🚀 go-pugleaf

In comp.lang.functional Tyson Richard DOWD <trd@cs.mu.oz.au> wrote:
> This would be a shame, perhaps, but nowhere near as much of a shame as
> if OCAML disappears, taking all the good stuff with it, never to be
> seen again until someone reinvents the wheel.

> IMHO far too many research projects die and take all the work done on
> them with them.  Far too many papers are published on systems that
> several years later are completely abandoned.  The source code remains
> under a restrictive copyright, and so is useless to future researchers.

I don't know whether you follow the OCAML-mailing list. The developers
just mentioned that in the (very unlikely) case that INRIA stops the
development of OCAML, they would release the sources under a less
restrictive licence. This would allow other people to make full use of
their work (sources).

> I would hope that OCAML has more to offer the FP-community than a
> few implementation features that can be transferred into Java.

It certainly has ;-)

But speed of language implementations is also one of the criterias for
choosing a language. Why should INRIA want to have an even stronger
competition from the IP-side? The high speed of OCAML-compiled code and
the fast interpreter are definitely a big plus for people taking a look
at FP.

> If all OCAML has to offer to the FP community is technology that can
> be transferred into other languages, then it's obvious that the language
> itself is not important -- probably the best thing that can happen for
> anyone is technology transfer.  It would certainly save other
> researchers working on other languages from re-implementing those
> features.

It seems you are not very convinced of OCAML ;-)

What a pity! It has indeed much to offer (not only the implementation
but also the language itself!)...

> If you are really concerned about one-way technology transfers, than GPL
> your code.  Anyone who takes your technology and uses it will have to
> license their changes under the GPL so you can also use their changes.

This is not the problem - it's not only a question of source freeness
but we also try to promote the idea of FP. So why support a technology
(IP) we consider inferior?

Best regards,
Markus Mottl

-- 
Markus Mottl, mottl@miss.wu-wien.ac.at, http://miss.wu-wien.ac.at/~mottl