Hi Yitzchak, I believe there are good explanations of open source licenses aimed at lawyers and management. I don't think their fears are well-founded. If you work for a timid company that isn't willing to learn, you should consider going elsewhere. You may be happier in the long run.
Respectfully, Howard > On May 20, 2015, at 7:39 AM, Yitzchak Gale <g...@sefer.org> wrote: > > The license issue is a real concern for any company using > GHC to develop a product whose binaries they distribute to > customers. And it is concern for GHC itself, if we want > GHC to continue to be viewed as a candidate for use in > industry. > > The real issue is not whether you can explain why this > license is OK, or whether anyone is actually going to the > trouble of building GHC without GMP. > > The issue is the risk of a *potential* legal issue and its > potential disastrous cost as *perceived* by lawyers and > management. A potential future engineering cost, no > matter how large and even if only marginally practical, > is perceived as manageable and controllable, whereas a > poorly understood potential future legal threat is perceived > as an existential risk to the entire company. > > With GMP, we do have an engineering workaround to side-step > the legal problem entirely if needed. Whereas if cpphs were > to be linked into GHC with its current license, I would be > ethically obligated to report it to my superiors, and the > response might very well be: Then never mind, let's do the > simple and safe thing and just rewrite all of our applications in > Java or C#. > > Keeping the license as is seems to be important to Malcolm. > So could we have an option to build GHC without cpphs > and instead use it as a stand-alone external program? > That would make the situation no worse than GMP. > > Thanks, > Yitz > _______________________________________________ > ghc-devs mailing list > ghc-devs@haskell.org > http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs _______________________________________________ ghc-devs mailing list ghc-devs@haskell.org http://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ghc-devs
