ocaml, QPL and the DFSG, new summary

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

Hello,

Ok this is my third and last tentative to summarize this whole mess, and i
would ask any participant here to ask himself if he is ready to defend its
opinion before a judge before posting, and to ask himself if he honestly
believes to have the legal background enough to make claim. Also, for those of
you who didn't bother yet to read the QPL, here are a few links : 

The QPL : http://www.trolltech.com/licenses/qpl.html
The Trolltech annotated version : http://www.trolltech.com/licenses/qpl-annotated.html
The ocaml licence : 
  http://svn.debian.org/viewcvs/pkg-ocaml-maint/packages/ocaml/trunk/debian/copyright?view=markup&rev=404
The DFSG : http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines
The caml-list thread about the LGPL+exception runtime licence, with
suggestions from RMS itself (read first and second followup) :
  http://caml.inria.fr/archives/200112/msg00000.html

Please read those links with attention, or don't bother responding here, and
start another thread with your ranting.

Now, in order to make things clear, i am preparing a subthread with my
complete analysis, and encourage you to not reply to it, but post your
complete analysis on your own, in such a way as you would present before the
jury, and try to identify exactly the problematic points. Try to be consice
and clear, i will try also.

Upto now, the identified problems are threefold, so we can start subthread for
analysing and discussing them separatedly. Please don't read to much into my
tentative of concise sumary below for each of those, and argument clearly in
followups to each of them individually.

Also, for clarification of the discussion, let's call A the upstream author, M
the modificator, and U the end user receiving code from M.

  1) QPL 3b. A is allowed to integrate changes from M into the original
  software in both the QPL licence and some other licence it is dually
  licenced with (GPL or proprietary). The claim that this fails DFSG #1 has
  been made, if you consider this right a fee or royalty.

  2) QPL 6c. This, as all of QPL 6, apply to external works linked with a
  QPLed library, and not really to modified version thereof. QPL 6c means that
  A is allowed to request a copy of this external work, under an otherwise
  free licence chosen by M.

  3) The choice of venue. The ocaml QPL mentions the choice of venue for law
  suits as being the Versaille court where the upstream authors reside. Claims
  are made that this is non-free, as it poses a burden over U or M, if A
  decides to sur him. No DFSG point seems to cover this case directly.

Ok, as said, this are mostly the plain facts, not my interpretation of them,
feel free to start a sub-thread for each of those three point you wish to discuss,
changing the subject as appropriate.

Also, i am now subscribing to debian-legal, so no need to CC me anymore.

Friendly,

Sven Luther