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

[Rafael Almeida]

On Fri, Mar 5, 2010 at 2:59 PM, Job Vranish <job.vranish at gmail.com> wrote:
> This seems really confusing.
>
> It would imply that if I write a library that is designed to talk to some
> part of the linux kernel API (which is GPL'd) then I'd have to release my
> library under the GPL. And anything that used my libraries API would need to
> be GPL'd too, etc...
> Which would mean that everything run in linux would need to be GPL'd, which
> is just silly.

Linux license specifically single that case out of the license
restrictions. From the COPYING file in linux's source:

       NOTE! This copyright does *not* cover user programs that use kernel
     services by normal system calls - this is merely considered normal use
     of the kernel, and does *not* fall under the heading of "derived work".
     Also note that the GPL below is copyrighted by the Free Software
     Foundation, but the instance of code that it refers to (the Linux
     kernel) is copyrighted by me and others who actually wrote it.

     Also note that the only valid version of the GPL as far as the kernel
     is concerned is _this_ particular version of the license (ie v2, not
     v2.2 or v3.x or whatever), unless explicitly otherwise stated.