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List:       kde-licensing
Subject:    Re: A more serious QPL-1.0 problem
From:       Raul Miller <rdm () test ! legislate ! com>
Date:       1999-03-13 16:24:41
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> |    b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in
> |    whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any
> |    part thereof, to be licensed AS A WHOLE at no charge to all third
> |    parties under the terms of THIS LICENSE.

Adam J. Richter <adam@yggdrasil.com> wrote:
>  This means that every piece of a derivative work that comingles
> GPL'ed material must be covered by copying conditions that grant the
> same permissions of the GPL or a superset of the GPL's permissions
> (i.e., puts the same restrictions on, or a subset of the GPL's
> restrictions). QPL-1.0 fails this requirement, because QPL'ed material
> has additional restrictions beyond the GPL, such as the right to
> distribute a modified version that integrates material Troll Tech
> cannot distribute in their proprietary version.

Sure.  

But if that gets fixed there's no need to strip out the part of the Qt
license which says that the program must be distributed under terms
which .. hmm.. oh, I see:

section 3b, because it grants "the initial developer" [developers?] the
right to distribute the modified copy -- even if they didn't receive a
copy -- implicitly does the same thing as section 6c.

Which conflicts with the GPL.

And, even without knowing the philosophy behind any changes to the GPL
which would show up in GPL 3.0, I can't see it having this kind of 
language -- because:

(1) Is the initial developer someone who submitted a patch?  [Probably
not.]

(2) Is the initial developer someone who wrote the first line of code?
[Maybe, but legally this is going to be very difficult to prove.]

(3) Is the initial developer the first person who releases a copy of
the program "to the general public"?  [Probably, but that means the
initial developer doesn't really need to do any development, nor even be
a copyright holder -- and it doesn't define "the general public".]

(4) Legally, how would you go about showing that you're the initial
developer... ?

[I think that the language is trying to capture the idea of the original
copyright holder, in such a way that it would apply even if copyright
has been transfered to someone else.  Then again, what happens when you
arrange to transfer your "initial developer" status to someone else?]

-- 
Raul

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