Re: ocaml license
On Fri, Oct 08, 1999 at 10:12:21AM +0200, Sven LUTHER wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 07, 1999 at 10:41:13PM -0500, David Starner wrote:
> > On Thu, Oct 07, 1999 at 10:57:15AM +0200, Sven LUTHER wrote:
> > >I read somewhere on the FSF site that such
> > > stuff cannot really adopt a free source approach,
> > Um, the FSF believes that the free software approach is the only morally
> > acceptable approach. I can't see them saying that anything can't adopt
> > a free software approach anywhere.
>
> But i read, some two years ago, that they said that the only case where the
> free approach could cause problems where when the software is leading edge
> technology, citing voice recognition and other such as example. I was not able
> to find the web page saying this again, so maybe it was from another source,
> maybe the opensource guys ?
Probably. I'm sceptical that any form of programming language or compiler
could truly classify as leading edge technology anymore.
> Also, i can understand them, they are a small research team who are working on
> it since some years, and they are afraid that some big company with lots of
> money will take their product and take over the developpment, because they have
> lot of money and people to throw at it.
Iverson, the author of APL, once said something about if you have a truly
great idea, you'll have to force people to believe in it. Beyond that,
what's wrong with the GPL? You can fold anything you want back in, and
no one can make it proprietary. That's the best protection free software
has to offer. Anyway, if a big company really wanted to exploit, it can
always rewrite it - cf the Microsoft Explorer, Word, Excel, etc.
> upstream ocaml source, and when it is built, will build non-free-ocaml, build
> free-ocaml with it, and then only put free-ocaml binaries in the package and
> discard the non-free-ocaml one ? This permit me to compile all caml stuff from
> main, since there is no reason i cannot put the source of ocaml in main, as
> long as i don't distribute the binaries for it. This would be similar of
> creating a package that contains the source of a non-free program, but don't
> distribute the program, but the source of it.
But you're evading the rules. The ocaml source cannot go in main, as it's not
free.
David Starner - dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org
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