Status of GHC runtime dependency on GNU multi precision arithmetic library

[Brian Hulley]

Hi,
I know this is a sensitive issue and I absolutely don't want to start 
any kind of discussion about the merits or otherwise of LGPL, but I was 
wondering if there are any plans to remove the GNU mp library from the 
runtime so that it would be possible to distribute native executables 
compiled with GHC without having to deal with the additional issues 
raised by the current inclusion of this LGPL component in the runtime. 
(Afaik everything else in ghc is under a BSD3 license.)

It's less of an issue on Linux where libgmp is dynamically linked but 
when thinking about using Haskell ghc for creating Windows apps it is 
for me a real problem, because it would mean I'd have to distribute the 
code for my app as a library along with the code as an executable, thus 
doubling the download size for my apps as well as having to include a 
license that has to explain to a possibly non-technical user that 
although the program includes code that is libre/gratis free the program 
is not itself free etc etc...

Regards, Brian.