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List:       kde-licensing
Subject:    Re: QT Designer _NOT_ under QPL.
From:       Steve Hutton <shutton () mediaone ! net>
Date:       2000-08-15 23:37:54
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On Tue, 15 Aug 2000, Peter S Galbraith wrote:
> 
> http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/license-list.html
> 
>     Since the QPL is incompatible with the GNU GPL, you cannot take a
>     GPL-covered program and Qt and link them together, no matter how.

Simply repeating this over and over won't make it true.  It's
_one_opinion_, and the law give no extra weight to the author
of a license when it comes time to interpret the license.  There's
no room for "what I really meant when I wrote that was..."

BTW, if someone takes my GPL'd code and links it with QT
without my permission, and then releases the entire source
for the resulting work under the GPL & QPL, how has my freedom,
or the freedom of the users of either piece of software been comprised?

I can view the second author's modifications to my work, 
and I can reuse them or derive from them if I like, even if
those modifications included changes to QT.  The users of
my software have the exact same right.

Nobody has comprimised any freedom, unless your reason
for choosing the GPL was:

"You may re-use this code as long as you make all my original
sources availble when you do so, and you must make the sources
to your additions available, AND, you must insure that anyone who
further derives from your derviation will not suffer through the horrible
inconvenience of having to distribute any portion of that work
through a PATCH(!)"

Is that what Free software is about these days?

Steve

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