[Haskell-cafe] Hmm, what license to use?

[Magnus Therning]

On Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 10:39 PM, Don Stewart <dons at galois.com> wrote:
> magnus:
>> 2008/9/29 Bit Connor <bit at mutantlemon.com>:
>> [..]
>>
>> Basically it seems to me that you believe in the benevolence and
>> enligtenment of companies.  Something I don't.  I believe you are
>> right in splitting the LGPL into two different objectives, and you are
>> right in saying that I really only care about getting changes back.
>>
>> > So in summary, if user freedom is important, then GPL is the way to
>> > go. If it's about encouraging the submission of patches and
>> > contributions, then the license won't help you, you simply have to
>> > rely on the good will of people. (But BSD will allow for a larger
>> > community)
>>
>> Well, I'm not convinced about this.  I fail to see how your use of
>> Apple is an example of this.  Yes, they clearly didn't get it in the
>> beginning, but now there seems to be a vibrant community around
>> Webkit.  Just as a point of comparison, did they do any better (in the
>> beginning) with the BSD licensed code they use?  I sure haven't heard
>> anything along those lines anyways.
>>
>
> The big problem with the LGPL and Haskell is static linking. We can't
> use anything we wish to ship commercially that relies on
> LGPLd-statically linked-and-inlined Haskell code at the moment.
>
> So if you use LGPL for your Haskell libraries, all of which are
> currently statically linked and non-replaceable at runtime, it is
> unlikely any commercial Haskell house can use the code.

AFAIU you could, but you'd have to supply linkable objects of your
proprietary code so that others can relink with a newer version of the
LGPL'd module.  It's a pain for sure and I've found no instructions
anywhere for how to do that.

/M

-- 
Magnus Therning                        (OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4)
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