[Haskell-cafe] (L)GPL libraries & Haskell/GHC (was: Re: ANNOUNCE: tie-knot library)

[Ivan Lazar Miljenovic]

On 12 December 2012 12:57, Nicolas Trangez <nicolas at incubaid.com> wrote:
> Note: IANAL
>
> On Tue, 2012-12-11 at 17:45 -0800, David Thomas wrote:
>> On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 5:35 PM, Brandon Allbery <allbery.b at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>> > (Oddly enough, GPL is not the only open source license.)
>>
>> There was no implication to the contrary.  It was stated that BSD is a
>> *weaker* license - this is true in the sense that it has fewer requirements
>> (in particular, no copyleft) - and that "strong copyleft" licenses such as
>> the GPL should be preferred as they do more to bolster the free software
>> community.  You can disagree with this claim (there are arguments both ways
>> - delving into them is not my point here) but please try not to bring in
>> straw men.
>
> Actually the library is made available under the LGPL-3 license,
> according to its README, not the GPL (although the latter is implicit,
> of course).
>
> In the Haskell world this does have a different effect compared to when
> one uses the LGPL for, say, a C library though, since (at least for now)
> GHC uses/defaults to static linking, which IIRC (though IANAL) turns the
> LGPL into GPL, so this has a severe impact for application authors. This
> might be something people aren't aware of when releasing Haskell
> libraries using the LGPL.
>
> I tend to use the LGPL myself for most library-style projects, and do so
> as well for Haskell code (although I'm aware of the drawbacks), but I'm
> perfectly fine with people linking the libs statically as long as they
> comply to the license "as if they were using dynamic loading".
>
> If anyone knows some standard license which boils down to "obligations
> like LGPL but OK for static linking as well", please let me know.

I too would like such a license; however, the closest I've seen is
LGPL + linking exception (which I believe is the license Malcolm
Wallace uses for the cpphs library, though not the executable).

>
> Nicolas
>
>
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-- 
Ivan Lazar Miljenovic
Ivan.Miljenovic at gmail.com
http://IvanMiljenovic.wordpress.com