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:

>> > Why not ? It would say : upstream can redistribute under the QPL and any other
>> > licence that is considered DFSG-Free, including the BSD licence.
>> >
>> > What do you find non-free in this ? 
>> 
>> It compels me to grant upstream a right which upstream will not grant
>> me.  If that were symmetric, I would not object to this under DFSG 3.
>
> Well, take the example of the BSD for example ? It is in no way symmetric.

Indeed, the BSD is no not symmetric.  It is more permissive than a copyleft.
*Compelling* the grant of a BSD license to others is less permissive
than a symmetric license: I have to give up more than I get.

>> Depending on phrasing, I might still find it objectionable, but I'd
>> have to think long and hard about the differences between compelled
>> grant of license to recipients, compelled grant of license to a third
>> party, and compelled transmission of data.  The first is free, the
>> third is not, and the second... well, I'm really not sure.
>
> Notice that nowhere in the QPL does it say that the original author can
> compell the patch from you, he can only get it freely from either you if you
> publicly distribute it, or from one of the chain of people you distribute it
> too.

You mean other than QPL 6, right?

Yes, the OCaml license I've last seen has no compelled transmission of
data, since it overrides QPL 6.  I just provided those three examples
-- copyleft, compelled asymmetric licensing, and compelled
transmission -- as examples of a range with one end certainly free and
one end certainly non-free.

>> >> It however would really improve the ocaml freeness, if ocaml itself were
>> >> dual-licensed under a 2-clause BSD license (or X11 or Expat or...)
>> >> besides the QPL. In that case Debian could choose to distribute
>> >> under the 2-clause BSD license (or X11 or...) and everyone could be
>> >> happy...
>> >
>> > Notice that the situation is not exactly the same. I didn't say the ocaml
>> > would be dual licenced, but that upstream has the right to distribute your
>> > changes under some random free licence, including the 2-clause BSD one, to the
>> > people they chose to. Not necessarily the world at large though.
>> 
>> But of course those people could distribute it further, under their
>> permissive license, right?  Because if they can't, then it's not free.
>> So this would at least allow somebody to buy and fork Ocaml into a
>> free-Ocaml and a QPL'd Ocaml.
>
> Indded. Now, this is no different than the pure BSD stuff, so if the BSD is
> free, what is the difference with this one ? 

This is quite different from pure BSD stuff.  If X gives Y code under
the BSD license, Y can modify it and do as he pleases, including
giving it and a copy of the license to Z.  If A gives B code under
this QPL' you mention, B must give A a license to distribute B's code
under the QPL, and under some other free license.

But if A then gives C a license to A's code plus B's code under the
BSD license, C has freedom with respect to the code and could freely
contribute it to Debian.

If we got the Caml code that way, that would be great.

-Brian

-- 
Brian Sniffen                                       bts@alum.mit.edu