Re: possible readline license problem with ghc and -package util

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Wednesday 12. June 2002 12:03, Simon Marlow wrote:

Well, nothing like a good license debate to wake everyone up ;-) Anyone heard of a "bikeshed" discussion before?

Hm, no clue, never heard that term... ;-) No, really, though.

Firstly, let me make it clear that GHC won't be switching to the GPL or even a dual license in the forseeable future. The University of Glasgow agreed to the BSD license, and frankly I can't see them agreeing to the GPL. And it's been widely publicised that Microsoft won't touch the GPL with a bargepole; enough said.

Personally, I wouldn't mind dual-licensing GHC, because in a sense that gives people more freedom: more freedom to choose which licensing terms they accept the code under. But I *do* believe that on its own the BSD license is morally the right choice. Sure, if the main line of GHC development moved to a non-free source base, then users would lose out; but I don't think that it is right to *legislate* against this by restricting the freedom of programmers. If the developers, by their own free will, decide to create a non-free fork, then so be it. After all, even the GPL can't force developers to continue working on the code if they don't want to.

But let me set minds at rest by saying that I'm not aware of any plans, at Microsoft or otherwise, to create a non-free fork of GHC.

OK, that's a diplomatic answer, but that's fine with me. I must say, I did not like to start this discussion, because I feel a bit insulting towards the Microsoft researchers, always sounding suspicious. Please be assured that I deeply respect anyone working on GHC. I am free of prejudice, just curious. I hereby officially part from this thread, as my wish for reactions is now fulfilled.

Sven Moritz Hallberg writes:

...

Put short, I'd like GHC to stay free. I'd like the GHC source to remain available, and the developers to remain reachable, touchable. Basically I want the GHC development process to work in the open same way as it does now. If someone can make that promise to me I will be satisfied.

Understandably, you'd like continued access to an open source actively-developed top-of-the-line Haskell compiler. I don't believe using a license is the right way to achieve this, though;

Right, I want to stress again that I didn't want to suggest licensing GHC under the GPL. I personally have no interest in licenses whatsoever, actually. My sole intention was to provoke comments on how people see the future of GHC. Regards, Sven moritz -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.0.7 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQE9B5b/Bz8tX8KX/qsRArM/AJ0eOyL7OlcfpMii/NvepZs+qEz8PQCfU+pY eeYaGLVaILS8WOXYYumwORo= =cTG3 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----