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
