[Haskell-cafe] ANNOUNCE: tie-knot library

[Herbert Valerio Riedel]

Brandon Allbery <allbery.b at gmail.com> writes:

> Haskell libraries are mostly BSD licensed, as is GHC itself.  (Oddly
> enough, GPL is not the only open source license.)

btw, what about GHC's reliance on the LGPLed GMP library? Doesn't that
already taint the whole GHC eco-system?

Quoting [1]:

| GMP is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), a
| kind of "copyleft" license. According to the terms of the LGPL,
| paragraph 5, you may distribute a program that is designed to be
| compiled and dynamically linked with the library under the terms of
| your choice (i.e., commercially) but if your program incorporates
| portions of the library, if it is linked statically, then your program
| is a "derivative"--a "work based on the library"--and according to
| paragraph 2, section c, you "must cause the whole of the work to be
| licensed" under the terms of the LGPL (including for free).
|
| The LGPL licensing for GMP is a problem for the overall licensing of
| binary programs compiled with GHC because most distributions (and
| builds) of GHC use static libraries. (Dynamic libraries are currently
| distributed only for OS X.) The LGPL licensing situation may be worse:
| even though The Glasgow Haskell Compiler License is essentially a
| "free software" license (BSD3), according to paragraph 2 of the LGPL,
| GHC must be distributed under the terms of the LGPL!


 [1]: http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/ReplacingGMPNotes#ReasonsforReplacingGMPastheBignumlibrary

cheers,
  hvr