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List:       kde-licensing
Subject:    Re: New QPL online
From:       Andreas Pour <pour () mieterra ! com>
Date:       1999-03-13 20:26:55
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"Sergey I. Panov" wrote:

> Andreas Pour,
>
> > If you are worried about 6(c), I am 100% confident that the KDE people do not
> > mind showing their source code to TT.  And I don't see how doing so conflicts
> > with the GPL license on some KDE code.
>
>  Yes, but GPL does not prevent you to modify/extend software for you
> personal/corporate use, and does not infringe on your privacy.

See below, I think this is not really any different.

>  Just imagine the following situation. Some US company takes one of
> the KDE programms and extends it by adding strong encryption of their
> own design for their internal use. According to Qt license, they have
> to provide source code of their encryption code to TT.

And according to the GPL they cannot prevent their employees, or anyone else they
distribute it to, from redistributing it to anyone they want.  So, if you want
"secret" software, you cannot use GPL code, either!

> It is not only
> against the stupid US anti-encryption law,

AFAIK, everyone agrees that a contractual provision that is illegal is
unenforceable.  Plus, you must really think that Troll Tech is malicious if you
think they would try to force someone to break export laws!

> but it is also infringes on
> that company internal corparate secrets and security.

Like I said, you cannot use GPL code if you care about security (in terms of noone
else being able to see the source code).  If Company X takes GPL code, modifies it
and distributes it internally, that is still a distribution, and under the GPL
they have to make the source code available to their employees and they are not
allowed to restrict their employees from distributing the source code to anyone
else -- if they try, they will violate the GPL.

> Yes, they can
> acquire commercial version of Qt(and it is probably fare), but that
> that contradicts to the GPL licence of the original KDE program they
> have modified.

See, so in this sense Qt is better than GPL, b/c a company that is very worried
about security has a way to solve the problem, but with the GPL there is no way
(well, you can try to ask the initial author for consent . . . ).

Regards,

Andreas Pour
pour@mieterra.com
speaking as a layperson

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