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Happy to see “secretlang” out in the open! I have been following development from afar and really like the idea of a “simple” take on a language, but with a lot

by ninjin 5y ago

Happy to see “secretlang” out in the open! I have been following development from afar and really like the idea of a “simple” take on a language, but with a lot of wisdom and affordances added since the state of the world back in 1972. In short, Hare seems to be a language that I really should like and I want to take it for a spin. What I find a bit confusing though is the licensing. I belong to the “BSD school”, but can at least claim that I understand (and respect) how GNU looks at things. Looking at Hare’s licensing [1], I am somewhat stumped and my usual modes of thinking no longer apply. What is the threat that warrants this level of complexity? A commercial fork? A community fork? Proprietary drivers? Are these really realistic enough threats to warrant this level of license complexity rather than just stamping ISC and CC-BY on the whole thing and not worry about forks at all? Yes, there is some writing in the README, but perhaps I am too thick to “get it”? [1]: https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/hare#licensing https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/hare#licensing Lastly, a sanity check, am I reacting too strongly to this if I feel that it has a bit of chilling effect in terms of my excitement?

staticassertion 5y ago
The license seems straightforward. You can use and distribute software written in Hare, but if you want to link or make changes to the tooling (compiler, etc) you must open source those.
- ninjin 5y ago
  Yes, legally it is perfectly clear. Just not the why. Is there any other language that has taken a similar approach? Has this been discussed in relation to Hare somewhere apart from the brief chunk of text that I linked? I am perfectly accepting that I may be in error here in terms of how I view licensing, but it bothers me that I can not build a mental model of the intentions of the authors.
  - sanxiyn 5y ago
    It seems basically equivalent to gcc/glibc, which I think is a good default.
sanxiyn 5y ago
I think you are reacting too strongly. Really, what's the problem?
- ninjin 5y ago
  Thank you for the sanity check. It is difficult for me to articulate really, but I guess I (perhaps in error?) have deferred battles over say proprietary drivers away from programming language licensing (just so that there is no confusion here, I am fairly hard line in terms of the usage of proprietary software for my own personal use; only falling marginally short of the FSF party line). Perhaps seeing this has me fearing that the project’s goals are more ideological than technical (or at least that a core of the community sees it that way?), while I (perhaps naively?) have a more laissez-faire approach believing that superior software is the way to software freedom and that legal “trickery” is a Faustian bargain in the end. I guess the feeling that arises in akin to when I see GNU projects banning even the mention of proprietary software from their communication channels. It has little effect on my excitement and respect for the software itself, but it comes across (to me) as somewhat misguided zealotry. Sorry for the mess in terms of my writing. It has been months since I first saw the licensing and I still do not know how to internalise it properly.
  - byecomputer 5y ago
    I think copyleft is a good way of protecting a creator's intentions. While it's true that 'superior software is the way to software freedom', it's also true that free software is the way to software freedom. If free software begets other free software simply through its replication, then I think the juice is worth the squeeze
electroly 5y ago
This licensing regime is copied almost directly from GCC. The compiler part is GPL and the part that gets embedded into your program isn't. GPL-licensed compilers need to do some kind of dance to allow the outputs from the compiler to be free of GPL restrictions, because typically some components distributed with the compiler are linked into the executable. In this case it's the standard library, so the standard library is MPL instead of GPL. Nothing to be concerned about here. I don't see anything unusual on this page.
ddevault 5y ago
The licensing model is essentially designed in deference to users who want to vendor standard library modules in their projects. They can do so, and patch them, but have to publish their patches. Then the compiler is GPL because it does not make sense to vendor it.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

by ninjin 5y ago

staticassertion 5y ago

The license seems straightforward. You can use and distribute software written in Hare, but if you want to link or make changes to the tooling (compiler, etc) you must open source those.

ninjin 5y ago
Yes, legally it is perfectly clear. Just not the why. Is there any other language that has taken a similar approach? Has this been discussed in relation to Hare somewhere apart from the brief chunk of text that I linked? I am perfectly accepting that I may be in error here in terms of how I view licensing, but it bothers me that I can not build a mental model of the intentions of the authors.
- sanxiyn 5y ago
  It seems basically equivalent to gcc/glibc, which I think is a good default.

sanxiyn 5y ago

I think you are reacting too strongly. Really, what's the problem?

ninjin 5y ago
Thank you for the sanity check. It is difficult for me to articulate really, but I guess I (perhaps in error?) have deferred battles over say proprietary drivers away from programming language licensing (just so that there is no confusion here, I am fairly hard line in terms of the usage of proprietary software for my own personal use; only falling marginally short of the FSF party line). Perhaps seeing this has me fearing that the project’s goals are more ideological than technical (or at least that a core of the community sees it that way?), while I (perhaps naively?) have a more laissez-faire approach believing that superior software is the way to software freedom and that legal “trickery” is a Faustian bargain in the end. I guess the feeling that arises in akin to when I see GNU projects banning even the mention of proprietary software from their communication channels. It has little effect on my excitement and respect for the software itself, but it comes across (to me) as somewhat misguided zealotry. Sorry for the mess in terms of my writing. It has been months since I first saw the licensing and I still do not know how to internalise it properly.
- byecomputer 5y ago
  I think copyleft is a good way of protecting a creator's intentions. While it's true that 'superior software is the way to software freedom', it's also true that free software is the way to software freedom. If free software begets other free software simply through its replication, then I think the juice is worth the squeeze

electroly 5y ago

This licensing regime is copied almost directly from GCC. The compiler part is GPL and the part that gets embedded into your program isn't. GPL-licensed compilers need to do some kind of dance to allow the outputs from the compiler to be free of GPL restrictions, because typically some components distributed with the compiler are linked into the executable. In this case it's the standard library, so the standard library is MPL instead of GPL. Nothing to be concerned about here. I don't see anything unusual on this page.

ddevault 5y ago

The licensing model is essentially designed in deference to users who want to vendor standard library modules in their projects. They can do so, and patch them, but have to publish their patches. Then the compiler is GPL because it does not make sense to vendor it.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]