The final straws for me is that it is the creator's explicit intent that no incomplete or incorrect implementations be publicly accessible (he among other things thinks there's enough already...), and that the author broke a promise to the community, demonstrating that his word is no good.

Sure, Ocaml and shen have "weird" licenses but I just read through them in the last few minutes and see no major issues.

The licenses for both only effect the code for the language interpreter/compiler and associated libraries itself and should have little to no effect on your own code.

If you use MIT/BSD licenses then you are almost certainly fine, with GPL there are some potential issues but most people think that dynamic linking doesn't count as "linking" in the lawyer sense and, therefore, using GPL code with something like Shen would be fine. This hasn't been tested in the courts AFAIK.

I don't think the language will take off unless it change licensing before it's too late, but I still find it enjoyable to use with some smallish projects.

I hope that Shen will get a successor that will make it more suitable for modern world while keeping ideas that make it unique and sound in the first place and smoothing the rough edges.