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List: kde-licensing
Subject: QPL still needed?
From: Matthias Ettrich <ettrich () trolltech ! com>
Date: 2003-04-07 9:32:53
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At present, the Qt Free Edition is dual licensed under both the GNU GPL and
the QPL.
I'm wondering what the benefit is, except confusing the dual licensing scheme
and historical reasons.
As I see it the biggest benefit of the QPL is that you can use the Qt Free
Edition to run commerical Qt software dynamically linked, e.g. the Opera
browser, and distribute the two together. This makes sense, nobody wants to
have two identical libraries in memory just because of different license
terms.
Currently this isn't permitted by the GPL, but by the QPL:
"5. You may use the original or modified versions of the Software to
compile, link and run application programs legally developed by you
or by others."
However, this could easily be achieved with a little addition to the GNU GPL,
practically the reverse case of
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#WritingFSWithNFLibs
Are there other reasons for the QPL? Is there any code out there under OS
licenses that satisfies the requirements of the QPL but not the GNU GPL? The
non-GPL code in KDE that I'm aware of grants a superset of rights (typically
X11 or BSD-style licenses), meaning linking to a GPL'ed library is not a
problem at all.
Is anybody aware of a counter example?
Matthias
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