[Haskell-cafe] blanket license for Haskell Platform?

[Yitzchak Gale]

Eric Y. Kow wrote:
> So I'm combining Haskell software with some non-free/closed source work.
> I was wondering what sort of effort it would take to organise a blanket
> license for everything in the Haskell Platform, and whether it would be
> worthwhile to anybody...
> - My user is concerned that a large number of having a large number of
>  individual licenses even though textually identical modulo author,
>  date, etc would mean a big hassle getting their lawyers and their
>  user's lawyers to sign off on each and every license

I agree that this is an important issue.

I think we should focus on the primary requirement that
Haskell software written for a commercial environment
should not create usability issues from a legal perspective.

If we clarify that question carefully, then as an important FOSS
community we might be able to send the question to the
EFF and get some guidance about how best to proceed.

SPDX sounds interesting; I'd like to hear more about it.

Besides that, it may not be as impractical as you think
to have mass license assignment and/or copyright
assignment as a medium-term goal for the platform.
There has been talk about the Haskell community
joining the Software Freedom Conservancy (as Darcs did).
If that happens, it will give us a solid legal foundation
for assigning assets such as these to the community
as a non-profit organization.

(Although I haven't heard anything recently, and Yale U.
is still the registrant of the haskell.org domain.)

> I wonder if this is a sort of thing we could tie to the IHG...

It would be great if the IHG could help push this effort.

Thanks,
Yitz