[Haskell-cafe] LGPL and Haskell (Was: Re: ANNOUNCE: tie-knot library)

[Steve Severance]

That very much mirrors my experience. As there is not settled case law
in all jurisdictions many companies would simply rather not risk it.
Simply having a court in the US set some precedents would not be
enough. A company which operated globally could be sued in many
different venues which are free to make up their own interpretations.

While these fears may be somewhat irrational they are still there. The
cost of building a replacement to a library may be far less than what
the cost of being found guilty of infringement may be. In any case I
mostly see GPL effecting smaller organizations anyhow as many big
organizations don't use much outside code.

It is true that in a hosted world the GPL doesn't matter much. So long
as the product that we ship to our customers is not software it
doesn't matter too much. If we were to ship code we would have to
replace any GPLed packages with something else.

The other thing I have found interesting is the notion that the GPL
can infect your codecase just by looking at GPLed code. If that it is
true, and I don't know that it is, it would seem that looking at any
code released under the GPL would be just as dangerous as looking at a
patent. Although I don't know that the offending party would be liable
for triple damages. Interesting food for thought and it would be nice
if there was a clarification somewhere.

Steve

On Thu, Dec 13, 2012 at 9:58 PM, wren ng thornton <wren at freegeek.org> wrote:
> On 12/13/12 3:14 AM, Colin Adams wrote:
>>
>> Presumably you are talking about companies who want to distribute programs
>> (a very small minority of companies, I would think)?
>
>
> Not at all. In addition to Michael's own rebuttal, I'll add my own. There
> are many companies which *fear* the L/GPL. The important thing to note here
> is this:
>
>     The Actual Legal Requirements of Copyleft Licenses are IRRELEVANT.
>
> This simple fact is consistently ignored by advocates of the GPL (of which I
> number myself, FWIW). The great majority of all software produced in the
> world is developed for in-house use, and thus would not be subject to any of
> the "bad" side effects from using copyleft software. And yet, in spite of
> this fact, there are a great many companies which have official policies
> forbidding the use of copyleft software.
>
> Why is that? It's because companies have legal departments whose jobs it is
> to ensure that the company won't be destroyed by legal action. And because
> there isn't an extensive record of actual court rulings regarding purported
> violations of the GPL, lawyers are rightly wary of it. Companies do not
> (generally) avoid the GPL because of understanding its requirements and
> refusing to abide by them. Companies avoid the GPL because they do not know
> what it means! More particularly, because they do not know what the courts
> will think it means, and that's too much uncertainty to risk your company
> over. Any actual commercial burden imposed by the GPL re distributing
> software is beside the point. Corporate lawyers (for these companies) won't
> risk getting close enough to even evaluate what that burden would amount to.
>
> --
> Live well,
> ~wren
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Haskell-Cafe mailing list
> Haskell-Cafe at haskell.org
> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe