[Haskell-cafe] GPL License of H-Matrix and prelude numeric

[Chris Smith]

On Wed, 2011-01-26 at 15:16 +1300, Richard O'Keefe wrote:
> You say "restrictive" like it's a bad thing.
> The GPL is *meant* to restrict certain behaviours,
> some of which some other open source licences do not.

There's really no need to start a debate over licensing here.  Clearly,
the best license is the one that allows the things the author wanted to
allow, and doesn't allow the things the author didn't want to allow.

Still, it would be nice to get an answer to the original question.
Licensing with the GPL has definite consequences; for example, that the
great majority of Haskell libraries, which are BSD3 licensed, may not
legitimately declare dependencies on it.  We can all agree that it's
good for people to understand those restrictions on what they can do
with hmatrix; and if the author didn't intend to place those
restrictions on the pure Haskell bits and just did so in respect for
other libraries' licensing, it would be reasonable to suggest splitting
it up to better express the intent.  If the author did intend those
restrictions, then of course they will remain.

-- 
Chris Smith