[Haskell-cafe] GPL answers from the SFLC (WAS: Re: ANN: hakyll-0.1)

[Magnus Therning]

On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 09:38, Stephen Tetley <stephen.tetley at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Magnus
>
> The 'Why not LGPL' doesn't cover the particular argument here:
>
>> using the ordinary GPL for a library makes it available only for free programs.
>
> The particular concern we have here is quite specific, considering
> (-->) to be a dependency, can Hackage libraries under BSD3 that depend
> on libraries under GPL?
>
> [1] App --> libBSD3 --> libGPL
>
>
> Any App built has to incorporate the GPL library - so the App has to
> be GPL. -- No dispute --.
>
> Similar BSD3 is a GPL compatible library, so this dependency chain
> would be legal:
>
> [2] App --> libGPL --> libBSD
>
> The argument is whether it is legal to distribute (read host on
> Hackage) BSD3 libs that depend on GPL libs - formulation [1].

Now I'm even more confused.  How is hosting on Hackage an issue in [1]?

Both involved licenses are very liberal when it comes to distribution.
 The only issue I do see is that the author of libBSD3 is actually
deluding her/him-self, since the use of libGPL means both libraries
are in fact under GPL.  I don't see this being anything that anyone
involved with Hackage can be held responsible for, the responsibility
must fall on the author of libBSD3.  In this scenario I don't see
Hackage as anything more than a conduit.

/M

-- 
Magnus Therning                        (OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4)
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