Re: [Haskell-cafe] (L)GPL libraries & Haskell/GHC

Hi, Am Mittwoch, den 12.12.2012, 02:50 +0100 schrieb Jonathan Fischer Friberg:

On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 2:26 AM, Ramana Kumar wrote: Using the GPL (or a strong copyleft free license) strengthens the free software community of which I thought the Haskell community is a part (or at least intersects substantially).

I don't think it strengthens the community. If someone wants to make a change a library, but not release the source, they cannot do that with GPL.

this is not fully correct. Correct would be to say: „If someone wants to make a change a library and distribute the resulting programs without also sharing the source with the recipient, they cannot do that with GPL.” So it is fully acceptable under the GPL to change the library for your own use, without sharing your code with anyone else. If you create a web service based on the modified library, you do not have to share the code (unless it is AGPL, but that is a different license). Also, if you want to sell the resulting program, you do not have to publish the source publicly, as long as you offer the source to your customers. For LGPL, we can assume that all this holds; whether the additional relaxation that LGPL provides over GPL apply to Haskell libraries seems to be doubtful. I hope that clarifies the situation a bit, Joachim -- Joachim "nomeata" Breitner mail@joachim-breitner.de | nomeata@debian.org | GPG: 0x4743206C xmpp: nomeata@joachim-breitner.de | http://www.joachim-breitner.de/