[Haskell-cafe] (L)GPL libraries & Haskell/GHC

[Joachim Breitner]

Hi,

Am Mittwoch, den 12.12.2012, 02:50 +0100 schrieb Jonathan Fischer
Friberg:
> On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 2:26 AM, Ramana Kumar
> <Ramana.Kumar at cl.cam.ac.uk> wrote:
>         Using the GPL (or a strong copyleft free license) strengthens
>         the free software community of which I thought the Haskell
>         community is a part (or at least intersects substantially).
> 
> I don't think it strengthens the community. If someone wants to make a
> change a library, 
> but not release the source, they cannot do that with GPL.

this is not fully correct. Correct would be to say:
        „If someone wants to make a change a library and distribute the
        resulting programs without also sharing the source with the
        recipient, they cannot do that with GPL.”

So it is fully acceptable under the GPL to change the library for your
own use, without sharing your code with anyone else.

If you create a web service based on the modified library, you do not
have to share the code (unless it is AGPL, but that is a different
license).

Also, if you want to sell the resulting program, you do not have to
publish the source publicly, as long as you offer the source to your
customers.

For LGPL, we can assume that all this holds; whether the additional
relaxation that LGPL provides over GPL apply to Haskell libraries seems
to be doubtful.

I hope that clarifies the situation a bit,
Joachim

-- 
Joachim "nomeata" Breitner
  mail at joachim-breitner.de  |  nomeata at debian.org  |  GPG: 0x4743206C
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