Isn't the question just about packages included in the Haskell Platform, for which "The current set of [acceptable] licenses is just the BSD3 license":
http://trac.haskell.org/haskell-platform/wiki/AddingPackages#Interimlicensepolicy http://trac.haskell.org/haskell-platform/ticket/85 It might be reassuring to companies that want to depend on the platform if the policy was moved from Interim to Official; at least that would mean there would be community pressure not to relicense anything in the platform from BSD3 to (say) GPL. Conrad. On 25 October 2011 22:42, Jeremy O'Donoghue <[email protected]> wrote: > IANAL, but I'll bite, since I have needed to live with this for quite some > time now. Obviously readers are directed to take independent legal advice > before they do anything for themselves, and all of the other standard > disclaimers. > > On 25 October 2011 11:58, Eric Y. Kow <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 21:46:21 +1100, Ivan Lazar Miljenovic wrote: >> > > - My user is concerned that a large number of having a large number of >> > > individual licenses even though textually identical modulo author, >> > > date, etc would mean a big hassle getting their lawyers and their >> > > user's lawyers to sign off on each and every license >> > >> > Why do their lawyers all need to sign off individually for BSD >> > licenses (which if memory serves all platform libraries have to be >> > licensed under, or some variant thereof)? At most it just means they >> > need to lump them all into one big text file somewhere saying which >> > libraries they used... (then again, IANAL, and don't charge by the >> > hour to consider these complex technical questions :p). > > The first thing to say is that this is actually a very responsible attitude > on the client's part. When legal review is conducted it is not just the > license which needs to be checked: > > What implications does this license carry for my business model. BSD is > considered benign in this respect. GPL and LGPL work for some models but not > others. > Does the purported copyright holder actually have the right to issue the > software under the given license. > > The second is much more time consuming. It is straightforward to do this if > the software in question was written by one person, but when contributions > come from multiple people it becomes more difficult. For example if a > project receives a contribution which the contributor did on company time, > they may not even have the right to make that contribution (because the > employer paid for, and hence owns it). There have similarly been cases where > a developer has taken code from, say, a GPL project and imported it into > their own differently licensed project. > > This second case is particularly difficult, as there *may* be cases when it > is acceptable (e.g. under fair use in some jurisdictions) to extract small > portions of a work and re-use them, but in most cases the developer simply > does not have the right to make the contribution. There are sub-cases of > these, for example where one developer has removed the copyright notices > placed by the original author, even though licensing has been kept the same. > This is legal (if ethically dubious) in some jurisdictions and illegal in > others. > > A related issue: can a project *prove* that contributors have all formally > licensed their code contributions under the same license? As far as the law > is concerned, you really need this in writing, or something very close to it > (e.g. e-mail with full header information). > > Personally I think we should give praise and recognition to anyone who > thoroughly checks and complies with the license attached to a piece of code > as they are taking care to respect the wishes of the author. I get much more > fired up about those who simply break licenses and hope they don't get > caught. > >> >> I find the whole thing baffling myself. I'd thought this would be the >> sensible thing to do, but I guess when it comes to these licensing >> things it's not the actual pain that counts, but the perceived potential >> pain. Know what I mean? >> >> It's similar to the "won't touch with a 10ft pole" attitude to the GPL >> that some entities may take. It's basically a precautionary "la la la; >> I can't hear you" or a conservative stance which consists of >> "I don't understand this stuff, so I'm going to do the thing that seems >> safest to me", which may or may not be a reasonable reaction... > > I am not sure that anyone 'understands' the GPL with real certainty [1]. Key > questions: when does a work fall into the category of 'derived' under the > GPL and when does it not do so? If I make money from licensing Intellectual > Property, what are the consequences of code which grants an implicit patent > license? Neither of these clauses of the GPL has been properly tested in a > significant legal jurisdiction (and anyway, a Code Napoleon style > jurisdiction might take a different stance than under UK/US style Common > Law). > > > >> Well, it would need copyright attribution/agreement of everyone that's >> ever committed code to any library/application to the Platform (which >> is why so many large projects want it) to re-license them AFAIK, which >> may be difficult. > >> I could just say it'd be unrealistic. Just trying to be thorough. > > It may be unrealistic, but it would actually be a very good idea - although > completely unnecessary if we wish to continue to avoid success at all costs > :-) > > [1] This a strength of the GPL. It was developed to achieve a specific > political goal, and has been hugely successful in doing so. > > _______________________________________________ > Haskell-Cafe mailing list > [email protected] > http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe > > _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list [email protected] http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
