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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: Nokia and Trolltech
From:       Eduardo Robles Elvira <edulix () gmail ! com>
Date:       2008-01-28 16:12:26
Message-ID: 200801281712.26346.edulix () gmail ! com
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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/
 
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