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List:       kde-licensing
Subject:    Debian FUD and whining
From:       mosfet <mosfet () mandrakesoft ! com>
Date:       2000-06-18 14:30:40
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Okay, I'm now convinced Debian (specifically Joe Carter) are not being
legitimate in their licensing complaints and are now just being
malicious.

First of all, KDE is not illegal. As I mentioned on the kde@kde.org
thread, US and German law both have provisions for something called
"intent". This was also noted by a German user. No Debian, FSF, or other
extremist have been able to come up with a response to this. According
to US law, for our own code linking KDE applications like those in
kdebase, etc... to Qt *is* legal. It is clearly intented that you link
to Qt by the application's copyright holder, and it is necessary to run
the program (which the user, at least in the US, has the right to do).
Thus we don't have to add anything to our licensing saying you can link
- and most of us won't. Saying that's illegal is a *lie*. Continuing the
FUD saying it is is a *lie*.

The second issue is if we can use KGhostview in kdeutils. This includes
code copyrighted by a third party. Ironically, this may be a legit
complaint but it's never what Debian people complain about because it's
only one application and makes it much less of an issue to leverage
against the KDE project :( Either way, I would like to hear from the
actual copyright holders about it rather than self appointed evangelists
who claim were doing illegal things even when we are not.

In any case, if you have a problem with KGhostview attack that. The
linking of all our code to Qt without license provisions is perfectly
legal. It's clear some of the Debian extremists don't like it and that's
okay. But a) none of the people complaining are even the copyright
holders of any of the code b) it's perfectly legal for us to use the GPL
on our own code without any additions. If you feel this weakens the GPL
and want to go into jihad mode that's fine, but it is all perfectly
legal and claiming otherwise I now consider deliberate libel as well. 

-- 
Daniel M. Duley - Unix developer & sys admin.
http://www.mosfet.org - The place for KDE development news.
mosfet@mandrakesoft.com
mosfet@kde.org

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