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

[Edward Kmett]

On Tue, Jan 25, 2011 at 5:18 PM, Ivan Lazar Miljenovic <
ivan.miljenovic at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 26 January 2011 07:32, gutti <philipp.guttenberg at gmx.net> wrote:
> > The H-Matrix and the prelude numeric packages however, which in my mind
> > cover really important ground work, are issued under the resprictive GPL.
>
> I think your description of "restrictive" is contentious...


Perhaps, but its true. ;)


> > Is that only because they link into other external GNU - libaries with
> GPL
> > license ? -- If yes would be repackaging the haskell-native bits in an
> extra
> > BSD package an option ?
>
> Or else because the developers _wanted_ to license it under the GPL.
> Some people do, you know.
>

Actually, not to quote him out of context, but  a short snippet from an
email to me from Alberto last year shows this isn't the case here in the
author's own words.

> It is GPL because of ignorance and laziness. For hmatrix I really want the
less restrictive license compatible with the fact that it is based on (calls
functions from) BLAS/LAPACK (BSD) and GSL (GPL). Can I change the license to
something like BSD?

This is from when we were discussing how to integrate hmatrix better with my
ad package. He was interested in using 'ad' to compute over vectors, and I
had a variation on the ad types that would allow them to compute with larger
jacobian fragments, but wasn't able or willing to build on the basic hmatrix
package, due to the licensing. He was very open to the idea of BSD licensing
and to the idea of potentially factoring it apart into GPL and BSD packages
if the GSL dependent portions could not be so licensed.

The main reason this didn't happen is that this fell off my critical path
and I moved on to other things.

-Edward Kmett
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