Hacker News Reader

Comment by necubi | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately it's AGPL licensed so it can't be used for commercial development (without obtaining a commercial license). It looks neat though, and it's great to see people rethinking the normal way of doing things on the web.

View on HN

s/commercial/closed source/...

Also, I may be wrong, but I don't think that the code run by a GPLed interpreter has to conform to the license. Native libraries linked to the runtime would have to, though.

Caveat: Opa is not an interpreter, it's a native code compiler, with native libraries. Consequently, the previous poster is right: AGPL is fully contagious here.

Note: I'm part of the Opa team.

Can you give insight into this strategy? It seems... limiting. For startups, at least.

Well, the general idea is to ensure that whoever is using Opa somehow contributes to the FOSS community, either by contributing source code or by funding the development of Opa itself.

How is that limiting for startups? Most startups are built on execution and network-effects and I don't see how the license is a hindrance to that.

Really? Source-code is not part of the execution?

A vast majority of start-ups, talented developers see afterwards and go "Oh, I could have coded that", but perhaps not built the business or had the drive to go after the users. They can see the site and imagine how they would reverse engineer it. The value is in the user-base and execution of the business. Only a few start-ups rely on what might be a non-trivial new technology that was invented in house, for which closed source is necessary.

Well, if you guys ever rethink this, I'll be interested. Until then, I'll just keep plugging along with what I have.

I was going to give a quick glance to Opa, but the AGPL license fills me with confidence. Your team is confident that the language is awesome enough that the license won't be a problem even for proprietary/commercial users of it.

Good choice on the license!

(However if you encounter problems with adoption/funding, it might be time to start thinking about paid dual-licensing heh)

I wouldn't even bother to look at it without knowing that, if I mange to make something interesting, I have a way to control my code.

AGPL is a non-starter.

EDIT: There is a non-AGPL license that can be purchased. Non-starter has passed start. :)

But no published price list. So, no sale here.

At least superficially, this seems close to UR/Web. (http://www.impredicative.com/ur/). I assume you guys are aware of each other. Can you tell us something about the advantages of Opa?

Of course, we know each other. Ur/Web for instance allows metaprogramming when Opa doesn't. But Opa handles distribution natively when Ur/Web doesn't. Some users say that both projects are of great quality, so I invite you to try both and make your own judgment. Some bits at http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/icp4u/yet_anoth...

Thanks for the information!

Ur/Web syntax seems closer to OCaml syntax, so it might be a bit easier to learn. However, Opa documentation seems more polished and complete so it might even the odds.

Nice work, and thanks for bringing static guarantees to web development. It is much needed.

The LtU thread now contains the start of a discussion on the topic.

You can't even open source your code using a license that doesn't restrict the rights of others. You would have to pay for a commercial license to be able to release your code under WTFPL, zlib, or MIT license.

Uh, I think this is wrong. Your code is not a derivative work of Opa, you can release it under whatever permissive license you want. (Of course, if users run it using Opa, they might have obligations with respect to Opa's license, but this is a different matter.)

The Opa web site says that I cannot: "Firstly, `‘if I'm using AGPL Opa to develop an app does it need to be AGPL, too?’'. Long story short — yes, it does." It would probably be better for me to consult the license, but I don't plan on reading the license just to make sure that I really can't use a language whose developers don't want me to be able to use it

I confirm (I'm the one who wrote that FAQ entry).

However, if you wish to make your code open-source with a different license, don't hesitate to contact Mathieu.Baudet@mlstate.com, he'll certainly be happy to arrange something.

I agree that under the right circumstances, the code would have to be released under the AGPL. I disagree with the fact that you could not also release the code (your code, not including any of MLstate's code) under a permissive license like MIT or WTFPL. If you think you are in a position to forbid this, I would be interested to know your reasoning.

I actually have no clue. Perhaps hbbio can respond to this question. He's our CEO, btw.

Otherwise, you can try and ping our COO at Mathieu.Baudet@mlstate.com .

here is a blog post about the license: http://blog.opalang.org/2011/08/opa-license-contributions.ht...

Regardless of license requirements, I think the following built in feature is interesting:

"way for your users to download the sources of the application. In fact Opa facilitates that by automatically enriching the server (in release mode) to serve the source code of the application at a special /_internal_/src_code URL."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com