[ocaml-platform] Maintainer notifications for opam-builder -- and other opam-builder enhancements

[Gabriel Scherer]

I don't follow, why would AGPL be a danger for your CI scripts or other
works on related topics? I'm not a lawyer, but the AGPL text (
https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl.html ) does not seem to imply that CI
scripts or "related topic" works would be affected by opam-builder's use of
the AGPL:

The "Corresponding Source" for a work in object code form means all the
> source code needed to generate, install, and (for an executable work) run
> the object code and to modify the work, including scripts to control those
> activities. However, it does not include the work's System Libraries, or
> general-purpose tools or generally available free programs which are used
> unmodified in performing those activities but which are not part of the
> work. For example, Corresponding Source includes interface definition files
> associated with source files for the work, and the source code for shared
> libraries and dynamically linked subprograms that the work is specifically
> designed to require, such as by intimate data communication or control flow
> between those subprograms and other parts of the work.
>

This description of "Source code" (to be distributed when you deploy
opam-builder on a service) includes "script to control those activities",
so you may argue that for example Docker files used to administrate an
opam-builder instance would have to be included -- which seems a reasonable
degree of invasiveness to me. I see nothing that could affect CI scripts
related to opam-repository in general, or your other works in the area:
they are not "specifically designed to require" interaction with
opam-builder, or are they?

And, in any case, any AGPL-related restriction might arguably prevent you
from running opam-builder on your own server, but I see even less how they
could prevent you from contributing patches to the software itself,
intended to take effect on Fabrice's instances -- that's the way I've been
considering contribution to opam-builder so far, although others are of
course warmly welcome to run their own instances if they want.


On Wed, Sep 28, 2016 at 2:18 PM, Thomas Gazagnaire <thomas at gazagnaire.org>
wrote:

> > In general I would encourage anyone to help improve opam-builder. We
> already have a few suggested features in the issue tracket (for example
> Alain Frisch gave feedback tracked in https://github.com/OCamlPro/
> opam-builder/issues/17 ), but ideas for improvements can easily be very
> open-ended while the resources to implement those changes seem fairly
> scarce, so I think focusing on small things first and actually implementing
> them could be very productive.
>
> Is there any hope to change the license? As a repository maintainer, I
> use/maintain/publish a lots of CI scripts and I also work on related
> topics, so AGPL make it impossible for me to contribute.
>
> Best,
> Thomas
>
>
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