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

[Ketil Malde]

Tom Tobin <korpios at korpios.com> writes:

>  In temporary lieu of posing questions explicitly to the SFLC, I dug
> up a copy of _Intellectual Property and Open Source_ by Foobar (and
> published by O'Reilly), and found this (from an entire chapter —
> Chapter 12 — about the GPL):

> "Nevertheless, there is a persistent issue that won’t go away—whether
> linking programs together creates a derivative work.  If linking
> creates a derivative work, the GPL applies to the linked program; 
                                             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> otherwise, the GPL doesn’t apply."

According to this, application Z linking GPL library X and BSD library Y
*may* be required to be GPL-redistributable.  The is no such requirement
on the source code of Y.

> If it turns out that Hakyll *is* okay to be BSD3 licensed so
> long as neither any binary nor the GPL'd work's source is distributed
> under non-GPL terms, well ... I'll say that the meaning of "BSD
> licensed" will have become much less reliable, since it means you
> actually have to trace the genealogy of the libraries you use *all*
> the way back in order to understand the situation for certain.

How so?  To me it's the exact converse: if the author of Hakyll may
*not* distribute his work under the BSD license, just because it is
intended to be linked with some GPL code, this complicates issues
tremendously.

I don't think the FAQs you cited is all that confusing: copyright covers
the expression of an idea - i.e. actual source code.  If my source code
doesn't contain bits of somebody elses source code, I can license it as
I wish.

All my programs are "intended" to be linked with Linux's libc, and
"intended" to call into to Linux kernel.  That this should imply a
particular licensing seems very counterintuitive, would be impossible to
police, and would have a tremendous effect on the software ecosystem.

-k
-- 
If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants