[Haskell] Licensing problem, caused by static linking on windows

Kevin Backhouse Kevin.Backhouse at arm.com
Fri Jul 2 13:10:47 EDT 2004


For past year or so, a group of us at ARM having been developing some
software in Haskell. We have recently discovered that there may be a
licensing problem if we wish to release a Windows version of the
software. No doubt others have encountered the same problem, so we would
be very grateful for any advice on how to solve it.

The problem is that on Windows, GHC statically links the program with
the libgmp library, which has an LGPL license. The LGPL license says
that we can distribute the executable under our own terms, provided that
we do this:

	Accompany the work with the complete corresponding
machine-readable source code for the Library including whatever changes
were used in the work (which must be distributed under Sections 1 and 2
above); and, if the work is an executable linked with the Library, with
the complete machine-readable "work that uses the Library", as object
code and/or source code, so that the user can modify the Library and
then relink to produce a modified executable containing the modified
Library. 

Does anyone have any experience of doing this with GHC? Is it relatively
straightforward? Or better still, has anyone figured out a way of
avoiding the problem by dynamically linking with libgmp on Windows?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Kevin


 
Kevin Backhouse

ARM Limited, 110 Fulbourn Road, Cambridge, CB1 9NJ, UK.

Tel: +44 1223 400601

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