[Haskell-cafe] Re: ANN: hakyll-0.1

[Tom Tobin]

On Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 4:38 PM, Robert Greayer <robgreayer at gmail.com> wrote:
> Not to belabor the point (I hope), but consider the following situation --
> if the current version of Pandoc, 1.2.1, were released under BSD3, not GPL,
> it would be obvious that the current version of hakyll could be released as
> BSD3 as well.  After said hakyll release, the Pandoc maintainer would be
> perfectly within his rights to release an API compatible 1.2.2 version of
> Pandoc, this time licensed under the GPL.  People installing hakyll with
> cabal might now be building a version of hakyll containing both GPL and BSD3
> code.  This is not under either author's control, and is perfectly
> allowable.  If the person downloading chooses to redistribute the hakyll
> executable he's built, he must be aware of and comply with his
> responsibilities under the GPL, but those would be his responsibilities, not
> those of the original author of hakyll.  (AIUI -- IANAL).

The compatible-API issue is very murky — it does indeed seem weird
that creating an API-compatible BSD'd library would magically
"release" users.  I've seen other discussions regarding this, and
about the sanest conclusion I've drawn is "ask your lawyer".  :-/