On Tue, 2011-01-25 at 22:34 -0800, John Millikin wrote: > The specific claim I'm refuting is that if some library or application > depends on GPL'd code, that library/application must itself be > GPL-licensed. This claim is simply not true. The GPL only applies to > derived works, such as binaries or copied code.
Well, binaries (among other things) are pretty much exactly what's at issue here. I don't think anyone disputes that you can copy and paste sections of BSD3 licensed source code into a new project, but that wasn't the point brought up. If you actually install the thing from Hackage, you build a binary, which links in code from the GPLed library, and distributing the result is covered by the terms of the GPL. I definitely interpret the license field in Cabal to refer to the terms and conditions that govern distribution of the entire program or library as a unit, including binaries. If the people to whom I distribute that program are not free to further distribute it without offering source code, then I'm not giving it to them under the terms of the BSD3 license; so the license field in Cabal should note that. > I think you're getting mixed up between a derived work and dependent > library/application. I'm fairly sure I'm not mixed up. I think it may have caused some confusion that I'm talking about the entire program, and you seem to be (sometimes, at least) talking about individual pieces of source code. -- Chris Smith _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe