[Haskell-cafe] containers license issue

[Vo Minh Thu]

2012/12/12 Dmitry Kulagin <dmitry.kulagin at gmail.com>:
> Hi Cafe,
>
> I am faced with unpleasant problem. The lawyer of my company checked sources
> of containers package and found out that it refers to some GPL-library.
>
> Here is quote:
> "The algorithm is derived from Jorg Arndt's FXT library"
> in file Data/IntMap/Base.hs
>
> The problem is that FXT library is GPL and thus containers package can not
> be considered as BSD3. And it means that it can not be used in my case
> (closed source software).
>
> Is this logic actually correct and containers should be considered as GPL?
>
> The package is widely used by other packages and the only way I see right
> now is to fix sources to reimplement this functionality, which is not good
> option.

GPL covers code, not algorithms.

Beside, you can use GPL in closed-source code. GPL forces you to make
the source available when you distribute the software, but if you
don't distribute the software, there is nothing wrong to use GPL and
not make your code available.

HTH, IANAL,
Thu