Re: [Haskell-cafe] ANNOUNCE: tie-knot library

I wonder if this discussion has been had before in the Haskell community. If so, pointers to archives could be of interest. 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 debate between strong and weak (or no) copyleft goes on in many quarters. I know which side seems right and which I would argue for, and I think it's a debate worth having, but perhaps in a new thread. At least for new libraries like Petr's, as Alexander said, the author can license however he wants. I hope others won't be so quick to encourage authors to make different choices without first resolving this debate or pointing to specific harms/benefits for the library in question. On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 1:13 PM, David Thomas wrote:

... and OS X and iOS are clearly a win for the FLOSS community?

On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 6:07 PM, Alexander Solla wrote:

...

As a matter of fact, BSD is far more popular on the desktop than GPL. And has a huge share of the mobile market. Witness: OS X, iOS.

And none of this has anything to do with Haskell. Petr can release *his* code with any license he wants. Some licenses fit into *this* ecosystem better than others. Suggestions have been made and we can all move on.

On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 6:03 PM, David Thomas wrote:

...

Right. Like, if Linus hadn't bogged down the Linux kernel with the GPL license, it might have wound up as popular as BSD!

Both dynamics go on, and the question is which is more likely to dominate in a given case (and cumulatively).

On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 5:50 PM, Jonathan Fischer Friberg < odyssomay@gmail.com> wrote:

...

On Wed, Dec 12, 2012 at 2:26 AM, Ramana Kumar < Ramana.Kumar@cl.cam.ac.uk> 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. The idea behind GPL is that then, the change is forced to be released - which would, as you say, strengthen the community. However, I think what would happen instead is that the person would simply not use the library in the first place.

So in short: GPL does not make people become a part of the community - it pushes them away.

Jonathan

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