[Haskell-cafe] ANNOUNCE: tie-knot library

[wren ng thornton]

On 12/11/12 9:30 PM, Ramana Kumar wrote:
> I wonder if this discussion has been had before in the Haskell community.
> If so, pointers to archives could be of interest.

Indeed, the discussion has been had more than once. Alas, I'm too bogged 
for time to look up the archives at the moment.


> I'm glad to see that there are others who apparently share my concern about
> the fact that people are actively recommending that new libraries be
> licensed without copyleft.

The big issue, and the reason for suggesting that people not use LGPL is 
a technical one. Namely that due to GHC's heavy inlining etc, the things 
distinguishing LGPL from GPL are no longer in force, and therefore using 
the "LGPL" license for your library is equivalent to using the full GPL 
license for your library. Given as using the full GPL is not usually 
people's intent, it's important to make people aware of this issue. And 
in so doing, we usually suggest the BSD license (or similar) as an 
alternative.

Inevitably, however, after the details of this technical situation are 
discussed (often followed by a debate over the proper interpretation of 
the linking clauses of the GPL/LGPL), the thread then turns to arguments 
over the merits of various licenses... which eventually peters out when 
everyone is too upset to keep on with it, just as in every other 
free/open-source community. I don't mean to sound jaded, but I've been 
through the cycle more than a few times already. Perhaps this time 
someone'll mine the archives and set up a wiki highlighting the posts 
with insightful discussion (and insightful counterpoints) so we can 
direct people there for the next time...

-- 
Live well,
~wren