[Haskell-cafe] ANN: FileManip 0.1, an expressive filemanipulationlibrary

[Claus Reinke]

>> i'm a fan of find | xargs, so a portable haskell replacement unencumbered
>> by viral licenses would be very welcome. i have no intention to participate
>> in yet-another-licencing-discussion, i would just like to ask whether those 
>> limitations of your offering are an accident or intended?
> 
> http://hackage.haskell.org/cgi-bin/hackage-scripts/package/FileManip-0.1
> 
> Apparently it's under the *L*GPL not the GPL, so it's not the "viral"
> license that you were thinking of perhaps?

no, i browsed the license file before asking my question (no non-restrictive
license needs to be longer than a page). if i wanted to use that library for
anything i want to distribute, my only chance to avoid the source re-distribution
and advertising clauses would be dynamic linking - the same reasons why
some of us a looking forward to the gmp replacement. i'd rather roll my own
find than look at the sources under the current license, which may or may not 
have been the author's intention when choosing that particular license. hence
my question. similarly for the unix dependency - it could be inherent in the
design, or an accident of the author's current platform.

<soapbox> <title>platform-independent haskelling</title>
if i may take this opportunity for a message to other haskell authors: haskell
makes it possible to write portable code. there are some cases  where
platform dependencies are unavoidable, and where one might write code
for one platform, hoping that others add the branches for their platforms.
there are even fewer cases where the functionality provided does not apply
to other platforms. but for the majority of code, the trick is simply not to 
use platform-specific tricks. a small price to pay for not being exclusive.
</soapbox>

;-)
claus