[ocaml-biz] licenses, Java, and .NET

[Brandon J. Van Every]

Brian Hurt wrote:
> Brandon Van Every wrote:
> >
> > A pitfall: INRIA does not exactly have the open source 'Bazaar'
> > mentality.  They are a Cathederal.  Us more
> > business-oriented guys are
> > going to have to organize the bazaar, and make it INRIA-compatible.
>
> I find this humorous- maybe I'm just staying up too late.
> Business has
> classically valued the bazaar least of all.  Business has
> never seemed to
> mind the "point source" for a product- Microsoft currently, but IBM
> before.  We don't need a bazaar to sell to business- we need
> a bazaar to sell to the techies running Open Source.

But the problem is, INRIA is not a company.  It's a research
institution, and it views OCaml as a research product.  That kind of
Cathederal is going to make a CEO really nervous.  Victory in this arena
would be securing some definitive statements from INRIA about the
ongoing stability of the language.  The problem is, at present I don't
think they'd provide them.  What I've heard Xavier say on caml-list, is
that OCaml is a research project, and if it didn't change it wouldn't be
much of a research project.

> > Another pitfall: C# is an ISO standard now.  The language
> > itself, and
> > many libraries associated with it, are no longer controlled by
> > Microsoft.
>
> Is it really?  Did they sign over a peice of paper saying
> that they waive all patent claims as well?

I'm not sure what an ISO standard guarantees.  You'd have to chase that
down.  I think it guarantees that if a company does hold a patent, you
can get a license to that patent 'on reasonable terms'.  Such
'reasonable' terms would exclude unfunded open source developers, but
not companies wanting to make commercial products.  I don't think
there's any patent difficulty for C# and its core libraries, however.

> Because that's my suspicion.  Invent the language, design it
> so you have
> to use Microsoft's patent to implement a conformant version.
> Microsoft
> can then use said patent to kill or maim any competitor they
> feel needs
> it.  The only reason they wouldn't necessarily have shut down
> Mono yet is because they can't do enough damage yet.

Mono infringes upon The .NET Framework, which is not part of the ISO
standard.  That is how Microsoft will kill it. It's a separate issue
from C# and the core libraries.

> > I don't know to what degree INRIA can be coached, cajoled, or
> > conditioned to see OCaml as other than a research project.  It is a
> > question that, compared to Python's ongoing development, does pose
> > significant strategic risk.
>
> If worse comes to worse, we fork the project.  I'd rather
> not, however (for obvious reasons).

You're talking about an organizational level of "we" that's huge.  It is
going to be hard enough to put all the pieces together *with* INRIA's
cooperation.  I think it'll be a long, long time before we feel we can
do without INRIA.


Cheers,                     www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every           Seattle, WA

When no one else sells courage, supply and demand take hold.