Re: copyright for ocaml byte code including a runtime system
On Sun, Sep 17, 2000 at 08:12:21PM +0200, Ralf Treinen wrote:
> Hi,
>
> has anyone thought about the problem what the correct debian/copyright
> should be for byte code containing the runtime system (that is linked
> with ocamlc ... -custom) ? This is certainly relevant if you provide
> a package for all architectures, in which case you should compile
> to byte code when there is no native compiler.
Well, There is no problem here, because the QPL code should only apply to the
compilers and other such stuff. Result of compilation to bytecode/nativecode
are at worse under the lgpl.
I don't know the lgpl enough, but i suppose that since most stuff there is a
library, (comparable to libc ?) it should not hinder licencing the program
compiled under another license.
Will need to look at it more ,but this could eventually be something for
debian/lega, and/or upstream.
> I don't not find an answer in the copyright file for ocaml-3.00 since it
> specifies the copyright in terms of the sub-directories of the ocaml
> *source*, without specifying what this implies for the various tools.
you could look at the compile log to see what tools use code from said
subdirectory.
Anyway, the idea was to have everything that goes into bytecode programs lgpl
and the various compilation tools QPL. Essentially runtime stuff is the
bytecode interpreter, the native code support stuff and the various libraries.
This lets a blind spot for the toplevel though.
> Anyway, I understand that the runtime system is LGPL (please correct
> me if I'm wrong). Good - so after wading through the LGPL text it
> seems to me that Section 6 is what applies here (the software that I
> compile is itself GPL licensed). My conclusion is that it is sufficient
> to add to me debian/copyright file the following text (only for architectures
> where I compile to byte code):
>
> The executable code contains a copy of the OCaml runtime system
> which is licensed under the terms of the Gnu Library General
> Public License. On a Debian system, this license can be found
> at /usr/share/common-lincenses/LGPL-2.
erm ...
Don't know if it is clear enough. ocamlc is definitively under the QPL. Not
sure if it is also LPGLed.
In any case i don't think any of these licenses apply to code compiled and
resulting executables.
Friendly,
Sven LUTHER
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