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List:       kde-licensing
Subject:    Re: [knghtbrd@debian.org: QPL v0.92+knghtbrd1]
From:       Andreas Pour <pour () mieterra ! com>
Date:       1998-12-29 17:08:33
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Joseph Carter wrote:

> On Tue, Dec 29, 1998 at 07:21:59AM +0000, Andreas Pour wrote:
> > > A Copyright lawyer would be nice.  We don't exactly have one offering to
> > > do it free of charge however and I don't think I have done all that bad a
> > > job considering that I'm not a Copyright lawyer.
> >
> > Please don't take this as a criticism drafted at you.  Just like a copyright
> > lawyer with no computer training should not be hacking the 2.2 kernel
> > unsupervised by a programmer and then publicly distribute the kernel, so a
> > programmer should not draft a legal document.  It's a question of
> > qualifications.  Though people like to bash lawyers, there is in fact a purpose
> > to the three years of legal training and seven years of apprenticeship that go
> > into being a good lawyer.
>
> Slight problem here.  You and I are dealing with the Copyright law in the
> US.  To say it as simply as I can, if Troll Tech hired a laywer's
> services for the purposes of writing the license the results would be a
> lot shorter than if they hired someone in the US.

As the world's biggest market the US cannot be ignored.  Once the Europe Union has
more centralized laws (5-10 years), those then cannot be ignored either; currently
other countries (except perhaps Germany) don't have enough size so that getting
legal counsel in each of them is prohibitively expensive.  Also, New York and London
laws are universal standards in commercial dealings.

> > > The only person
> > > involved with this discussion who is even in a position to really consult
> > > a Copyright lawyer is RMS, and you removed him from your reply so unless
> > > someone forwards the message to him, he'll never see it.
> >
> > Obviously any lawyer working for RMS would have a conflict and could not render
> > legal advice to TT.  The point was not addressed at you but at TT, I keep
> > saying this so hopefully they will take this advice and hire a lawyer, maybe
> > they have already, I don't know.
>
> Unless of course RMS brought the issue before them with the Trolls'
> interests in mind.  I think he could do this personally, he has taken
> great interest in the license and even determined that as much as the
> original v0.90 was not GPL compatible and had some annoying points in it
> that even that was free software and it was a good thing.  I believe
> Troll Tech disagrees on this point and I'm certain they have reasons why
> they do.  He's not exactly what anyone would call impartial here.  <g>
>
> > > (Not to mention my belief that RMS is likely not going to be viewed
> > > by anyone at Troll Tech as taking their professional product and
> > > profitability into account, whether he did or not)
> > >
> > > As you commented, a good portion of section 7 has no legal purpose.  The
> > > purpose was not intended to be legal, it was intended to be there for
> > > people who AREN'T lawyers to read and understand the intent of the line
> > > above, which could serve a rewrite based on your comments.  Your solution
> > > of just delete the whole thing doesn't much help things.
> >
> > Well, it prevents language from being in there that (a) doesn't work, (b)
> > doesn't make sense (either from the QPL's or the GPL's perspective), (c) is
> > incomprehensible, and ergo (c) won't be enforceable.
>
> As written (and reread later) I would agree that it wouldn't work.  It
> does make sense however.  The minimum requirements of the QPL are <=
> those of the GPL.

That's pretty conclusory, isn't it?  I mean, if that's how you draft it, sure.
However, you could, for example, require QPL mods to be licensed back to Qt rather
than making it voluntary.  Anyway, in terms of licenses, there is no >= or <=; there
is only compatible and incompatible.  And the GPL zealots claim nothing is
compatible, b/c Section 2 of the GPL requires the "entire source code" to a binary
distributed under Section 3 to be licensed under the GPL.

> The solution I kept hearing to be the end-all for the
> license debate would be to GPL Qt.  However we have already established
> that nothing in the GPL is going to say "we're really like you to
> distribute your changes as patches" or "if you want your mods in the
> official tree you'd better give Troll Tech the ability to relicense the
> changes" or "Anything which has freely available source and can be
> redistributed is good enough to be considered free when you're figuring
> out whether or not you can use this library without paying for it."

GPL will not prevent a port to other OSes where TT does not provide a free version.
Also, I have no doubt Qt would fork, given what a great product it is. Testimonials
about other things forking or not forking don't really matter, this is a whole new
animal.

> > Face it, you will never satisfy the GPL zealots unless TT GPLs or LGPLs
> > Qt, which IMHO would be a terrible thing (for many reasons I won't get
> > in to) and in any event I think their creative minds would still find
> > something wrong with Qt.
>
> Please do go into the reasons you think the GPL would be a terrible
> thing.  I looked at the requirements of the QPL (which you did not change
> in your version that I saw)

I wasn't trying to change any terms, only trying to make clearer what had already
been drafted.  It is not up to me to change any terms, that is TT's issue.  Since
they came up with the QPL skeleton that is what I looked at.

> and compared it with the requirements of the
> GPL.  They are very similar.  In fact, v0.92+knghtbrd1 allowed things the
> GPL didn't.  It was my belief then that as long as the QPL was included,
> the GPL could be too and there would be no harm in allowing the code to
> be used under the GPL.

Again, it does not make sense to "use" code under GPL, since GPL does not apply to
use, only to modification and distribution.  And the GPL in Section 0 very
specifically says the license applies only to code whose copyright holder has
licensed it under the GPL, so you could only apply Qt under a modified GPL.  Also,
Section 6 of the GPL says each recipient receives a GPL license from the original
copyright holder, so in effect Qt would be GPLing Qt.  If this is the result, it
makes a lot more sense IMHO to GPL it from the start, rather than have Section 7 of
the QPL.  At that point why is the QPL even existing?

> However, the way it's done with perl and other software just didn't seem
> right for all the same arguments I've made against it before.  Putting it
> in the license seemed like a better solution, though it would end up
> having probably the same sort of effect legally.  I think the effect
> would be slightly different on the average person though, and that was
> the point.  If the LGPL did not do it directly, people could release
> their software as both LGPL and GPL---you could then use whichever one
> you want/need for the task at hand.

Which is why commercial software is not released under either license.  Frankly, as
long as QPL is open source (i.e., the source code is free and can be freely modified
and freely redistributed), I think TT has done all they need to satisfy any person
worthy of satisfaction.  Personally I think the GPL is such a crappy license, just
in terms of its drafting, that I would not think a commercial entity should use it
(in terms of substance, as I read it I have no objections to the GPL, in fact I
rather like it, but the problem is not everyone reads it the way I do).  Basically
it gets used by people who don't understand it, not due to any intelligent choice --
programmers want to program, not read legal licenses.  Someone like TT is in a more
sophisticated position, and would IMHO be errant to use the GPL -- it is ambiguous
and otherwise poorly drafted.  Plus as this list proves people can publicly disagree
on very basic points about what it means -- not what you want in a license.  That's
why most *organizations* with resources, as opposed to individual programmers, have
rejected the GPL in favor of something else (e.g., Netscape, Aladdin).

> > My view is you cannot satisfy the radical factions so don't bother,
> > they will not be reasonable so you can't reason with them, they have to
> > have things exactly their extreme way or not at all.  Believe me, I
> > tried to be reasonable on this mailing list and as is the mark of true
> > zealots even when backed into a corner they will never admit they are
> > wrong.
>
> I'm not trying to please the zealots.  I figure a clear relationship
> between the QPL and GPL is a good thing.  If it's enough to make the
> people calling for Troll Tech to use the GPL happy, cool.  If they're
> not, well there isn't anything more I could do then.

That's my point, these people won't be happy until TT GPLs Qt, and even then they
won't be happy (essentially b/c Qt is not gtk).  So why bother?

> In addition to the advantages of having the direct GPL compatibility that
> nobody in their right mind would contest, I can see other benefits for
> good PR for Troll Tech and for Free Software.

I think the QPL as drafted qualified as Free Software (and every reasonable person
has publicly confirmed this) and would provide lots of good PR.  As far as I can
tell, only one person and his followers object to the QPL, and, like I said, I think
they will not be satisfied no matter what TT does.

>  And being a little biased
> for a moment, something that clearly obviously related to the GPL if the
> resulting QPL is applied to Qt 1.42 (something I suggested they might
> consider and they didn't appear objectionable to) and the current KDE
> would be in Debian the day (after) it could be compiled and licenses were
> all compatible..  =>
>
> It'd be there if I had to compile the packages myself!  Of course on this
> machine that'd take TWO days, but hey.  =>
>
> > In short:  the only way to get a reasonble solution is for all parties to be
> > reasonable and for all parties to want a solution.  TT has done an excellent
> > job at letting people comment and has been very reasonable and flexible in its
> > proposals, and also clearly desires a solution.  The other side in this debate
> > have been nothing but unreasonable, unbending stakes in the cement, unwilling
> > to make even the smallest departure from their dogma, and since they appear to
> > want to see KDE die and Gnome succeed they do not want a solution, either.
> > While I wish it weren't so, that is the way I see it.
>
> A lot of us aren't on Troll's side (I don't consider myself to be) and I
> want a solution.  There seem to be hundreds of "sides" to this issue.
> It's not fair to any of us to say it's "us" vs. "them" because it just
> doesn't work that way.  Everybody has different hopes and goals here.

You are right, there are many different view points in the world.  But almost
everyone has endorsed the QPL and lauded TT for their spirit of compromise and
openness.  There is only, as far as I can tell, one viewpoint which hasn't (oh, and
those that take his viewpoint as commandments).

> Mine happen to be looking for the best solution for as many people as I
> can find it for.

Good luck :-) .

Regards,

Andreas Pour
pour@mieterra.com

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