From kde-licensing Wed Jul 05 22:19:19 2000 From: Kevin Forge Date: Wed, 05 Jul 2000 22:19:19 +0000 To: kde-licensing Subject: Re: Major licensing issue alarm... X-MARC-Message: https://marc.info/?l=kde-licensing&m=96283563927623 Neil Stevens wrote: > > On Wed, 05 Jul 2000, Bill Soudan wrote: > > >From Zack Brown's most recent Kernel Traffic: > > > > http://kt.linuxcare.com/kernel-traffic/kt20000703_74.epl > > > > 'Elsewhere, Alan also remarked, "Actually folks get sued for not following > > copyrights. I've been talking to someone recently who plans to solve the > > KDE gpl/nongpl issue by issuing cease and desist orders to KDE. Vendors > > also take it seriously. Some of them anyway"' > > Well, if KDE links GPL code to Qt, then the copyright holders could sue. > Then a court could decide whose interpretation of the GPL version 2 is > legally binding. > > Does anything in KDE contain GPL code taken from other projects that don't > themselves link to Qt? Yes. I have herd of as many as 5 apps. The only ones I can name for sure are kfloppy and kghostview. In all likelihood there are others. I don't see how such a stop order will solve anything however. KDE would simply drop the app in question and then code around the gap if needed. All without even admitting liability. You see KDE has a tradition of dropping code at the request of the author regardless of legal or technical problems. I.e. Kimp was never distributed mostly because the Gimp people didn't approve. If it's an important app they may code around the loss.