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List:       kde-freeqt
Subject:    Re: [freeqt] Future of Harmony
From:       Bernd Gehrmann <bernd () physik ! hu-berlin ! de>
Date:       1998-11-23 10:07:22
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> > > I'm not sure how I'm supposed to remember what you "know," but your
> > > premise is flawed: there was much discussion as to whether Harmony
> > > should be GPL or LGPL, and much of that debate concerned whether closed
> > > source software vendors should be able to use Harmony.  IIRC, the
> > > working position was that Harmony should be LGPL, *not* restricted to
> > > Open Source or GNU/FSF use only.

These are two different things: putting Harmony under the GPL would not
have
meant restricting it to Open Source, but restricting it to GPL only. I
don't
like library licenses which restrict me which precise license I have to
use
for my own application (as a whole). This is IMO a flaw in the GPL and a
major 
reason why in recent months several licenses have been invented (NPL,
MozPL, 
AbiPL come to mind). The QPL allows applications to be distributed under
a 
number of licenses, like X11, BSD, GPL, Artistic. I'm not sure whether
it allows 
also NPL, but somewhere I'm open for comprises. What for me is an
important 
point in the QPL is that is allows linking with _any_ other code legally 
developed. For example, I can link with any code that does not depend on
Qt.

The other point is 'use by proprietary applications'. To not allow this
would
have meant that KDE would have never used Harmony, because they wanted
to
explicitely encourage commercial developers to write for KDE. This
consequence
would have been that either Harmony becomes a stillbirth - used by noone
-
or the reason for a split inside KDE - neither neither being a nice
vision.

Of course, this is all my personal opinion, so there is no need to
followup.
You will not convince me ;-)

For me, more important than the licensing details is the mere fact that 
TT ships its main product as Open Source software. I think that everyone
who takes this path should be supported. Continuing Harmony would be the
exact opposite: it would mean directly attacking a company that makes
its
software available under fair conditions. IMO, this would be rude. But
there
is also a good rational arguments against it, namely that people would
hate you.
And anyway, KDE people would only switch to your toolkit if it turns out
to
be significantly superior to Qt. A hard job, if you ask me.

I won't continue any work on Harmony. There are things that are worth
spending
my time on. KDE is far from perfect, and I encourage everyone to remove
some
of its weaknesses (when I find the time, I will try to do so :-)

If you want to write a LGPL'd toolkit, feel free to do so. There is no
need
to make it compatible with Qt. Put your creativity in finding new
concepts.
Improve other toolkits - there are enough floating around.

> Furthermore, for ISV's that already have Motif licensing agreements and
> existing Motif code bases, converting that code and negotiating new Qt
> licenses entail certain operational and opportunity costs.  A different
> set of costs would be involved in using GTK or Harmony under the LGPL,
> but it is hard to construe these costs in any way but less than those
> associated with Qt.

Just a side note: I think you underestimate the costs for educating
developers.
Qt is easy to learn and has excellent documentation. In recent weeks, I
have
tried to learn gtk, and it's very hard as there is virtually _no_
reference
documentation, When writing a program, I always had one window open with
my 
code, and another one with the gtk source code.

> RMS to your cause by implication.  I, for one, will be amazed if Richard
> comes out and says, "Anything that Troll Tech wants to do is ok by me.
> Because they were nice enough to make QT available under the QPL, no
> free software developer should pursue any project that might encroach on
> their revenue stream."  That ain't gonna happen; nor should it.

When Netscape opened the Mozilla sources, the FSF stopped their Escape
project,
although the NPL is incompatible with the GPL.

Bernd.

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