On Tue, 2011-01-25 at 20:53 -0800, John Millikin wrote:
What are you talking about? Of course BSD3 libraries/applications can depend on GPL'd code.
Not being a lawyer, I'll avoid claiming any definitive answers, and just mention that that's definitely a minority opinion, and at odds with the interpretation given by the FSF.
The only license Cabal allows that conflicts with the GPL is BSD4, which (to my knowledge) is not used by any software on Hackage.
This is true if you "conflicts" means "cannot be combined with GPLed code in a GPLed derivative work." However, it's generally considered untrue if "conflicts" means "cannot be combined with GPLed code in a BSD licensed derivative work." While there might be a legitimate debate over whether linking constitutes making a derivative work, the author of the GPL license certainly believes that it does. Hence my comment. Not trying to start a license war here; as I said earlier, it's completely up to a library author how they license their own code. But we do have to understand the consequences and be careful to abide by the licenses those authors choose. -- Chris