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List:       kde-licensing
Subject:    Re: RMS,Debian and KDE
From:       "Darren O. Benham" <gecko () debian ! org>
Date:       2000-06-19 20:43:48
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Joseph,

Why don't you substantiate that DEBIAN's problem (and not YOUR problem) is
with "the number of KDE proponents who have said...".  The only official
Debian statement that I can find is the original one that Debian made when
the decision to not ship KDE was made
(http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=1998-10-08-002-10-OP)

While this was directed at KDE1/QT1, the core issue of QPL !compatible with
GPL is still true and I don't recall any other official statement coming
from either a GR or Project Leader.

On Mon, Jun 19, 2000 at 11:39:27AM -0700, Joseph Carter wrote:
> 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 even if I could find it it'd be sadly out of date this much later.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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