ANNOUNCE: GHC version 6.8.2

[Judah Jacobson]

On Dec 18, 2007 8:54 PM, Manuel M T Chakravarty <chak at cse.unsw.edu.au> wrote:
> Judah Jacobson:
> >
> > - Statically linking against GMP puts extra license requirements on
> > any ghc-compiled program; thus, dynamic linking is preferable.
>
> Dynamic linking is preferable, because it is the simplest way to
> comply with the LGLP (specifically, Section 4(d)) in a closed-source
> program.  However, it is incorrect to say that static linking leads to
> extra license requirements.  All that is required is to enable users
> to use the program with a modified version of the GMP.  There are two
> simple ways of doing that: (a) provide access to the .o files of your
> program so that they can statically link with a different version of
> the GMP or (b) to provide a version of the program linking GMP
> dynamically alongside the statically linked version.
>
> In any case, no change of the closed-source program's licence is
> required.

Thanks for the correction and list of alternatives; both seem pretty
reasonable.  Either way, I guess you're "optimizing" for the casual
user rather than for a hacker wanting to update GMP who won't be
stopped by needing to statically link a bunch of .o files anyway.

> > - On OS X, installing new frameworks is very easy (just drag-and-drop
> > the framework into ~/Library/Frameworks or /Library/Frameworks; the
> > former doesn't even need admin privileges).  This doesn't seem like
> > much to ask of users.
>
> I think it is.  It means, Haskell programs are more hassle to install
> than, say, C programs.

That's fair, although I think it's still less hassle than, e.g.,
installing a Ruby program on OS X Panther (which required first
installing the whole of Ruby itself).

Best,
-Judah