On Fri, Jan 09, 2004 at 12:58:49PM +0100, Sven Luther wrote: > Ocaml did. It was in non-free when i picked it up in 98, and has after > long discussion with upstream become free enough for main. I don't think > it was the only reason for the licence change, but my contact with > upstream and the work i did on the package led to them considering my > opinions more favourably or something such.
In the context of this discussion, do you think that the fact that Ocaml was in non-free was of any significance, or was it rather your personal contact/persuasion that made the license change possible? Or did you only initiate the discussion because you were maintaing Ocaml in non-free? FWIW, I've convinced a couple of authors to license their semi-free (which in my context usually means: only free for academic use) under a true Free Software license, without having the package in non-free. One could even argue that once a package is in non-free that might be good enough for some upstreams, so they don't feel the urge to relicense in order to get their stuff into main. Every case is different. Michael
