Re: GHC licence

[Fergus Henderson]

[please consider taking followups off-line, as the Haskell content of
this thread has started to become rather low. -moderator]

On 22-Jul-1998, Simon Marlow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bob Hutchison) writes:
> 
> > There are *two* GNU licenses. The GPL is meant for tools, like GHC, and
> > would prevent certain uses of GHC. There is a second GNU license for
> > libraries, called LGPL, and this is important. The runtime components of
> > GHC should be licensed using the library license (just like the GNU
> > runtimes are). Using both licenses appropriately would allow for the use
> > of GHC in commercial software (as long as GHC itself was not included).
> > Any improvements GHC or its runtime would still have to be made public
> > by the commercial entity.
> 
> Sure, but what happens when someone wants to include GHC in a
> commercial system?

Either

(1) They discuss things with the copyright owner and come to some mutually
satisfactory arrangement.

or

(2) They design their software so that it is not a "derivate work" of ghc
(e.g. If they're building a Haskell IDE, perhaps they just invoke ghc
or any other Haskell compiler as a separate process).

or 

(3) They release their source code under the GPL.

> Really, the GNU license is innapropriate for most commercial use.

I think you are talking about people selling products that include
ghc (as opposed to products just compiled by ghc) and I think that
was something that Simon said he did not want to allow.  So I think
the GPL would achieve Simon's intentions in this respect.

-- 
Fergus Henderson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  |  "I have always known that the pursuit
WWW:   |  of excellence is a lethal habit"
PGP: finger [EMAIL PROTECTED]| -- the last words of T. S. Garp.

Re: GHC licence

[Fergus Henderson]

On 22-Jul-1998, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 
> I do think that the GNU license would be a mistake -- as I understand, it   
> would prevent the use of GHC in commercial projects, and I'm pretty sure   
> that's something Simon wants to *encourage*.

There are two simple ways to avoid this problem.

One is to license the compiler itself under the GPL but the libraries
and runtime system under the LGPL (GNU Library General Public License).
For example, this is the approach we used for the Mercury implementation.

Another is to license them all under the GPL but to add a special exception
that means that programs linked with the libraries and runtime are not
covered by the GPL.  This is the approach taken by GNU C and GNU Ada.

Here's the exact wording of the exception used for the GNU C runtime
(from libgcc2.c in the gcc distribution):

/* As a special exception, if you link this library with other files,
   some of which are compiled with GCC, to produce an executable,
   this library does not by itself cause the resulting executable
   to be covered by the GNU General Public License.
   This exception does not however invalidate any other reasons why
   the executable file might be covered by the GNU General Public License.  */

-- 
Fergus Henderson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  |  "I have always known that the pursuit
WWW:   |  of excellence is a lethal habit"
PGP: finger [EMAIL PROTECTED]| -- the last words of T. S. Garp.

Re: GHC licence

[Simon Marlow]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Bob Hutchison) writes:

> There are *two* GNU licenses. The GPL is meant for tools, like GHC, and
> would prevent certain uses of GHC. There is a second GNU license for
> libraries, called LGPL, and this is important. The runtime components of
> GHC should be licensed using the library license (just like the GNU
> runtimes are). Using both licenses appropriately would allow for the use
> of GHC in commercial software (as long as GHC itself was not included).
> Any improvements GHC or its runtime would still have to be made public
> by the commercial entity.

Sure, but what happens when someone wants to include GHC in a
commercial system?  Do you really think they are going to provide
source code for the rest of the system?  Perhaps they make some
modifications to GHC but don't want to release the ideas in source
form?  Really, the GNU license is innapropriate for most commercial
use.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a free software fanatic.  That's "free" as in
"freedom", not as in "you must give everyone your source code" (1/2 :-)

Cheers,
Simon

-- 
Simon Marlow [EMAIL PROTECTED]
University of Glasgow   http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~simonm/
finger for PGP public key

Re: GHC licence

[Tony Finch]

[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
>I do think that the GNU license would be a mistake -- as I understand, it   
>would prevent the use of GHC in commercial projects, and I'm pretty sure   
>that's something Simon wants to *encourage*.

The GPL explicitly allows commercial use. The commercially problematic
aspect of the GPL is that derived versions of GPLed software must be
distributed with source (and all the intellectual property exposed).
This does not propagate to works created using GPLed software.

Tony.
-- 
F.A.N.Finch  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]   +44-7970-401-426
"Plenty more letters in the alphabet"

Re: GHC licence

[Bob Hutchison]

On Wed, 22 Jul 1998 08:51:47 GMT, you wrote:

>CC: Simon L Peyton Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
>
>
>I do think that the GNU license would be a mistake -- as I understand, it   
>would prevent the use of GHC in commercial projects, and I'm pretty sure   
>that's something Simon wants to *encourage*.
>

There are *two* GNU licenses. The GPL is meant for tools, like GHC, and
would prevent certain uses of GHC. There is a second GNU license for
libraries, called LGPL, and this is important. The runtime components of
GHC should be licensed using the library license (just like the GNU
runtimes are). Using both licenses appropriately would allow for the use
of GHC in commercial software (as long as GHC itself was not included).
Any improvements GHC or its runtime would still have to be made public
by the commercial entity.

For example, Tower Eiffel has use GNU compilers for some time. The
runtime libraries of GNU compilers are protected by the library license.
Yet Tower Eiffel is certainly used for commercial products.

Cheers,
Bob
---
Bob Hutchison, [EMAIL PROTECTED], (416) 760-0565
([EMAIL PROTECTED] until INTERNIC fixes problems)
RedRock, Toronto, Canada

Re: GHC licence

[michael]

CC: Simon L Peyton Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>


I do think that the GNU license would be a mistake -- as I understand, it   
would prevent the use of GHC in commercial projects, and I'm pretty sure   
that's something Simon wants to *encourage*.

 --
From:  jfk
Sent:  21 July 1998 20:20
To:  Simon L Peyton Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; [EMAIL PROTECTED];   
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject:   Re: GHC licence (was Could Haskell be t


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

Re: GHC licence

[Fergus Henderson]

On 21-Jul-1998, Hans Aberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> At 23:28 +1000 98/07/21, Fergus Henderson wrote:
> >I ANAL, but I believe the phrase "public domain" is a well-defined concept.
> >It does not mean why Simon L Peyton Jones means by it, though.
> >If something is public domain, then anyone can use it for anything.
> 
>   I recall from the eighties about what wordings like "public domain",
> "free-ware" etc really meant, and it turned out that people meant different
> things.
> 
>   So to be one the sure side, I think ine should the wording "This software
> is public domain, that is, ...", spelling it out.
> 
>   (By the way, what does the "I ANAL" you use mean?)

IANAL stands for "I am not a lawyer".

(The space between the "I" and "A" was a typo.)

-- 
Fergus Henderson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  |  "I have always known that the pursuit
WWW:   |  of excellence is a lethal habit"
PGP: finger [EMAIL PROTECTED]| -- the last words of T. S. Garp.

Re: GHC licence

[Fergus Henderson]

On 21-Jul-1998, Hans Aberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> At 10:38 +0100 98/07/21, 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.
> 
>   The wording "public domain" is not a legal or otherwise well-defined
> concept,

IANAL, but I believe the phrase "public domain" is a well-defined concept.
It does not mean why Simon L Peyton Jones means by it, though.
If something is public domain, then anyone can use it for anything.

> so the advice to anybody writing publicly distributed software is
> claim the copyright, and then specify what rules there should be for its
> use.

Yes, indeed.  Copyright law forbids anyone from copying software without the
copyright owner's permission (except for certain specific circumstances,
e.g. "fair use").

>   But the conditions should be spelled out in the copyright notice, I think.

Definitely.

-- 
Fergus Henderson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>  |  "I have always known that the pursuit
WWW:   |  of excellence is a lethal habit"
PGP: finger [EMAIL PROTECTED]| -- the last words of T. S. Garp.

Re: GHC licence (was Could Haskell be taken over by Microsoft?)

[Charles Godin]

On Tue, 21 Jul 1998, Simon L Peyton Jones wrote:
> (...) 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.

No need to apologize to a group of haskell fanatics for using lazy
evaluation to solve this problem ;)


Charles Godin
Software engineer
Discreet Logic
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Re: GHC licence (was Could Haskell be taken over by Microsoft?)

[Jorgen Frojk Kjaersgaard]

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

Re: GHC licence (was Could Haskell be taken over by Microsoft?)

[Bonard B. Timmons III]

> 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.

Popular free software CD-ROM distributions such as Debian GNU/Linux
disagree with you: they have refused for years to include software
such as GHC and Hugs, due to licensing/redistribution worries.

Thus, licensing problems have been hindering the distribution and use
of Haskell, and, what is worse, more within relatively active
communities such as GNU/Linux. Only NHC has a reasonable license,
stating that the software is freely redistributable and modifiable.

GPLing GHC would prevent commercial exploitation and better spread
Haskell.  Even if you ended up having regrets, you would have nothing
to worry about since you as the _copyright holder_ could just release
a new version under any license you fancied.

A more traditional fix would be the XFree86 license. It involves a
higher risk of commercial exploitation, but in practice, how bad could
that be, given the widespread distribution it would encourage? The
risk would be especially small within the free software community.
I've tacked on to the end of this message the short XFree86 license.

Regardless of what you do, thank you for GHC!

Bake

--
   The XFree86 Project, Inc.



1.  XFree86 Copyright

XFree86 code without an explicit copyright is covered by the following
copyright:

Copyright (C) 1994-1998 The XFree86 Project, Inc.  All Rights
Reserved.

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining
a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the
"Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including
without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish,
distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to
permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to
the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF
MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
NONINFRINGEMENT.  IN NO EVENT SHALL THE XFREE86 PROJECT BE LIABLE FOR
ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF
CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION
WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Except as contained in this notice, the name of the XFree86 Project
shall not be used in advertising or otherwise to promote the sale, use
or other dealings in this Software without prior written authorization
from the XFree86 Project.
--

Re: GHC licence

[Hans Aberg]

At 23:28 +1000 98/07/21, Fergus Henderson wrote:
>I ANAL, but I believe the phrase "public domain" is a well-defined concept.
>It does not mean why Simon L Peyton Jones means by it, though.
>If something is public domain, then anyone can use it for anything.

  I recall from the eighties about what wordings like "public domain",
"free-ware" etc really meant, and it turned out that people meant different
things.

  So to be one the sure side, I think ine should the wording "This software
is public domain, that is, ...", spelling it out.

  (By the way, what does the "I ANAL" you use mean?)

  Hans Aberg
  * Email: Hans Aberg 
  * Home Page: 
  * AMS member listing: 

Re: GHC licence (was Could Haskell be taken over by Microsoft?)

[Marko Schuetz]

> "Simon" == Simon L Peyton Jones <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:

>> Simon L Peyton Jones wrote:
>> > So far as GHC is concerned, I wrote on this list a month ago:
>> > "More specifically, I plan to continue beavering away on GHC.
>> > GHC is public domain software, and Microsoft are happy for it to 
>> > remain so, source code and all.  If anything, I'll have quite a bit
>> > more time to work on it than before."
>> 
>> 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.)

Simon> No I am not renouncing all copyright.  By "public domain" I mean freely
Simon> available for anyone to use for any purpose other than making money
Simon> by selling the compiler itself.  That isn't a formal definition,
Simon> but I'm sure you see the intent.

Simon> I have carefully avoided getting tangled up in legal red tape, which
Simon> is why there is no formal license.  It may be that my move to Microsoft
Simon> will force me to spend time sorting this out.  But it's never been
Simon> a problem so far, and I doubt it will in the future, so I'm reluctant
Simon> to invest the time until pressed to do so.

There is a discussion of various free licenses at
http://www.debian.org/intro/free

As part of the 'social contract' there are also the Debian Free
Software Guidelines at
http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines 


Marko

Re: GHC licence (was Could Haskell be taken over by Microsoft?)

[Jan Skibinski]

> 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.
> 

Or a non-profit consortium, as someone mentioned it already. I am not
in a position to advice, but the example of Bertrand Meyer and his
Eiffel language comes to mind so vividly. :-)

Originally Eiffel was Bertrand's child. Later he gave all his rights to
NICE - Non-profit International (?) Consortium for Eiffel. His greatest
worry was to keep Eiffel as a pure, uniform language, without dialects.

This seems to work. All decisions on future of Eiffel are voted by voting
members, and Bertrand is just one of them.

There are several commercial companies that maintain Eiffel compilers
and libraries, including Bertrand's own ISE in Santa Barbara. 

Jan

Re: GHC licence

[Hans Aberg]

At 10:38 +0100 98/07/21, 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.

  The wording "public domain" is not a legal or otherwise well-defined
concept, so the advice to anybody writing publicly distributed software is
claim the copyright, and then specify what rules there should be for its
use. This way one can prevent abuse. One form of abuse (if not copyrighted)
could be that a company takes over the product for commercial purposes,
perhaps even copyrighting it itself.

  A prudent "public domain" definition could be that the product can be
used commercially without a charge, but needs the written consent of the
copyrighter. Another criteria could be that a commercial versions of the
product can be allowed to make money on the commercially added features, or
costs for commercial distribution, but not on the product itself. So if a
commercial company adds say GUI, then they can charge what is reasonable
for that job, but they cannot charge for making use of the source codes.
(Just in order to avoid apparent cases of over-charging of the product.)

  But the conditions should be spelled out in the copyright notice, I think.

  I am not an expert on legal wrangling, but if the perceived independence
is at stake, one way could be to create a consortium and transfer the
copyright to that while retaining the right to develop the product.

  Hans Aberg
  * Email: Hans Aberg 
  * Home Page: 
  * AMS member listing: 

Re: GHC licence (was Could Haskell be taken over by Microsoft?)

[H. Conrad Cunningham]

Jorgen Frojk Kjaersgaard <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> 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.

The GNU General Public License is not the only type of "free software" or
"open source software" license in use.

For information on various types of "open source" licenses, check out the 
URL  http://www.opensource.org.

- Conrad Cunningham

Re: GHC licence (was Could Haskell be taken over by Microsoft?)

[Simon L Peyton Jones]

> Simon L Peyton Jones wrote:
> > So far as GHC is concerned, I wrote on this list a month ago:
> > "More specifically, I plan to continue beavering away on GHC.
> > GHC is public domain software, and Microsoft are happy for it to 
> > remain so, source code and all.  If anything, I'll have quite a bit
> > more time to work on it than before."
> 
> 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.

Simon

GHC licence (was Could Haskell be taken over by Microsoft?)

[Ross Paterson]

Simon L Peyton Jones wrote:
> So far as GHC is concerned, I wrote on this list a month ago:
> "More specifically, I plan to continue beavering away on GHC.
> GHC is public domain software, and Microsoft are happy for it to 
> remain so, source code and all.  If anything, I'll have quite a bit
> more time to work on it than before."

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.)

Ross Paterson