Re: [Caml-list] Licensing questions

[David MENTRE <david.mentre@gmail.com>]

Hello Jonathan,

2005/11/17, Jonathan Roewen <jonathan.roewen@gmail.com>:
> I'm not a licensing guru, nor know exactly what all the gobbledegook
> means, and have a few questions about how licensing of various parts
> of ocaml system will affect my operating systems project.

Be careful that license issues are a sensitive topic on this list! ;-)

> I use a customised version of the sources in the following directories:
> byterun
> stdlib
> otherlibs/threads
> otherlibs/bigarray
>
> Do I have to make those components open source?

>From http://camlcvs.inria.fr/cgi-bin/cvsweb/ocaml/LICENSE?rev=1.18 ,
it appears that all those directory are part of the "Library".

"The Library is distributed under the terms of the GNU Library General
Public License version 2 (included below)."

So those compose components *are* Open Source. If you distribute then,
you need to keep them Open Source.

> Also, can DST be
> closed source if I so wish (currently haven't decided on a license)?

Due to the use of LGPL license with a special clause, you can use
those components in a closed source (aka proprietary) software. So you
can use about any license for the remaining part of your software.

That's said and as a personal note, I would *strongly* advise you to
use a free software liense and a well known one, like BSD, LGPL or
GPL. Personally, I would use GNU GPL, because is forces contributers
of your software to give back to you, while still allowing anybody to
use it at will. I'm quite interested by your OS in Caml but the 2nd
reason not to look at it is that it is currently not Free Software.
The first reason being I don't have enough time. As it becoming off
topic for this list, you can ask me in private if you want more
information on those license issues and about Free/Open Source (and
I'm not a lawyer ;-).

Yours,
david