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List:       kde-licensing
Subject:    Re: RMS,Debian and KDE
From:       Joseph Carter <knghtbrd () debian ! org>
Date:       2000-06-20 7:49:34
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On Mon, Jun 19, 2000 at 01:43:48PM -0700, Darren O. Benham wrote:
> 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)

If the consensus of debian-legal is that we can't accept implicit
permission and this is one of the agreed-upon reasons, I think you or
anyone else trying to distance Debian from that opinion is completely
ingenuine.  As long as the explicit permission is not there, -legal is
going to shoot it down again and again, citing that as one of the reasons.

I'm not going to maintain a double standard between Debian's stated
opinion and Debian's actual opinion.  Official or not, KDE proponents who
claim there is no GPL/QPL compatibility issue and that no permission is
needed _IS_ a factor and _WILL_ keep KDE out of Debian.  And that's not
even my decision - I stayed out of that discussion.


> 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.

So I need official permission from Wichert to post the consensus of a
Debian list to another list?  Give me a break.  Just because it wasn't
stamped by Wichert and posted by the project secretary (which would be you
wouldn't it?) doesn't mean it ain't so.

For the wholly KDE-written components, implicit permission seems to be
enough.  The problems -legal came up with are 3rd party code in KDE and
that accepting implicit permission would look like we were agreeing no
permission is necessary (or possibly worse, actually accepting the license
with no permission implicit or otherwise since the claim that no
permission is necessary and therefore will not be provided could be
inferred to be a denial of the implicit permission as well..)

In short, Debian's DEVELOPERS came to the conclusion that implicit
permission won't work for us and that 3rd party code is a problem.
Debian's officers are free to support or disagree with that conclusion,
but it is the conclusion reached by the people who figure out whether or
not stuff can legally go into Debian or not.


If I have totally misunderstood your message, chalk my reply up to being
in a really, really bad mood.

-- 
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

Steal this tagline.  I did.

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