I'm being provocative, I know. I'm not trying to insult though, just to encourage a creative discussion.
Me too. But I've never seen a flame war on any haskell list, so I trust that no one will be insulted if we present our differing opinions in a strong way. We'll just have to take this discussion elsewhere (where?) in case it starts to generate too much noise on this list. This list shouldn't become "glasgow-haskell-politics", after all. --- cut here if you aren't interested in political rants ---
:) The question here is, are you (plural) really trying to write Free Software or just giving something away now, which will be closed and hogged later?
They probably don't want to restrict people's freedom to create non-free versions. At least that would be my motive. My main problem with the GPL is that if my code is placed under GPL, it is misused as a political tool to enforce a rather extreme vision - a world _without_ proprietary software. While it is a "valid" viewpoint, it's far too extreme for me - I _want_ to write proprietary software. Let's suppose that Microsoft decides that it's time to integrate a proprietary version of GHC into Visual Studio... and suppose that the current main GHC developers will work on the non-free version. Is that a problem? No. It would generate enough additional interest in Haskell to keep up development on the free version. Let's suppose on the other hand, that the main GHC developers decide to release the next version of GHC and its libraries under GPL. That would mean that it cannot be used to create proprietary software, or to create software that doesn't include a political manifesto by RMS. I doubt that there will be enough talented people available to develop a non-GPLed free version of GHC in parallel. It would destroy any hope of widespread use of Haskell in the "real world".
Anybody writing truly Free Software should have no problem with it, while any non-free efforts are left out.
I feel that Truly Free Software doesn't leave anyone out. I feel that Truly Free Software doesn't force anyone to distribute political manifestoes that he/she doesn't necessarily agree with. I feel that Truly Free Software doesn't impose silly restrictions on static vs dynamic linking (as the LGPL does). I believe that Truly Free Software shouldn't have a license that could be classified as a (admittedly relatively benign) computer virus. I have a problem with the GPL because, while I'm strongly in favor of Free Software, I have no problem with proprietary software. If my code is released under GPL, It becomes a political tool.
"GHC doesn't want to be GPL... why? - Would they close it once they smell money in it?".
Well, they can't really close it -- the license is a value, not an IORef :-). They can make a closed copy of it. While it would be a pity if those talented people who are currently employed at Microsoft Research would stop contributing code to the free version, it would concern me less than if GHC was put under GPL. And everyone who has seen the GPLed version would then be forbidden to work on a proprietary version of the old non-GPLed source base, because the FSF could sue him for copyright infringement if RMS feels that there is an opportunity to take out a non-free competitor to a free software product. Not my idea of freedom. The current license leaves the most freedom to everyone. That includes things that some of us would not like to happen - but why give up freedom just because some "bad guys" might come along and do something that some (not all) "good guys" don't like?
I have that fear, and I'd be really happy if someone could relieve me of it.
And while you're at it, you could relieve me of my fear that the official GHC distribution could switch to a GNU license...
I'll admit here (for the sake of honesty) that `grep microsoft ghc/README` adds to the effect.
It might be scary at first, but it actually has helped improve my opinion of Microsoft a lot over the course of the last year :-). After all, Microsoft already has made a donation to the free software community. I wouldn't have expected that... CU, Wolfgang