Re: The next step

Alastair David Reid wrote,

Manuel M T Chakravarty writes:

...

Depends on the library. I agree with you that the really core stuff and in particular the "language extension"-related libraries should be completely unrestricted.

In particular, I would be unhappy to see the Hugs or GHC distributions change from being pure BSD license but I'd like to see all the major libraries come as part of the standard distribution.

When the number of libraries grows it may also be technically more feasible to seperate them into extra packages. GHC, for example, is already pretty big. For teaching purpose I want to recommend my students to install it at their machines at home, but they don't need all libraries and are happy about smaller installs. Just as an example.

The "purity" aspect is as important as the choice of license - it is hard enough to understand one license but if you get a package which is covered by multiple licenses then you're pretty-much hosed.

If it is distinct libraries where the difference lies, I don't see it as much of a problem. When you buy a Linux CD, you also get a wild mix of licenses - also with the pre-installed libraries. Still this doesn't seem to lower the popularity of Linux much. Cheers, Manuel