Re: NEW ocaml licence proposal by upstream, will be part of the 3.08.1 release going into sarge.

[Brian Thomas Sniffen <bts@alum.mit.edu>]

Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr> writes:

> On Fri, Aug 20, 2004 at 08:41:35AM -0400, Brian Thomas Sniffen wrote:
>> Sven Luther <sven.luther@wanadoo.fr> writes:
>> 
>> > On Thu, Aug 19, 2004 at 03:48:10PM -0400, Glenn Maynard wrote:
>> >> > Now, you may claim that the patch may be more significant than the original
>> >> > code, or equaly so. But then, in this case, it would be argued which of those
>> >> > correspond to a derived work of the other. My position is that each one is a
>> >> > derived work of the other, each being QPLed, and so each get the same licence
>> >> > and the same benefit, in particular your right to claim upstream's code is a
>> >> > derived work of your own stuff, and can thus be incorportated in your own code
>> >> > base, provided upstream incorporate your work.
>> >> 
>> >> The QPL requires that I give special permission to the original author to
>> >> incorporate my changes.  It does not give me that permission in return if he
>> >> does so.
>> >
>> > Ok, please tell me where the QPL says that the upstream author, in addition of
>> > having the right to licence your changes made under the QPL into his tree,
>> > where does it say that he has the right to not respect the QPL on your code ?
>> 
>> Right here, in QPL 3b:
>> 
>>       When modifications to the Software are released under this
>>       license, a non-exclusive royalty-free right is granted to the
>>       initial developer of the Software to distribute your
>>       modification in future versions of the Software provided such
>>       versions remain available under these terms in addition to any
>>       other license(s) of the initial developer.
>> 
>> That grants an entirely separate license to distribute the
>> modification in future versions.  He can't modify it himself, but he
>
> So, what if he want to touch the code provided by the patch, he has to abide
> by the terms of the QPL ?

If he wants to make further changes to my modifications, he has to
abide by whatever license I gave him for that, yes.  But he's still
the initial developer, not me, even if I gave it to him under the QPL.

But if I license it to him saying "you may distribute this freely, but
you may not modify it" then he's mildly screwed.  Indeed, that's the
default license he gets under QPL 3b.  I wonder how many
further-modified patches are in the OCaml compilers right now, without
a license to INRIA to do so.

-Brian

-- 
Brian Sniffen                                       bts@alum.mit.edu