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:

>> > 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?
>
> Well, QPL6c was removed, right ? And QPL clause 6 and QPL clause 3 and 4 apply
> to different cases of software, as we previously discussed.

QPL 6c ws not removed.  It's overridden for the specific case of
Ocaml, but that doesn't help the other QPL-licensed software in
Debian.  I don't think there's much, but it's all important to somebody.

>> 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.
>
> Indeed, but this is not going to happen. I also would 100x prefer a GPLed
> ocaml over a BSSDish one though.

It's hard to call the GPL a more free license than the QPL -- even if
the QPL is called non-free for the sake of argument.  They provide
different freedoms under different conditions.  Licenses are only a
partially ordered set.

-Brian

-- 
Brian Sniffen                                       bts@alum.mit.edu