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

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

On Fri, Jul 30, 2004 at 09:56:12AM -0700, Josh Triplett wrote:
> Sven Luther wrote:
> > On Fri, Jul 30, 2004 at 10:32:23AM -0400, Walter Landry wrote:
> >>Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr> wrote:
> >>>I would much rather keep this one as is, and concentrate at a later
> >>>time to the change to another licence altogether, maybe one of the
> >>>upcoming CECILL family.
> >>
> >>If you could get it changed to the version with the explicit GPL
> >>conversion clause, then we would have no issues.
> > 
> > Well, it will most assuredly not be the GPL-like licence anyway, so ...
> 
> The license itself is not GPL-like.  It just contains a clause partway
> through the license saying that you may alternatively
> use/copy/modify/distribute under the GPL.  I believe it was included to
> ensure that the license was explicitly GPL-compatible.

There will be various licence coming from the same guys who did the CECILL
one, don't know about the naming scheme. This one is aimed at having the same
kind of properties as the GPL, and there will be others more similar to the
LGPL or even the QPL in its properties.

I suppose that software coming from french public institution will be released
under those in the future, and the ocaml upstream said about it : 

  http://caml.inria.fr/archives/200407/msg00268.html :
  > I was delighted to see INRIA participating in the development of new 
  > free-software licences adapted to French law.[1]  Does INRIA have any 
  > plans yet to use any of these licences for Caml?

  The first (and currently only) such license is a GPL-style
  "contaminating" license, so it's not what we want for Caml.
  The press release mentions other licenses in the work with different
  flavours, so we'll see when they are ready.

  Moreover, we need these licenses to be recognized as open-source by
  Debian and other authorities before even considering to use them.
  Some of the initial reactions to the press release suggest that this
  might not be obvious.

I would love if debian-legal could get some access to the devel process of
those licences before they are released though.

Friendly,

Sven Luther