[ocaml-infra] ocaml.org licensing

Wed Feb 26 16:20:15 GMT 2014

Hi,

  I have a few points that I would like to see clarified before:

1/ What is exactly "Ocaml.org" in this discussion ? Is opam.ocaml.org
included here, or not ? I think it would be clearer if the website was
called "www.ocaml.org", and this licensing policy only applied to that
site.

2/ Ashish said the goal was to "give appropriate credit to
contributors", but I couldn't find either a page listing the
contributors, nor an official copyright holder or just contributors
per page. As a consequence, I don't see who is the BY of CC BY-SA 4.0
[1].

By the way, in France, the site would be illegal, I think, as there is
no public entity (or individual) taking the responsibility for
potential illegal content on any page.

3/ I am concerned by the "governance" part of
http://ocaml.org/about.html . I don't think the 5 current members are
representative of the OCaml community, 3 of them are in the UK, 1 in
the US and 1 in Belgium. Given that the current rules gives them too
much power (each of them has the right to prevent anybody from joining
the group: I have never seen that anywhere else, I would actually
expect the contrary, that any member would have the right to add new
members), I think it is a barrier for adoption and contribution by the
wider community (especially the French one, see for example how
outdated the page http://ocaml.org/docs/install.fr.html is, latest
version is 4.00.1 there).

--Fabrice

On Wed, Feb 26, 2014 at 4:14 PM, Anil Madhavapeddy <avsm2 at cl.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
> Louis, Fabrice,
>
> Do you have a sense for how long this response will take?  It's holding up
> progressing the licensing issue at the moment (which is very important to
> resolve before adding more content into the mix).
>
> -anil
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>
> From: Ashish Agarwal <agarwal1975 at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [ocaml-infra] ocaml.org licensing
> Date: 18 February 2014 16:47:36 GMT
> To: Louis Gesbert <louis.gesbert at ocamlpro.com>
> Cc: infrastructure <infrastructure at lists.ocaml.org>
>
> Hi Louis. Have you had a chance to review? We'd like your input. Thanks.
>
>
> On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 11:09 AM, Louis Gesbert <louis.gesbert at ocamlpro.com>
> wrote:
>>
>> Very good move, thanks for doing this clarification !
>>
>> However we do have a number of contents on ocaml.org ; we'll need to go
>> through them and discuss their licensing internally to give a proper
>> response.
>>
>> Thanks,
>> Louis
>>
>> Le lundi 10 février 2014, 09:20:54 Ashish Agarwal a écrit :
>> > Dear all,
>> >
>> > The content and implementation of the OCaml.org website do not have
>> > licenses specified, which should be fixed. Our goal is to encourage
>> > contributions, give appropriate credit to contributors, and maximize the
>> > utility of the website for the entire OCaml community. We would like the
>> > community's feedback on the following proposal:
>> >
>> > (A) Content is released under CC BY-SA 4.0 [1].
>> > (B) Code that implements the site is released under the ISC license [2].
>> > (C) Code examples within content are released under the UNLICENSE [3].
>> > (D) Design of the site. All rights reserved by the OCaml.org project.
>> > (E) OCaml logo is released under the UNLICENSE [3].
>> > (F) Abstracts, slides from meetings. Rights retained by contributor.
>> >
>> > Here is our reasoning for each of the above:
>> >
>> > (A) Content refers to text that is visible by readers at
>> > http://ocaml.org(except for code; see (C) below). We'd like others to
>> > be able to use these
>> > materials but we don't want to create a situation where content that is
>> > freely given to the community (which amounts to a substantive volume of
>> > work) is then taken and monetized without giving back.
>> >
>> > The CC BY-SA 4.0 license [1] allows anyone to share and adapt the work,
>> > including for commercial gain, as long as that work is also released
>> > under
>> > the same (or compatible) license. This means that commercial works could
>> > be
>> > produced but free versions would also have to be made available. Thus,
>> > the
>> > community wouldn't lose out on any derivative work.
>> >
>> > (B) Code that implements ocaml.org. We want the code implementing the
>> > site
>> > to be open source and available for others to use as they wish. Examples
>> > of
>> > this include the files found under the 'script' folder of the repository
>> > [6]. The ISC licence [2] has already been chosen for OMD and MPP, two
>> > libraries that OCaml.org relies on substantially. Additional scripts are
>> > not particularly complex in nature, and we feel their use should not be
>> > restricted.
>> >
>> > (C) Code examples within content. For example, you can see many of these
>> > on
>> > the 99 problems page [5]. These are typically small pieces of useful
>> > code
>> > and we want people to be able to use them however they see fit. We want
>> > to
>> > do this without the burden of attribution that an open source license
>> > (e.g.
>> > ISC) would require, so placing them in the public domain seems like the
>> > sensible thing to do. The UNLICENSE [3] is one way of putting works in
>> > the
>> > public domain and is how code examples in Real World OCaml are released
>> > [4].
>> >
>> > (D) Design of the site. This is essentially the CSS, banner image, and
>> > custom logos (except the OCaml logo, see (E) below). The design uniquely
>> > identifies ocaml.org, and it would be awkward if another site looked
>> > similar. It seems sensible to reserve all rights over the design and
>> > disallow copying it in any form.
>> >
>> > (E) The new OCaml logo [7], which you see in the top-left of ocaml.org,
>> > should be encouraged. We hope this can be a unifying symbol of all
>> > things
>> > related to OCaml. Everyone should use this logo in their OCaml blogs,
>> > websites, documentation, presentations, T-shirts, stickers, etc. Thus,
>> > it
>> > should be usable freely by all, which can be achieved by releasing it
>> > under
>> > the UNLICENSE.
>> >
>> > (F) OCaml.org also hosts abstracts and slides for various meetings, such
>> > as
>> > the OCaml Users and Developers Workshop. Contributors should retain all
>> > rights over those works or be subject to whatever agreement they have
>> > with
>> > the respective meeting. They are not considered part of the Content as
>> > defined in (A).
>> >
>> > [1] http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
>> > [2] http://opensource.org/licenses/ISC
>> > [3] http://unlicense.org
>> > [4] https://github.com/realworldocaml/examples/blob/master/UNLICENSE
>> > [5] http://ocaml.org/learn/tutorials/99problems.html
>> > [6] https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml.org
>> > [7] http://ocaml.org/img/ocaml.png
>
>
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-- 
Fabrice LE FESSANT
Scientific Advisor, OCamlPro SAS