From: David Brown <caml-list@davidb.org>
> On Mon, Oct 25, 2004 at 04:29:59AM +1000, skaller wrote:
> 
> > It would be useful when making an anouncement if you could
> > specify the licence. This saves wasting time. 
> > 
> > On the home page it says:
> > 
> > "This software is free for free software. It is released under the GPL."
> > 
> > Hmm. So if I link it against the Ocaml standard libraries,
> > they have to be GPL'd too. But they're not ..
> 
> What???  I know your distaste for the GPL, but there is no incompatibility
> between the Ocaml standard libraries and a GPL'd program.  The Ocaml
> libraries are LGPL with a special exception that lets you build executibles
> using them, unrestricted.

I was going to make the same answer...

However, when releasing libraries for ocaml, it may be useful to
remember that while ocaml's runtime and libraries are
LGPL(+exception),  the compiler, and as a result the toplevel, is QPL,
and that the QPL happens to be incompatible with the GPL.
In practice, this means that you cannot distribute a toplevel
including a GPL library.

On the other hand, there should be no problem loading manually a
GPL library in the toplevel, or building such a toplevel privately.
(At least I believe so, but questions of dynamic loading are the
muddiest part of the GPL and the QPL.)

Jacques Garrigue

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