From kde-core-devel Mon Jan 28 10:03:43 2008 From: "Eduardo Robles" Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 10:03:43 +0000 To: kde-core-devel Subject: Re: Nokia to acquire Trolltech Message-Id: <9e2d3ad60801280203k69a021ddw8f1e87283ddc5675 () mail ! gmail ! com> X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kde-core-devel&m=120151469522462 MIME-Version: 1 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------=_Part_6786_24558587.1201514623231" ------=_Part_6786_24558587.1201514623231 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline So let's see the facts: Nokia is pro software patents [1]. I belive the trolls are not. GPL 3 requires all copyright holders to "free" their patents to others creating derived work from them [2]. And let's take a look at history and its order: 1. Trolltech changes Qt to GPL 3 2. Oficial announcement: Nokia to acquire Trolltech So I can only but guess that there were some concerns in the trolls about being acquired by Trolltech and putting Qt in hands of a patent encumbered of software patents and that's why they hasten up to change to GPL 3. But.. what about Qtopia? Or QSA? they seem not to be under GPL v3. In general, if Nokia doesn't make an statement against Software patents, which seems rather unlikely, I won't trust Nokia as much as I trust Trolltech. Nokia is not doing any favor to open source and the community by fostering software patents and that should be taken seriously when analyzing this acqusition. -- [1] http://swpat.ffii.org/gasnu/nokia/index.en.html [2] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html ------=_Part_6786_24558587.1201514623231 Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline So let's see the facts: Nokia is pro software patents [1]. I belive the trolls are not. GPL 3 requires all copyright holders to "free" their patents to others creating derived work from them [2]. And let's take a look at history and its order:
1. Trolltech changes Qt to GPL 3
2. Oficial announcement: Nokia to acquire Trolltech

So I can only but guess that there were some concerns in the trolls about being acquired by Trolltech and putting Qt in hands of a patent encumbered of software patents and that's why they hasten up to change to GPL 3. But.. what about Qtopia? Or QSA?  they seem not to be under GPL v3. In general, if Nokia doesn't make an statement against Software patents, which seems rather unlikely, I won't trust Nokia as much as I trust Trolltech. Nokia is not doing any favor to open source and the community by fostering software patents and that should be taken seriously when analyzing this acqusition.

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[1] http://swpat.ffii.org/gasnu/nokia/index.en.html
[2] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html
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