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List:       kde-licensing
Subject:    Re: QT Designer _NOT_ under QPL.
From:       Peter S Galbraith <GalbraithP () dfo-mpo ! gc ! ca>
Date:       2000-08-16 13:47:07
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Richard, the following summarizes a point of discussion on the
kde-licensing mailing list.  You can find the entire thread at:

  http://lists.kde.org/?t=96586745400005&w=2&r=1

Here goes:

mosfet <mosfet@mandrakesoft.com> wrote:

> If Debian could get it through it's head that it has no right nor legal
> basis to require free software developers to add explicit permission we
> would consider Debian a lot less biased.

Peter Galbraith (me) wrote that the legal basis for explicit
permission to link one own GPL code against Qt was provided by
the FSF:

> 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.

Steve Hutton wrote:
 
> 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..."

Joseph Carter wrote:

> This is the FSF's opinion.  It's also Debian's opinion.

Neil Stevens wrote:

> Richard Stallman apparently believes that the GPL, when applied software 
> written for Qt, does include implied permission to link to Qt.  I doubt 
> the FSF's official view strays far from Stallman's view.
> 
> http://www.debian.org/Lists-Archives/debian-legal-0006/msg00062.html

In the above referenced message, Konrad Rosenbaum asked RMS:

:    Debian seems to state that it might be a violation of plain, unmodified
:    GPL to link against Qt.

and RMS replied :

: That is true.  However, if the authors of the program clearly intended
: it to be linked against Qt, I would say they have given some kind of
: implicit permission for people to do that. 

This gives us back full circle.  Richard Stallman says one thing
(that implicit permission is okay), yet the FSF web site says
another.  Richard, please take a stand on this issue more way or
another and clarify the FSF web site (or come up with GPL V3!).

What is the position of the FSF in regards to KDE code using the
unmodified GPL and expecting others to redistribute the code
linking to Qt?  Do they have to provide explicit permission in
the license or not?

Sorry to drag you into this...

-- 
Peter Galbraith <GalbraithP@dfo-mpo.gc.ca>

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