[Haskell-cafe] Re: ANN: hakyll-0.1

[Tom Tobin]

On Wed, Dec 9, 2009 at 4:59 AM, Ketil Malde <ketil at malde.org> wrote:
> Tom Tobin <korpios at korpios.com> writes:
>> If it turns out that Hakyll *is* okay to be BSD3 licensed so
>> long as neither any binary nor the GPL'd work's source is distributed
>> under non-GPL terms, well ... I'll say that the meaning of "BSD
>> licensed" will have become much less reliable, since it means you
>> actually have to trace the genealogy of the libraries you use *all*
>> the way back in order to understand the situation for certain.
>
> How so?  To me it's the exact converse: if the author of Hakyll may
> *not* distribute his work under the BSD license, just because it is
> intended to be linked with some GPL code, this complicates issues
> tremendously.

For instance, it would mean that businesses which may be writing
proprietary software can't assume they can freely use a liberally
licensed (e.g., BSD3) library — which would *completely* go against
the prevailing understanding of liberally licensed software.  Tainting
your software with a GPL dependency without realizing it is a
terrifying prospect (and certainly one of the questions I'd now like
to pose to the SFLC).