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List:       kde-licensing
Subject:    Re: A more serious QPL-1.0 problem
From:       "Adam J. Richter" <adam () yggdrasil ! com>
Date:       1999-03-13 9:46:29
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Andreas Pour <pour@mieterra.com> wrote
>I have a different read on this provision:
>
>"Adam J. Richter" wrote:
>
>>         I think a more serious GPL incompatibility of QPL-1.0 is
>> QPL section 3b (my emphasis added):
[...]

	I think Andreas meant that he had "a different read" on
the QPL-QPL incompatibility that I discussed later, not on GPL-QPL
incompatibility.

	The G-Q stuff is about why KDE is illegal.

	The Q-Q stuff is somewhat less immediate, and is more about
why I personally would not call QPL "free software" and why I do not
think accomodations should be made for QPL-1.0 until it is slightly
modified.  Still, I will comment on Andreas's remarks, although I
probably will not have time to respond more, and readers who are in a
hurry can probably skip the rest of this article.


>>         Let's say that the Open Software Foundation decides to put
>> Motif under the QPL with the Open Software Foundation designated as
>> the initial developer.  Now let's say I want to produce a derivative
>> work that is the Qt Library with the Motif Mrm resource management
>> code merged in.  The result would be a derivative work of both Motif
>> and Qt.  Satisfying all of the copying conditions for distributing
>> this code would require satisfying the QPL's of both OSF and Troll:
>>
>>         Troll's QPL requires that OSF grant permission for this work
>>         to be distributed under any future Troll "license(s)", which
>>         OSF's QPL does not do.  Distributing the combined work is
>>         therefore an infringement of Troll's copyright.
>
>I think it speaks in terms of "your" modifications to Qt source code.

	That is an amusing point!  Theoretically, one could interpret
QPL-1.0 as giving no right to distribute modifications to anyone but
the author of those modifications (because they're not "'your'
modifications"), even if they have the author's permission.  I'm sure
you'll agree that that was not the intention, and I think a judge
would too, but you sure have found something in QPL that should be
clarified.

[...]
>But you are right that you cannot blend them together and redistribute.   What
>you could do is [essentially make each side a separate library].

	You have a point in that QPL-1.0 section 6 offers different,
more liberal terms when a derivative work is produced by just linking
the QPL'ed work as a library, like the LGPL and unlike the GPL.

	Still, I believe that enough contribution to free software
projects involves at least a little comingling of source that the
developer is not the owner of that it would throw a monkey wrench into
software sharing if the QPL were widely used.  In the hypothetical
Qt+Mrm example, it would be much easier to write the large amount of
Mrm glue by adapting examples from existing Xm programs.  A better
example might be trying to integrate the Harmony's thread-safe
signal/slot system (which I understand did not originate in Harmony)
into Qt.

	The problem is not an artifact of "object oriented" systems
either.  Consider, for example, integrating a font rendering algorithm
into an X server.  If both the server and algorithm were QPL'ed code
that you were not the owner of, you would pay a big performance penalty
in comparison to an integration not limited by such copying conditions.

	So, although you do have a good idea about combining QPL'ed
software in a hypothetical QPL world, I still think that wide adoption
of QPL would retard free software development far more than it would
help it by any perceived benefits of using copyright laws to keep
patches separate.

Adam J. Richter     __     ______________   4880 Stevens Creek Blvd, Suite 104
adam@yggdrasil.com     \ /                  San Jose, California 95129-1034
+1 408 261-6630         | g g d r a s i l   United States of America
fax +1 408 261-6631      "Free Software For The Rest Of Us."

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