From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id OAA06309; Wed, 26 Feb 2003 14:17:39 +0100 (MET) X-Authentication-Warning: pauillac.inria.fr: majordomo set sender to owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr using -f Received: (from xleroy@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id OAA06134 for caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr; Wed, 26 Feb 2003 14:17:38 +0100 (MET) Received: from nez-perce.inria.fr (nez-perce.inria.fr [192.93.2.78]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id EAA25434 for ; Wed, 26 Feb 2003 04:30:15 +0100 (MET) Received: from pakastelohi.cypherpunks.to (pakastelohi.cypherpunks.to [213.130.163.34]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id h1Q3UFH05941 for ; Wed, 26 Feb 2003 04:30:15 +0100 (MET) Received: by pakastelohi.cypherpunks.to (Postfix, from userid 1036) id 4954436638; Wed, 26 Feb 2003 04:30:10 +0100 (CET) From: Anonymous via the Cypherpunks Tonga Remailer Comments: This message did not originate from the Sender address above. It was remailed automatically by anonymizing remailer software. Please report problems or inappropriate use to the remailer administrator at . To: caml-list@inria.fr Subject: [Caml-list] Re: User library license Message-ID: Date: Wed, 26 Feb 2003 04:30:10 +0100 (CET) Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk Many successful languages use a very liberal license with basically BSD or X11 terms. Python, Oz, SML/NJ, etc. "RedHat makes a living from GPL code" is misleading. A big reason for Linux success is Apache, which is BSD licensed, plus the BSD-licensed languages running on Linux. The big sticking point with me is that it's much easier to convince my management to use software with a clean license. If I want to make a product with an embedded XYZ engine, the company lawyers come down on me like a ton of bricks when they see xGPL license terms for XYZ. Then everybody loses. Me, the business, and XYZ Project. Believe me, I've had the GPL/BSD debate before, and am not interested in repeating it. My statement is simply that the GPL philosophy completely misreads the business situation. It sets up an artificial antagonism instead of finding common ground. There are Bad Guys like Microsoft, but also Good Guys like Sun and IBM, which have both given away millions of lines of code. Business is at least as likely to be your friend as your enemy. There is enough overlap of mutual interest that you will get some code back from proprietary work. If you xGPL it, then you destroy many possibilities for collaboration. Business wants the code to be better, but does not want to be forced into revealing family jewels. So it contributes what it can. However in the face of xGPL licensing, business says basically "forget it" to its software team. xGPL pushes them to the wall and demands their code; no business can submit to that. Some GPL folks say, "fine do it yourself," and that's exactly what business ends up doing. It's all horrific duplication and waste. Over- worked software teams duplicating open source work, and understaffed open source projects crying out for volunteers. Sometimes business uses BSD code without sharing back -- true enough -- but that's not always bad! The whole Windows TCP/IP stack, and the new Mac OS X, are perfect examples. We have better quality operating systems because of this BSD adoption. They may have even caught a few bugs for us. If it were up to me I'd put all of OCaml and its libraries under the Academic Free License which is the current OSI best practice for BSD-style licensing. You would see much broader usage of OCaml in the commercial sector. Yeah I know plenty of people use OCaml at work, I do too, don't beat me over the head. There is a difference between internal usage and mass production. Mass production is where you get real returns because the code has to be right, or customers complain. Internal use doesn't generate anywhere near that kind of development effort. OK, thanks everyone, I know opinions differ, this is just my perspective and I hope it was communicated clearly. Mark ------------------- To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners