[Haskell-cafe] GPL License of H-Matrix and prelude numeric

[Chris Smith]

On Tue, 2011-01-25 at 20:53 -0800, John Millikin wrote:
> What are you talking about? Of course BSD3 libraries/applications can
> depend on GPL'd code.

Not being a lawyer, I'll avoid claiming any definitive answers, and just
mention that that's definitely a minority opinion, and at odds with the
interpretation given by the FSF.

> The only license Cabal allows that conflicts with the GPL is BSD4,
> which (to my knowledge) is not used by any software on Hackage.

This is true if you "conflicts" means "cannot be combined with GPLed
code in a GPLed derivative work."  However, it's generally considered
untrue if "conflicts" means "cannot be combined with GPLed code in a BSD
licensed derivative work."  While there might be a legitimate debate
over whether linking constitutes making a derivative work, the author of
the GPL license certainly believes that it does.  Hence my comment.

Not trying to start a license war here; as I said earlier, it's
completely up to a library author how they license their own code.  But
we do have to understand the consequences and be careful to abide by the
licenses those authors choose.

-- 
Chris