[Colin Paul Adams] Re: [Haskell-cafe] base-4 + gtk2hs-0.10.0 licensing

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"Wolfgang" == Wolfgang Jeltsch writes:

Wolfgang> Am Mittwoch, 25. Februar 2009 14:33 schrieb Duncan Wolfgang> Coutts: >> Note that some people will tell you that by a strict >> interpretation of the LGPL that statically linked Haskell libs >> under that license are a pain in the backside. When we decided >> on that license for gtk2hs that was not our intention. In other >> words nobody is going to sue you if you statically link gtk2hs >> libs. Of course if you need a cast iron legal guarantee then >> that's not good enough and you'd have to ship .a and .o files >> to let users relink if they wanted to. Wolfgang> I’m not sure whether this would be enough. .a and .o Wolfgang> files are not compatible among GHC versions, as far as I Wolfgang> know. Relinking against newer Gtk2Hs versions might not Wolfgang> work. And a program using Gtk2Hs contains code from the Wolfgang> .hi files of Gtk2Hs through inlining. So it’s not pure Wolfgang> linking. However, the LGPL only allows linking, as far Wolfgang> as I understand. Wolfgang> I want to repeat what I’ve said earlier on this list: Wolfgang> For Haskell, there is no real difference between LGPL Wolfgang> and GPL, as far as I understand it. If you don’t want to Wolfgang> force the users of your library to use an open source Wolfgang> license for their work then use BSD3 or a similar Wolfgang> license for your library. But IF there is no difference between LGPL and GPL for Haskell programs, then the licensing of gtk2hs as LGPL is just a smokescreen - it is effectively GPL, so you have to license your program as GPL. Which I'm all in favour of :-) -- Colin Adams Preston Lancashire