Judah Jacobson:
On Dec 18, 2007 8:54 PM, Manuel M T Chakravarty
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Judah Jacobson:
- Statically linking against GMP puts extra license requirements on
any ghc-compiled program; thus, dynamic linking is preferable.
Dynamic linking is preferable, because it is the simplest way to
comply with the LGLP (specifically, Section 4(d)) in a closed-source
program. However, it is incorrect to say that static linking leads
to
extra license requirements. All that is required is to enable users
to use the program with a modified version of the GMP. There are two
simple ways of doing that: (a) provide access to the .o files of your
program so that they can statically link with a different version of
the GMP or (b) to provide a version of the program linking GMP
dynamically alongside the statically linked version.
In any case, no change of the closed-source program's licence is
required.
Thanks for the correction and list of alternatives; both seem pretty
reasonable. Either way, I guess you're "optimizing" for the casual
user rather than for a hacker wanting to update GMP who won't be
stopped by needing to statically link a bunch of .o files anyway.
That's right. Make it dead simple for the 99.999% of users who
couldn't care less about GMP as long as it does implement Haskell's
Integer nicely. The LGPL requires use to enable the remaining 0.001%
to hack GMP to their hearts content. We need to meet this
requirement, but these are power users who don't need the simplest
install possible.
- On OS X, installing new frameworks is very easy (just drag-and-
drop
the framework into ~/Library/Frameworks or /Library/Frameworks; the
former doesn't even need admin privileges). This doesn't seem like
much to ask of users.
I think it is. It means, Haskell programs are more hassle to install
than, say, C programs.
That's fair, although I think it's still less hassle than, e.g.,
installing a Ruby program on OS X Panther (which required first
installing the whole of Ruby itself).
Yes, but on Leopard, Ruby is preinstalled, as is Python, and I'd like
the barrier to entry to be as low as possible.
Manuel
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