Re: ocaml, QPL and the DFSG: New ocaml licence proposal.

[Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr>]

On Fri, Jul 23, 2004 at 12:59:33PM +0200, Sven Luther wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> Ok this is my third and last tentative to summarize this whole mess, and i
> would ask any participant here to ask himself if he is ready to defend its
> opinion before a judge before posting, and to ask himself if he honestly
> believes to have the legal background enough to make claim. Also, for those of
> you who didn't bother yet to read the QPL, here are a few links : 
> 
> The QPL : http://www.trolltech.com/licenses/qpl.html
> The Trolltech annotated version : http://www.trolltech.com/licenses/qpl-annotated.html
> The ocaml licence : 
>   http://svn.debian.org/viewcvs/pkg-ocaml-maint/packages/ocaml/trunk/debian/copyright?view=markup&rev=404
> The DFSG : http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines
> The caml-list thread about the LGPL+exception runtime licence, with
> suggestions from RMS itself (read first and second followup) :
>   http://caml.inria.fr/archives/200112/msg00000.html

Ok, after a first contact with upstream, there seems to be some informal
agreement to modify the ocaml licence to the following text :

  http://svn.debian.org/viewcvs/pkg-ocaml-maint/packages/ocaml/copyright?view=markup&rev=502

Changes are :

  a) Modified clause 3a to allow for adding authors to and translation of
     copyright notices.

  b) Removed clause 6c.

  c) Removed choise of venue mention in the Choice of Law.


So this solves most of the issues, and we need to go through the QPL 3b again,
but upstream feels it is a reasonable clause, and would like to keep it.

Also the first modification, well, i am not overly confident that it is really
needed, and i am sure my wording of it are abysmal, and i ask for some help
here in finding some nice and concise wording which doesn't divert to much
from the original. The old wording was : 

  a. Modifications must not alter or remove any copyright notices
     in the Software.

And i changed it to : 

  a. Modifications must not alter or remove any copyright notices
     in the Software except by adding new authors.
  
One last trouble i have is that the QPL 1.0 state :

          Copyright (C) 1999 Troll Tech AS, Norway.
              Everyone is permitted to copy and
	      distribute this license document.

So, this would make it illegal to modify the QPL as i have done here, right ? 

Another way the upstream author has been suggesting was to keep the QPL 1.0 as
is, and saying that ocaml is under the QPL 1.0 licence, except that clause QPL
6c and the Choice of venue part of the Choice of Law clause doesn'y apply.

Friendly,

Sven Luther