License question - QPL vs. SCM

License question - QPL vs. SCM

[Edgar Friendly]

The core OCaml compiler has a QPL license[1] (for everyone but
consortium members).  This license allows distribution as follows:


2. You may copy and distribute the Software in unmodified form
provided that the entire package, including - but not restricted to -
copyright, trademark notices and disclaimers, as released by the
initial developer of the Software, is distributed.

3. You may make modifications to the Software and distribute your
modifications, in a form that is separate from the Software, such as
patches. ...


My question for INRIA's lawyers (or anyone else in some official
capacity to answer) involves using a Source Code Manager (SCM) whose
distribution method has structure: source + patch1 + patch2 + ....  The
SCM would do the lifting of combining the two into the final tree, just
as a script could easily wget an original source file and a list of
patches and combine them into the final tree.

Would using such a SCM to organize and distribute compiler source
violate OCaml's license?

Would using such a SCM make the Gods of OCaml angry?  :)  I don't intend
to slip through a legal crack, I just want to work efficiently, and
trying to manage patches without such a system seems like madness, like
Linux kernel development before BitKeeper (I imagine).

Edgar


[1] http://caml.inria.fr/ocaml/license.en.html

Re: [Caml-list] License question - QPL vs. SCM

[Peng Zang]

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I have no legal experience, I am not a lawyer etc ...

But this sounds okay.  You're never actually distributing the changed form.  
You are simply distributing the patches and software to automate the patching 
process.

My opinion is probably biased though.  I've always thought QPL was a silly 
license.  The whole idea that you can release source + patches but not the 
patched sources seems absurd to me.  There is no difference between the two.  
All the necessary bits are there.  It's like saying you can release the 
source code in ASCII format but not UTF-8.

Peng


On Monday 07 April 2008 12:29:58 am Edgar Friendly wrote:
> The core OCaml compiler has a QPL license[1] (for everyone but
> consortium members).  This license allows distribution as follows:
>
>
> 2. You may copy and distribute the Software in unmodified form
> provided that the entire package, including - but not restricted to -
> copyright, trademark notices and disclaimers, as released by the
> initial developer of the Software, is distributed.
>
> 3. You may make modifications to the Software and distribute your
> modifications, in a form that is separate from the Software, such as
> patches. ...
>
>
> My question for INRIA's lawyers (or anyone else in some official
> capacity to answer) involves using a Source Code Manager (SCM) whose
> distribution method has structure: source + patch1 + patch2 + ....  The
> SCM would do the lifting of combining the two into the final tree, just
> as a script could easily wget an original source file and a list of
> patches and combine them into the final tree.
>
> Would using such a SCM to organize and distribute compiler source
> violate OCaml's license?
>
> Would using such a SCM make the Gods of OCaml angry?  :)  I don't intend
> to slip through a legal crack, I just want to work efficiently, and
> trying to manage patches without such a system seems like madness, like
> Linux kernel development before BitKeeper (I imagine).
>
> Edgar
>
>
> [1] http://caml.inria.fr/ocaml/license.en.html
>
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Re: [Caml-list] License question - QPL vs. SCM

[Adrien]

IIRC, that's who the KDE project did before Qt was released with a gpl license.
They had a local copy of Qt directly from Trolltech and distributed
patches which were automatically applied.
Trolltech even advised to get Qt's source from kde.org ! So I *guess*
it will be alright.

 ---

Adrien Nader

Re: [Caml-list] License question - QPL vs. SCM

[Dario Teixeira]

Hi,

> My opinion is probably biased though.  I've always thought QPL was a silly 
> license.  The whole idea that you can release source + patches but not the 
> patched sources seems absurd to me.  There is no difference between the two. 

It's not silly if you intend to make clear what comes from upstream
and what has been modified.  Debian packages are organised like this:
unmodified upstream tarball + Debian patches.  In a different domain,
the American constitution works the same way: there's the original
text + patches (that go by the name "amendments").

Cheers,
Dario



      ___________________________________________________________ 
Yahoo! For Good helps you make a difference  

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Re: License question - QPL vs. SCM

[Sylvain Le Gall]

On 07-04-2008, Dario Teixeira <darioteixeira@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
>> My opinion is probably biased though.  I've always thought QPL was a silly 
>> license.  The whole idea that you can release source + patches but not the 
>> patched sources seems absurd to me.  There is no difference between the two. 
>
> It's not silly if you intend to make clear what comes from upstream
> and what has been modified.  Debian packages are organised like this:
> unmodified upstream tarball + Debian patches.  In a different domain,
> the American constitution works the same way: there's the original
> text + patches (that go by the name "amendments").
>

I think distributing tarball + patches are ok, but a lot of SCM will
interleave changes which leads you to have a really borderline situation
where delta are not patches... This is a very dangerous interpretation.
I won't go this way -- because this thread will finish as a std battle
of what is SCM, how delta are stored et al...

Regards,
Sylvain Le Gall

Re: [Caml-list] Re: License question - QPL vs. SCM

[Edgar Friendly]

Sylvain Le Gall wrote:
> I think distributing tarball + patches are ok, but a lot of SCM will
> interleave changes which leads you to have a really borderline situation
> where delta are not patches... This is a very dangerous interpretation.
> I won't go this way -- because this thread will finish as a std battle
> of what is SCM, how delta are stored et al...
> 
> Regards,
> Sylvain Le Gall
> 
As noted in the annotated QPL [1],


Any technique is acceptable for keeping changes separate - generally,
you would have to mark changes very clearly for them to be separate. We
don't want to hard-code the idea that the form must be patches.


methods other than patches can satisfy the separate requirement.  This
seems to defuse the issue of delta != patch, at least in my mind.

E

[1] http://troll.no/products/qt/licenses/licensing/qpl-annotated

Re: [Caml-list] License question - QPL vs. SCM

[Peng Zang]

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Yeah, Edgar was also just pointing out that (source + patches) allows one to 
easily recover the source whereas patched sources do not.

(source + patches) is more equivalent to (patched sources + original sources).

In any event, I'm not saying such a format is bad for releasing code.  I 
simply think it is a tad silly for a distribution license to specify, so 
precisely, the format the code is to be released in.  Releasing the code as 
(patched sources + original sources) for example, seems just as reasonable... 
but it is unclear if that is allowed.

Peng

On Monday 07 April 2008 03:54:09 pm Dario Teixeira wrote:
> Hi,
>
> > My opinion is probably biased though.  I've always thought QPL was a
> > silly license.  The whole idea that you can release source + patches but
> > not the patched sources seems absurd to me.  There is no difference
> > between the two.
>
> It's not silly if you intend to make clear what comes from upstream
> and what has been modified.  Debian packages are organised like this:
> unmodified upstream tarball + Debian patches.  In a different domain,
> the American constitution works the same way: there's the original
> text + patches (that go by the name "amendments").
>
> Cheers,
> Dario
>
>
>
>       ___________________________________________________________
> Yahoo! For Good helps you make a difference
>
> http://uk.promotions.yahoo.com/forgood/
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Re: [Caml-list] License question - QPL vs. SCM

[Xavier Leroy]

> My question for INRIA's lawyers (or anyone else in some official
> capacity to answer) involves using a Source Code Manager (SCM) whose
> distribution method has structure: source + patch1 + patch2 + ....  The
> SCM would do the lifting of combining the two into the final tree, just
> as a script could easily wget an original source file and a list of
> patches and combine them into the final tree.
>
> Would using such a SCM to organize and distribute compiler source
> violate OCaml's license?
>
> Would using such a SCM make the Gods of OCaml angry?  :)  I don't intend
> to slip through a legal crack, I just want to work efficiently, and
> trying to manage patches without such a system seems like madness, like
> Linux kernel development before BitKeeper (I imagine).

The QPL talks only about distribution of derived software.  To
organize your work and that of your co-developers, everything goes.

If you wish to stick to the letter of the QPL, you can always not give
public access to your SCM repository, and do your public distribution
as a patch against the original Caml sources.  Your SCM will very
conveniently generate this patch.  It's no more work than distributing
tarballs.

This said, I believe the spirit of the QPL is that anyone can easily
see what parts of your derived work are original work and what parts
are unchanged from the OCaml sources.  In this view, as mentioned
earlier in this thread, modified sources + original sources is
just as good as original sources + patch.

However, a public SCM repository is more than just a set of (original
sources, modified sources) pairs.  In particular, if your repository
contains several versions of the original OCaml sources (because you
track our releases), it might not be clear which version of the
original sources correspond to which version of your modified
sources. So, some changes that we have made may appear like you made
them, which isn't quite in the spirit of the QPL.

So, you're in a gray area.  I don't think anyone will be upset to the
point of bothering you about your public repository.  I certainly won't.
But if I were you I'd just stick to the letter of the QPL, just to
have one less thing to worry about.

- Xavier Leroy

Re: [Caml-list] License question - QPL vs. SCM

[Edgar Friendly]

Xavier Leroy wrote:
> The QPL talks only about distribution of derived software.  To
> organize your work and that of your co-developers, everything goes.
> 
I feel very happy to hear this - I could imagine QPL's "separate"
requirement getting enforced even among developers, which would
certainly cause pain for development.

> If you wish to stick to the letter of the QPL, you can always not give
> public access to your SCM repository, and do your public distribution
> as a patch against the original Caml sources.  Your SCM will very
> conveniently generate this patch.  It's no more work than distributing
> tarballs.
> 
Actually, github has a one-click "download tarball" button, but I've an
issue in their tracker to disable it for this project as to not violate
your license.

> This said, I believe the spirit of the QPL is that anyone can easily
> see what parts of your derived work are original work and what parts
> are unchanged from the OCaml sources.  In this view, as mentioned
> earlier in this thread, modified sources + original sources is
> just as good as original sources + patch.
> 
I don't mind making releases as original sources + patch, especially if
this makes you happier.

> However, a public SCM repository is more than just a set of (original
> sources, modified sources) pairs.  In particular, if your repository
> contains several versions of the original OCaml sources (because you
> track our releases), it might not be clear which version of the
> original sources correspond to which version of your modified
> sources. So, some changes that we have made may appear like you made
> them, which isn't quite in the spirit of the QPL.
> 
A large part of my problem with patches comes to this - there's often
not enough information in them to know which version of the original
OCaml sources they apply to.  My repository will track your CVS, so yes,
your changes will appear as patches as well.  The commits are still
marked with the CVS id of the INRIA user that committed them, so the
origin of a patch could be determined, but it'd take a bit of time.

> So, you're in a gray area.  I don't think anyone will be upset to the
> point of bothering you about your public repository.  I certainly won't.
> But if I were you I'd just stick to the letter of the QPL, just to
> have one less thing to worry about.
> 
> - Xavier Leroy

If it pleases you, I'll have a repository for developers (and make it
easy to get on the list of developers), and make any official releases
as ocaml-source + patch -- QPL-style.

I'd rather have the development repository public -- the more hoops to
jump through to submit code, the less code submissions.  As to the
letter of the QPL...  we'll stay away from that flamewar.

E