bindist for Intel MacOS X 10.4 (Tiger) with static libs

[Manuel M T Chakravarty]

Yitzchak Gale:
> Bulat Ziganshin wrote:
>>> for me, GMP is much more problematic issue. strictly speaking, we
>>> can't say that GHC is BSD-licensed because it includes LGPL-licensed
>>> code (and that much worse, it includes this code in run-time libs)
>
> Manuel M T Chakravarty wrote:
>> ..binary distributions of GHC that include libgmp.a and statically
>> link it into compiled code...  All
>> that is needed to make this legal is to (a)...
>> (b) give users access to another version of
>> the proprietary program that links GMP dynamically.
>
> Wow, I didn't realize that. Now I understand Bulat. In a
> project of any serious size and complexity, the use
> of static or dynamic linking is often architechted in and
> cannot be changed. So LGPL is really bad for a general
> purpose compiler like GHC. We've got to make GMP
> optional, or get rid of it.

Well, I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say.

My point is that the LGPL is *no* reason to worry.  As Isaac wrote,  
there are a number of ways in which a vendor of a proprietary program  
can successfully work with LGPL'ed code.  My proposal of providing a  
dynamically linked version of the software as an option is just one of  
these ways (which I think is especially easy to realise).  Other ways  
include distributing the dynamically linked binary in the first place  
and providing access to .o file to link with a different version of  
the library (as Isaac outlined).  BTW, when I write dynamically linked  
binary I mean a binary that links dynamically to the LGPL'ed code (ie,  
here GMP).  All other libraries can still be linked statically.

As a case in point for my argument, please consider Apple.  Mac OS X  
contains a lot of GPL'ed and LGPL'ed code.  Now you can argue that  
that's a simpler situation because it's a whole OS and many of the  
programs with GNU licenses are standalone, such as gcc.  Now just for  
fun, go to your nearest Apple store, grab an ipod touch and have a  
look at its "Copyright" menu.  There is lots of LGPL'ed code in there,  
too.  I am sure they had a trillion lawyers making sure that they  
comply with the licence terms, so that the FSF is not going to come  
after them.

Manuel