The next step

[Manuel M. T. Chakravarty]

"Simon Marlow" <simonmar@microsoft.com> wrote,

> > > On the other hand, I certainly don't want to discourage people from
> > > contributing because they don't like our license requirements.  But
> > > things are going to get real messy if every file has its 
> > own license.
> > > Looking down the hierarchy we have at the moment, much of 
> > the existing
> > > code (from hslibs, the FFI project etc.) is either under 
> > the GHC license
> > > or is licenseless.  So would it be too painful to ask that 
> > anyone who
> > > wants to contribute code under the LGPL does it in a 
> > separate part of
> > > the repository?
> > 
> > Maybe I haven't paid enough attention to the previous
> > discussion about the library organisation, but what are the
> > criteria for libraries to be in the magic set which should
> > not use the LGPL?  
> 
> I wasn't planning to separate the libraries logically (i.e. you still
> get all the libraries when you install GHC), only separate them
> physically by keeping the sources in different parts of the repository.
> This is I think the minimum we need to do if we have code with different
> licenses in the same tree.  I'll do this on a lazy basis: as soon as
> someone comes along with LGPL code they want to contribute, we'll set up
> the repository.

That's certainly a good idea.

> The criteria for a library to be in the "magic set" (I'm going to call
> it the core set for now) is nothing more than conforming to a set of
> guidelines that we've yet to decide on.

That's, I think, the crucial point.  I am happy to define a
core for which we ask to use a BSD-style license in terms of
how fundamental the provided functionality is.  Outside of
this fundamental functionality, I am against prescribing a
license (except requiring it to be "open source", as defined
by the OSI).

To give you an idea of what I mean by fundamental
functionality.  For example, the FFI libraries are
fundamental.  Their use should be unrestricted.  A library
like Edison is on the borderline.  QuickCheck or HOpenGL are
clearly outside of the core functionality.

Cheers,
Manuel