Sven Luther <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > > I was thinking of a case where the software is being used in a > > secretive industry. For example, suppose I work for a semiconductor > > Well, if they can't abide with the term of the licence, nobody is forcing them > to use the software in question.
Of course, but everyone loses if people who might have been able to contribute, even in a small way, by identifying bugs, for example, find themselves unable to use the software. > Compare that if someone has some GPLed > software whose otherwise constraints stop you from freely distributing it. It > is common knowledge that this means you cannot distribute it at all. It's surprising, though, how uninterested some people are in licensing issues. GNU Prolog used to have a GPL run-time library, and perhaps still does. That's quite a limitation, and I'm not sure it's deliberate on the part of the author. > > company with 500-100 employees. A lot of what we do is temporarily > > confidential, in that we don't want the rest of the world finding out > > what we are working on until there is an official announcement. We use > > So what. if upstream is aware of it enough to make a request, the secret is > out anyway, The fact that the software is being used is presumably not secret, but the (modified) source code might contain confidential information. This is somewhat hypothetical, because, as I understand it, ocaml's run-time library is released under the LGPL with additional permissions, so the QPL would not cause any problems for someone who just wants to use ocaml for making binaries which they then distribute. Nevertheless, it's worth noting that the GPL allows something that the QPL does not allow: namely, a limited release of software that contains confidential information. For example, it's possible, I think, that a microprocessor company might want to modify GCC to make it handle some new instructions that are highly confidential, then release the modified GCC to partners who have signed non-disclosure agreements, and publicly announce that they are doing this, without revealing details of how the new instructions work. I think that's possible with the GPL, but not with the QPL.
