From kde-devel Mon Jan 28 16:12:26 2008 From: Eduardo Robles Elvira Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 16:12:26 +0000 To: kde-devel Subject: Re: Nokia and Trolltech Message-Id: <200801281712.26346.edulix () gmail ! com> X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kde-devel&m=120153686226523 El Lunes 28 Enero 2008, Mario Young escribió: > and now what?? I don't know, it can be good and it probably it will be good, but there are dark corners. I've poted this in kde-core-devel but I was told it was not the right place.. maybe this is a better place? Please tell me if it's not. 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. I've found an interview [3] at the DOT to Eirik Eng, president of Trolltech in 2004. At the end of the interview, Eirik is asked about the position of Trolltech and software patents. This is his answer: "Trolltech is against software patenting. We think it is a bad thing and we see with horror what is happening to the US software market because of the patent policy over there. From my limited understanding of the subject, US patent law isn't that bad, it's the actual application of that law by the US patent office which is the problem. We sincerely hope that we will not get a parallel situation in Europe and we think that would be a catastrophe to the software industry in Europe. We think that we are well protected by copyright laws and other laws. we think that software is a very different product from other types of commercial production products. And we think that it is very important for innovation that people can continue to share ideas and that companies are not allowed to patent things which are very obvious." Will this still be the position of "Trolltech" once acquired by Nokia? I don't think so. I'll belive it when I read it, straight in nokia.com signed by them, and when they join forces with the FFII and enter in campaings like nosoftwarepatents.com. Working in favor of software patents means working against open source and against the community. -- [1] http://swpat.ffii.org/gasnu/nokia/index.en.html [2] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html [3] http://dot.kde.org/1081772638/ >> Visit http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-devel#unsub to unsubscribe <<