GHC licence (was Could Haskell be taken over by Microsoft?)
Simon L Peyton Jones wrote: So far as GHC is concerned, I wrote on this list a month ago: "More specifically, I plan to continue beavering away on GHC. GHC is public domain software, and Microsoft are happy for it to remain so, source code and all. If anything, I'll have quite a bit more time to work on it than before." Do you mean "public domain" literally, i.e. are you renouncing all copyright? (The source code contains copyright notices, but no licence, as far as I can see.) Ross Paterson
Re: GHC licence (was Could Haskell be taken over by Microsoft?)
Simon L Peyton Jones wrote: So far as GHC is concerned, I wrote on this list a month ago: "More specifically, I plan to continue beavering away on GHC. GHC is public domain software, and Microsoft are happy for it to remain so, source code and all. If anything, I'll have quite a bit more time to work on it than before." Do you mean "public domain" literally, i.e. are you renouncing all copyright? (The source code contains copyright notices, but no licence, as far as I can see.) No I am not renouncing all copyright. By "public domain" I mean freely available for anyone to use for any purpose other than making money by selling the compiler itself. That isn't a formal definition, but I'm sure you see the intent. I have carefully avoided getting tangled up in legal red tape, which is why there is no formal license. It may be that my move to Microsoft will force me to spend time sorting this out. But it's never been a problem so far, and I doubt it will in the future, so I'm reluctant to invest the time until pressed to do so. Simon
Re: GHC licence (was Could Haskell be taken over by Microsoft?)
"Simon" == Simon L Peyton Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Simon L Peyton Jones wrote: So far as GHC is concerned, I wrote on this list a month ago: "More specifically, I plan to continue beavering away on GHC. GHC is public domain software, and Microsoft are happy for it to remain so, source code and all. If anything, I'll have quite a bit more time to work on it than before." Do you mean "public domain" literally, i.e. are you renouncing all copyright? (The source code contains copyright notices, but no licence, as far as I can see.) Simon No I am not renouncing all copyright. By "public domain" I mean freely Simon available for anyone to use for any purpose other than making money Simon by selling the compiler itself. That isn't a formal definition, Simon but I'm sure you see the intent. Simon I have carefully avoided getting tangled up in legal red tape, which Simon is why there is no formal license. It may be that my move to Microsoft Simon will force me to spend time sorting this out. But it's never been Simon a problem so far, and I doubt it will in the future, so I'm reluctant Simon to invest the time until pressed to do so. There is a discussion of various free licenses at http://www.debian.org/intro/free As part of the 'social contract' there are also the Debian Free Software Guidelines at http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines Marko
Re: GHC licence (was Could Haskell be taken over by Microsoft?)
Simon L Peyton Jones wrote: Simon L Peyton Jones wrote: Do you mean "public domain" literally, i.e. are you renouncing all copyright? (The source code contains copyright notices, but no licence, as far as I can see.) No I am not renouncing all copyright. By "public domain" I mean freely available for anyone to use for any purpose other than making money by selling the compiler itself. That isn't a formal definition, but I'm sure you see the intent. I have carefully avoided getting tangled up in legal red tape, which is why there is no formal license. It may be that my move to Microsoft will force me to spend time sorting this out. But it's never been a problem so far, and I doubt it will in the future, so I'm reluctant to invest the time until pressed to do so. It might be a good idea to publish GHC under the GNU Public License or something similar. It grants everybody the right to use the software for any purpose, including making extensions or modifications of it - as long as the "derived work" is published under GPL as well. This ensures that no company can take the product, make some small modifications to it and call it their own. Whatever you choose to do, I think you need to be more explicit about which rights you grant the users of GHC to avoid unwanted use/misuse by anyone. regards, Joergen
Re: GHC licence (was Could Haskell be taken over by Microsoft?)
Jorgen Frojk Kjaersgaard [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It might be a good idea to publish GHC under the GNU Public License or something similar. It grants everybody the right to use the software for any purpose, including making extensions or modifications of it - as long as the "derived work" is published under GPL as well. This ensures that no company can take the product, make some small modifications to it and call it their own. Whatever you choose to do, I think you need to be more explicit about which rights you grant the users of GHC to avoid unwanted use/misuse by anyone. The GNU General Public License is not the only type of "free software" or "open source software" license in use. For information on various types of "open source" licenses, check out the URL http://www.opensource.org. - Conrad Cunningham
Re: GHC licence (was Could Haskell be taken over by Microsoft?)
It might be a good idea to publish GHC under the GNU Public License or something similar. It grants everybody the right to use the software for any purpose, including making extensions or modifications of it - as long as the "derived work" is published under GPL as well. This ensures that no company can take the product, make some small modifications to it and call it their own. Whatever you choose to do, I think you need to be more explicit about which rights you grant the users of GHC to avoid unwanted use/misuse by anyone. Or a non-profit consortium, as someone mentioned it already. I am not in a position to advice, but the example of Bertrand Meyer and his Eiffel language comes to mind so vividly. :-) Originally Eiffel was Bertrand's child. Later he gave all his rights to NICE - Non-profit International (?) Consortium for Eiffel. His greatest worry was to keep Eiffel as a pure, uniform language, without dialects. This seems to work. All decisions on future of Eiffel are voted by voting members, and Bertrand is just one of them. There are several commercial companies that maintain Eiffel compilers and libraries, including Bertrand's own ISE in Santa Barbara. Jan
Re: GHC licence (was Could Haskell be taken over by Microsoft?)
On Tue, 21 Jul 1998, Simon L Peyton Jones wrote: (...) But it's never been a problem so far, and I doubt it will in the future, so I'm reluctant to invest the time until pressed to do so. No need to apologize to a group of haskell fanatics for using lazy evaluation to solve this problem ;) Charles Godin Software engineer Discreet Logic [EMAIL PROTECTED]
