For what it's worth, I think it's a very good answer. The Haskell Foundation chooses how to spend limited resources. Their mandate is to spend those resources to fill in gaps in the Haskell ecosystem. Spending resources instead to obtain one more lawyer's opinion on issues that thousands of people are already thinking about a courts across the world are already actively grappling with is not nothing, but the incremental benefit is small. It's not clear how much difference one more lawyer would make in anyone's understanding of questions that are just not settled, at a level much broader than Haskell.
I could see the answer being different if the original questions had brought up unique problems specific to GHC or major Haskell projects. I don't see any questions there, though, that differ from those facing pretty much every open source code base. On Thu, Aug 20, 2026 at 6:00 AM damiancoding--- via ghc-devs < [email protected]> wrote: > Let me copy the emails in here. First Andreas quoted my original email, > then he wrote: > > Dear Haskell Foundation, > > > > I'm contacting the HF as I think it would be helpful to get legal > expertise through a legal consultation or similar > > to help inform AI policies and handling of LLM generated source > contributions in various haskell projects. > > > > In particular getting answers to these questions would be valuable: > > > > ========================== > > > > Soundness of the "content right waivers" from popular LLM providers. > These attempt to assign rights for generated content to users. > > Legal expertise about risks associated with above waivers, in particular > due to clauses that might retroactively extinguish these rights due to > terms of use violations > > would be welcome. > > > > Consequences and potential risks when parts of a code base are not > legally protected by copyright due non-copyrightable material. > > Are there unexpected consequences like changes to (lack of) liability > for contributors, maintainers or organizations owning such projects? > > Especially for commonly used licenses in the haskell eco system (BSD3, > MIT, (L)GPL, Apache2). > > > > Risk assessment for becoming liable for copyright infringement due to > accidental similarity in LLM output to copyrighted material. > > > > Or any other legal pitfalls related to these subjects that we as legal > laymen would be likely to miss. > > > > ========================== > > > > I think it would be great if the HF could provide information and/or > guidance on these issues driven by > > legal expertise. Please let me know if you think this could be arranged. > > > > I've attached the discussion from which these questions arose below for > additional context. > > > > Best wishes > > Andreas > > > > ------------ > > Then, Laurent P. René de Cotret <[email protected]> wrote the > email went straight to spam, and then he replied the following, copying in > <Simon Peyton Jones>, <Ben Gamari>, and the user <board> > > > > Thank you for your patience, Andreas. > > > > > > Thank you for your patience, Andreas. > > > > The Haskell Foundation Board discussed the issue, and the consensus is > that dedicating HF resources to legal advice regarding LLMs is not a good > use of our resources. > > > > It's not that the questions are not important, but rather that this > isn't Haskell-specific. > > If a larger body decides to get involved (e.g. the Free Software > Foundation), the Haskell Foundation could collaborate as part of a larger > coalition. > > > > Best regards, > > Laurent > > ---------- > > Laurent P. René de Cotret > > Chair, Haskell Foundation > > That's a pretty bad answer. Why does it matter if those questions are > "Haskell specific"? We're talking about the specific impact on the GHC code > base and its legal status. It doesn't matter if those are questions that > also need to be answered by other projects, WE have to answer them for > ourselves. That's like saying you don't need health insurance as an > electrician because health insurance "isn't electrician specific". Sorry, > but that's just plain nonsense and irresponsible. I question Laurent's > legal instincts as a whole. The optics of this are pretty bad. > _______________________________________________ > ghc-devs mailing list -- [email protected] > To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] >
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