[Haskell-cafe] [Cabal-devel] Cabal && license combinations

[Antoine Latter]

On Thu, Feb 10, 2011 at 10:04 AM, Chris Smith <cdsmith at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Thu, 2011-02-10 at 08:59 +0100, Ketil Malde wrote:
>> I disagree - the linked executable must, but not the wrapper by itself.
>> It's source code, i.e. text, thus a creative work, and therefore
>> covered by copyright - on its own.
>
> You're certainly right from a legal standpoint.  But being right doesn't
> actually matter.  The instant anyone actually compiles an application
> that uses your library, however indirectly, they are bound by the terms
> of the underlying library as well.  So your bindings are effectively
> covered by the underlying license anyway (unless you're choosing a
> license for the sake of people who will never produce any usable end
> result...)
>

The vast majority of Open Source licenses in use only restrict the
publication of the work or derived works, not compilation.

So no, the instant of compilation is not when the transitive
dependencies kick in, it is the publication of compiled binaries,
which in my mind is a pretty specialized case.

Antoine