Roman Leshchinskiy:
Manuel M T Chakravarty wrote:
Roman Leshchinskiy:
It would be possible to distribute GHC itself under BSD3 and
readline under the GPL if they were really distributed as two
independent thing (and, e.g., optionally linked together during
installation). But by prelinking them, you have created a combined
work which must be distributed under the GPL since it includes
GPL'ed code.
Yes, but what does that mean. It means that GHC must fullfil all
the obligations placed on us by the GPL. Well we do that by
distributing GHC under BSD3.
I don't think that's quite correct. If you distribute GHC+readline,
you can do that only under the GPL. You can still inform the user
that the GHC part is also available under BSD3 from haskell.org, but
this particular distribution has to be under the GPL.
We agree here.
To be precise, the GPL says:
You must license the entire work, as a whole, under this License to
anyone who comes into possession of a copy.
...
You may convey a covered work in object code form under the terms of
sections 4 and 5, provided that you also convey the machine-readable
Corresponding Source under the terms of this License
Note the "this license" part.
I think, we also agree here. I think we differ only in how we execute
this. My view is that by distributing something under BSD3, you
implicitly also distribute it under the GPL (as anybody can take the
BSD3 code and re-distribute it under the GPL). AFAIK, this is the
same position held by the FSF - even if other people (eg, some OpenBSD
people disagree).
Anyway, I don't think this is terribly important. Personally, I'd
just point the users to the source and include the GPL in the package.
We could include the GPL in the package without pointing that out
during the installation process. The reason I don't like that is
because then somebody will discover it, due to lack of explanation,
wonder what it is all about and reach wrong conclusions (such as GHC
itself is only available under the GPL and maybe even that compiled
program will include GPL'ed). That's why I prefer to be up front about
it.
Manuel
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