Here are some less tragic solutions I can think of:
1. Dual-license GHC under _both_ the current GHC license and the GPL
2. User wins because they don't have to deal with the GPL if they don't want to.
Agreed.
3. Developer wins because lots of people like the GPL, and any development they do with the GPL is guaranteed to go back to the community. This may not occur all the time if you only use a permissive license like the BSD license.
I'm slightly afraid of this. What will prevent a code split between the GPL and BSD versions? (Developer loses because other developers will contribute patches only for the GPLed version. The GPL version will take all the code from the BSD version, but the BSD version will automatically stay behind. If a Developer wants to work on the cutting edge, they will have to work on the GPL version, with no choice but to release their own patches under GPL. In the end, only the GPL version will be left. User loses because they will have to deal with the GPL after all.)
Maybe Perl can help Haskell in some slightly less evil ways ;). Evil ways? Are you referring to that evil, carnivorous script "ghc- asm.lprl"? Well, in my experience the "Evil Mangler" is just like any other wild animal: he smells your fear. If you approach him without fear, he won't harm you :-)
3. As a nice bonus, you avoid all this evil stuff about linking with (L)GPLed libraries, like what's happening with libreadline now, because your software is licensed under the GPL.
My proposal would be as follows: 1) seperate the readline library from the utils package. 2) put a warning on the readline package so that people who are not fluent in licenses won't accidentally use it for proprietary programs. 3) Make sure that the Windows version links with libgmp dynamically. 4) Leave GHCi as is. 5) If the FSF complains that GHCi should be released under GPL and that the current license is not "compatible enough", switch to a BSD lib. IMHO, they won't complain in the first place. I'd say, stick with BSD for now, because while it doesn't do much to protect people's interests, it is the only license that doesn't interfere with other people's interests now, so it's probably the only reasonable compromise. I still don't buy the "you have to give up a part of your freedom to allow us to protect your freedom" argument. CU, Wolfgang