Re: [Haskell-cafe] LGPL and Haskell (Was: Re: ANNOUNCE: tie-knot library)

On Thu, Dec 13, 2012 at 11:35 AM, Ramana Kumar wrote:

On Thu, Dec 13, 2012 at 8:09 PM, Michael Snoyman wrote:

...

I also don't think that distributing programs is as small a market as you think, and should also be something we support for commercial users of Haskell.

Distributing programs commercially is compatible with distributing them as free software. I think it would be helpful not to use "commercial users" to refer to both those with policies against copyleft licenses and those who make money distributing software. Those groups are not even extensionally equal, and separating them further (by having companies reconsider such policies) is, I would think, an instrumental goal of the free software movement, which is one reason why these tensions arise.

I'm not saying that *every* commercial user of Haskell has these concerns. But I think it's a fair statement to say that a very large number of commercial users do not wish to give out their source code. If you want to claim that this isn't a commercial concern, but simply a concern of many companies, that's fine, but I think it's irrelevant to the point: in many cases, you will be unable to use GPLed libraries when creating software for companies. Ignoring semantics, are you arguing with that claim? If you want to try and convince companies to change their software policies by writing some incredibly compelling GPL libraries, more power to you, and I wish you the best. But I think that's quite separate to the question of whether usage of the GPL today will hinder your ability to sell your products or services to a company. Michael