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List:       kde-licensing
Subject:    Re: Liscencing Issue - Taking Action
From:       Joseph Carter <knghtbrd () debian ! org>
Date:       2000-06-11 20:12:46
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On Sun, Jun 18, 2000 at 06:08:43PM +1000, Don Sanders wrote:
> Hello Joseph,
> 
> If TT could be convinced to release the inline functions defined in QT header 
> files under the GPL (or a freer license), would that resolve the legal 
> situation in your view? Would that be enough to satisfy Debian as a whole?

They've said they wouldn't do that.  According to our best guess, it also
wouldn't work.  But that's not going to stop anyone from insisting that's
all Troll had to do.

If Troll wants to muck around with licenses more, they might as well just
make the QPL compatible since that's the intent of such a modification to
the header license.  Changing the header license is going to leave a lot
of people believing that Troll and KDE are trying to circumvent the GPL,
myself included.

If it's worth doing, it's worth doing right.  Especially since the changes
I proposed aren't exactly going to damage Troll's profits.


> If the inline functions are not enough could you please define exactly what 
> portions of the source code have to be freer?

The GPL says that the entire work needs to be available under its terms in
order to distribute a binary.  So far as we can tell, this would include a
library such as Qt.

UNLESS of course we consider Qt a system library, then binaries may be
distributed as long as we don't distribute them together.  (It's our
opinion that this would mean in the same distribution/CD..)


> I will be in touch with some TT people in a couple of weeks so I can ask them 
> about this in person, (but only if this really is the critical issue).

If you're actually serious about trying to resolve the issue, I'll give
the QPL and GPL one more pass under the microscope and apply a large
hammer to it (my standard software repair method) so it works.  But if
you're not dead serious about trying to get them to adopt a few reasonable
changes, it's really not worth my time - I have much larger projects with
a much higher chance of success that need every bit of time I can spare.

Still, I believe the problems which plague KDE in most people's minds have
gone on long enough.  For the most part there are no weekly flamewars
anymore, they're more like 4-6 monthly and they're a fraction of what they
were before.  Just about everyone has their opinion now and most people
aren't interested in arguing about it anymore.  I want this resolved if
nothing else so I don't have to hear about it anymore.

-- 
Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@debian.org>               GnuPG key 1024D/DCF9DAB3
Debian GNU/Linux (http://www.debian.org/)         20F6 2261 F185 7A3E 79FC
The QuakeForge Project (http://quakeforge.net/)   44F9 8FF7 D7A3 DCF9 DAB3

<Mercury> Cas can kiss my fuzzy feline ass... (=:]

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