Roberto Zunino wrote:

I noticed the following on http://hackage.haskell.org/trac/ghc/wiki/ReplacingGMPNotes

=== The LGPL licensing situation may be worse: even though The Glasgow Haskell Compiler License is essentially a "free software" license (BSD3), according to paragraph 2 of the LGPL, GHC must be distributed under the terms of the LGPL! ===

This seems to be inaccurate to me. The LGPLv2.1, section 6, states that, if you statically-link, it is enough to provide the GHC source (even under BSD), o re-linkable object code. I think the newer LGPL has a similar clause.

Well, I think that's what the quote you quoted says: when you distribute GHC, you have to distribute it under the restrictions imposed by the LGPL, namely to provide relinkable object code or source + permission for reverse engineering. This means that if you want to incorporate GHC into a proprietary product you would have to provide re-linkable object code for that product as well as permission to reverse engineer the code. This is of course not a problem for some people but it is nevertheless a restriction that could bite if other issues prevent you being able to release your code under such conditions. It also means that if you want to develop a proprietary app for Windows, the fact that GMP is hardwired into the runtime means that everything you build, even if it doesn't need Integer, has to be released with relinkable object code + reverse engineering permissions. All I'm saying is: please don't dissuade people from the effort to replace GMP with a BSD3 alternative, since I'm sure a lot of people would **love** this to happen as soon as possible. Thanks, Brian.