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Comment by Yoric | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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

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.

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.

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