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List:       kde-licensing
Subject:    Re: RMS,Debian and KDE
From:       Joseph Carter <knghtbrd () debian ! org>
Date:       2000-06-19 18:39:27
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On Mon, Jun 19, 2000 at 04:53:03PM +0200, Marco Zühlke wrote:
> I found that comment from RMS about KDE and QT
> (pro KDE on using QT implicit) see:
> 
> http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-legal-0006/msg00062.html

Debian's problem with this is the number of KDE proponents who have said
quite plainly that no permission is required, implicit or otherwise.
Because of this, and because of blatant GPL violations made under the same
arguments citing KDE as proof that they can supposedly legally get away
with it, a lot of people feel that Debian accepting implicit permission is
going to be viewed as "admitting" that those few loud people claiming
there to be no license problems whatsoever with KDE were supposedly right.
They don't want this perception of Debian.  (And this isn't just Debian
developers I'm talking about either.)

The other aspect is that there is a lot of 3rd party GPL'ed code in KDE.
The obvious examples such as kmidi and kghostscript are there, but there
are also things like kfloppy and other programs which include code not
written for KDE, but used anyway.  I had a list some two years ago, but
even if I could find it it'd be sadly out of date this much later.
Because of this, without a real serious code audit, we really don't know
what has implicit permission and doesn't.


These two factors are the primary reasons Debian is so insistant on
explicit permission.  If it's already implicit, that shouldn't be too hard
unless people are against it.  Seems people are against it though, which
seems to indicate it's not all that implicit..


> So I (IMHO) think KDE has only to clear the situation with
>  3rd party stuff (only some programs may be affected).

This is extremely important, yes.  It is by far the biggest problem.  It's
not the only one, but it id the biggest.

-- 
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

<Culus> OH MY GOD NOT A RANDOM QUOTE GENERATOR
<netgod> surely you didnt think that was static? how lame would that be? 
         :-)

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