[Haskell-cafe] Re: The Future of MissingH

[John Goerzen]

Bulat Ziganshin wrote:

Hi Bulat,

Many thanks for the *great* comments.

> first, is it possible to integrate MissingH inside existing core libs,
> i.e. Haskell libs supported by Haskell community? i think that it will
> be impossible if MissingH will hold its GPL status. i think that
> such fundamental library as MissingH should be BSDified to allow use
> it both in commercial and non-commercial code

As others have pointed out, the GPL is not a commercial vs. non-commercial
license.

That said, I am scrupulous about copyrights and licensing.  I know exactly
which bits of MissingH I own the copyright to, and which bits are under
which license.

I have, for quite some time already, maintained an LGPL branch of MissingH. 
This branch contains all of the code in MissingH that is:

a) compatible with the LGPL
b) not depending on LGPL-incompatible components

That means basically the code I wrote, plus any LGPL or BSD code others
wrote.

It would be easy enough to figure out which bits can suitably fall under BSD
license; it would be nearly the same bits as can fall under LGPL.  Again,
since I own copyright to most of the code, I can put it under as many
different licenses as I like, so long as I respect everyone else's
copyrights properly.

In any case, most of the stuff that would be suitable for base was written
by me anyway.

> if library will be BSDified, and somewhat "advertized". i hope that
> its parts will start moving to the more specific libs of core set, say
> HVFS system into the Files library, logging facilities into the Unix
> library, so on

Planning to do so.

> quality of code documenting in your lib, most peoples prefer to read
> Haddocks, which again should be made available on web

Already are, and will continue to be.

> next, while you accept patches to the lib, this's not declared in your
> announces. best way is just to open darcs repository - most peoples
> thinks that having darcs repository and accepting patches is the same
> thing :)  i can also propose you the idea that Pupeno, packager of

Have it, but it's under-documented.  That will change.

See http://software.complete.org/offlineimap/ for an example of what I
intend to do with MissingH as well.

> Streams library used - he included in the tgz files copy of darcs
> repository, again facilitating use of darcs and developing new patches
> for library

That is an interesting idea, but the MissingH repo has nearly 1000 darcs
patches by now.  This would seriously bloat the tarball, plus it's easy
enough to just download it off the 'net with darcs.

> and, about WindowsCompat.hs - stat() function is available on Windows
> and even used to implement getModificationTime :)

Err, how?  Is this new in ghc 6.6?  Last I tried, -package unix wouldn't
even work on Windows.

>>   I initially wrote it that way to make resolving dependencies easier
>>   for end users.
> 
> now Cabal handles this

No, it just complains when dependencies aren't resolved.  People still have
to go out and download/install each piece manually.


-- John