IANAL, but reviewing what others have written, it sounds like it may be possible to maintain *some* distinction between LGPL and GPL in Haskell, but it's a different distinction than with an LGPL shared library, so even if applicable it's certainly worth being aware of.

It sounds (and I'd very much like clarification) like providing source of an application to users *without* license to redistribute, which can be built using an LGPL library, would be compliant - whereas if the library was GPL this would not be the case?


On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 9:19 PM, wren ng thornton <wren@freegeek.org> wrote:
On 12/11/12 9:30 PM, Ramana Kumar wrote:
I wonder if this discussion has been had before in the Haskell community.
If so, pointers to archives could be of interest.

Indeed, the discussion has been had more than once. Alas, I'm too bogged for time to look up the archives at the moment.



I'm glad to see that there are others who apparently share my concern about
the fact that people are actively recommending that new libraries be
licensed without copyleft.

The big issue, and the reason for suggesting that people not use LGPL is a technical one. Namely that due to GHC's heavy inlining etc, the things distinguishing LGPL from GPL are no longer in force, and therefore using the "LGPL" license for your library is equivalent to using the full GPL license for your library. Given as using the full GPL is not usually people's intent, it's important to make people aware of this issue. And in so doing, we usually suggest the BSD license (or similar) as an alternative.

Inevitably, however, after the details of this technical situation are discussed (often followed by a debate over the proper interpretation of the linking clauses of the GPL/LGPL), the thread then turns to arguments over the merits of various licenses... which eventually peters out when everyone is too upset to keep on with it, just as in every other free/open-source community. I don't mean to sound jaded, but I've been through the cycle more than a few times already. Perhaps this time someone'll mine the archives and set up a wiki highlighting the posts with insightful discussion (and insightful counterpoints) so we can direct people there for the next time...

--
Live well,
~wren


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