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List:       kde-licensing
Subject:    Re: The problem is not Qt
From:       Joseph Carter <knghtbrd () debian ! org>
Date:       1999-10-30 5:40:17
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On Fri, Oct 29, 1999 at 12:53:57AM -0500, Pedro Fernando Giffuni wrote:
> Thanks for taking the time to reply, I'm sure this list is full of
> people making weird suggestions ;-).

And where there's licenses, flamewars aren't far behind...


> Actually I agree with them: I believe in people making money out from
> their work. It's actually nice from them to let us use it freely and
> read the sources. When I started with computers, software was neither
> free (well actually it was illegal but free ;-) and few people knew what
> source code even was. If people write good code and make it available
> for free, even due to selfish purposes, it's a great advance.

I've never disputed that---they have every right to try to make whatever
profit they can from their software.  It's actually something I support; I
don't think the idea of just selling support as the primary income source
for software is going to cut it forever.

I'm very interested in watching value-added free software with a price
tag.  Stuff that works for everybody but has a few extra features or
abilities the average person doesn't need (but may want anyway) for a
reasonable fee.


Most people don't believe the GPL can do that--and I'll agree the GPL
tries to make it difficulat--but when you're the Copyright holder the
GPL's restrictions don't apply to you.  The way it ends up working is that
any substantial change to the covered work not made by the Copyright
holder (in the case of Qt that'd be the Trolls) must have its Copyright
signed over to the Copyright holder or it can't go in.  That is if the
Copyright holder wants to include the changes at all---they don't have to,
after all.

A good parallel is GNU emacs, which the FSF has required signing over of
Copyright for major changes.  It's not an attempt to get out of giving
credit to the people who wrote it, it's just an attempt to make sure that
the FSF and only the FSF will be responsible for deciding what license
terms, etc, emacs is released under.  If you trust the FSF, you probably
have no problems with this.  If you don't, well the GPL does allow you to
distribute your changes seperately in a GPL only version.


Qt is unique though.  It's software that Troll Tech is selling under a
very commercial-style source license, but giving away free.  This is
perfectly acceptable IMO (and I get flamed regularly for saying so.)
Could they GPL it for the free license and still sell it?  Sure, but if
they do they have to be willing to allow some changes to be floating
around they simply can't touch because they couldn't give them away under
a closed license.  I think the Trolls are a little worried about doing
that, for good reasons.

Of course, some people who would not be willing to sign over the Copyright
would possibly still be willing to let Troll Tech do whatever they want
with the code, but that just gets more complicated.

My conclusion is that the GPL could work for Qt but it'd be a bit of a
risk for Troll Tech that might be safe to consider when tensions die down
a bit, but it probably will be kinda difficult for them until then.
Problem is it's been almost a year since the first hints of Qt and Open
Source licensing started circulating and tensions haven't died down YET!

And then there's Richard Stallman...  Sometimes I wish he'd leave well
enough alone, but I guess he wouldn't be Richard if he would.  =p


> > KDE2 is Artistic licensed.  I personally don't like the Artistic license,
> > it's not very well written as licenses go, but it is clearly a free
> > license and compatible with the QPL.  Some third party programs may be GPL
> > and they'll have to deal with the GPL compatibility issue in that case.  I
> > don't believe there is any GPL code left in KDE.  If someone finds some
> > they can of course bring it to this list's attention and it'll be dealt
> > with I'm sure.
> > 
> WOW, that was a brave (surely difficult) decision. Some people are
> really rude when something different than the GPL, even if it's
> opensource, is mentioned. BTW I don't understand why these people would
> want to use the X Window System.

X is under a license which allows you to add your own conditions in
addition to those already preasent.  This means you could literally add
the entire GPL to the top and since none of the existing conditions
conflict you have put the thing literally under the GPL.  Richard wanted
the same kind of thing to be possible with the QPL.  Troll Tech was
annoyed at the suggestion (so was I, but my opinions don't really matter
other than in case anyone actually gives a rip..)

I think Artistic/GPL would have been a better idea for KDE, but then again
people would still be adding GPL only parts which conflict with the QPL.
The Trolls could fix that real quick, but so far the only reason to do so
people have offered is to make GPL proponents happy.  If they don't care
whether or not the GPL proponents are happy, and there's some measure of
difficulty (any change is difficult simply because it is change--people
tend to like things to stay as they are) in changing, why change?  Granted
it would greatly simplify the license issue, but so did putting KDE under
Artistic license for the most part.


> > When KDE2 is released the license issues should be non-existant.
> > 
> The license change, for something less restricted, will probably attract
> new coders: some will contribute and some won't (they will have to buy
> Qt though :-). Even if some people don't contribute I think we all win. 

BSD people in particular are happier with it.  They like licenses that
allow them to do whatever with it because they feel they should be able to
do whatever and the GPL prevents many things from becoming default parts
of the BSDs..  (BSDi couldn't use them for example)


> The GGI Project, for example, decided to move to a BSD-like license
> because their code wasn't being adopted by anyone. My congratulations to
> the KDE team for doing the right thing !

I like the 3 clause BSD license.  And the X/MIT license (2 clause BSDish.)
I also like the GPL.  I believe each has a place, depending on what you
want to accomplish.  The LGPL has its limits...  I'd rather see something
like the LGPL that allows linking with anything that is Open Source (since
that is no longer and can not be a TM or an R, the license had better
define Open Source!), just not non-free software..

I was hoping to write such a license in the QPL, but I never really
managed to find the right words to put in the right places to make it
happen and then Trolls' lawyers got a hold of it and did the lawyer thing
so even I don't know what it says anymore (that's not true--I do actually
know what it says) and it just didn't work out as a license useful in more
than a specific type of situation, and possibly not the most optimal
solution in those cases.

Durring the time I was under a lot of stress and getting massive amounts
of email (hundreds a day) on the subject of the QPL.  I suspect most of
them came from a lot of the same people.  Most of them were not polite.
I've been called everything in the book and a few things that aren't in
the book for even trying to help---regardless of what I was doing.  I only
get a few of those a week now.  And those get caught by rc.morons in my
.procmail directory.  =D

I'd still like to see such a license and I'd like to see Qt under it.  Now
that I can think clearly enough to write it, I can't spare the time from
my studies to work on it.  Too bad too, I think a lot of people would find
it very nifty, even if the Trolls thought it was too much trouble.  A
number of people have approached me about such a license over the past
many moons, so it'd still be worth writing if I could find the time or
some reasonably intelligent people willing to help work on it.  I don't
want to even bug the Trolls to gauge interest until I've got something
close to finished.



(BTW, the only reason I bring it up at all is that Corel seems to be stuck
with a few cases that they want to use GPL software with Qt and some of
the authors are being stubborn about no special GPL exceptions..  While I
may not agree with everything Corel is doing or their methods of doing it,
it really sucks to see commercial interest in free software being strained
by politics, bickering, and general bullshit withing the free software
movement..

If commercial interests are shaking up the status quo, it only gives us
MORE opportunities to convince people that free software is nifty.  No
stupid Open this and Open that buzzwords, just a really nifty idea that
makes some of the greatest software there is available to anyone for free
and gives commercial vendors reason to stay on their toes if they want to
sell something that neither meets our standards nor offers the source code
for people to bring it up to those standards..  Isn't that the whole point
of what many of us are doing here---all politics and morality discussions
aside?)

-- 
- Joseph Carter         GnuPG public key:   1024D/DCF9DAB3, 2048g/3F9C2A43
- knghtbrd@debian.org   20F6 2261 F185 7A3E 79FC  44F9 8FF7 D7A3 DCF9 DAB3
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject: Bug#42432: debian-policy: Proposal for CTV for Draft for Proof of
Concept for Draft for Proposal for Proposal for CTV for a CTV to decide on
a proposal for a CTV for the CTV on whether or not we shoud have a CTV on
the /usr/doc to /usr/share/doc transition now, or later.
        -- Ed Lang


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