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List:       kde-licensing
Subject:    Re: QT Designer _NOT_ under QPL.
From:       Joseph Carter <knghtbrd () debian ! org>
Date:       2000-08-20 22:59:54
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On Fri, Aug 18, 2000 at 03:29:02PM -0500, mosfet wrote:
> Troll is perfectly within bounds by using an unmodified GPL and you know
> it. Despite your personal feelings there is nothing wrong at all with
> what they are doing. Asking a company to use a modified license to link
> to their own software without any legal basis is arrogant, Debian
> dropping the app because of it is insane.
> 
> It just goes to show Debian is using speculation and personal opinion
> about Troll Tech's intent (without actually knowing anyone in the
> company) instead of legal backing to make their decisions about what to
> carry and what not. Great policy, there.

o/~ Trollin', trollin', trollin', keep this thread a-rollin'!  o/~  (hmm,
I gotta finish that one if someone else hasn't already filked it..)

The funny thing is, this is exactly what Debian REFUSES to do.  We will
not as an organization assume that Troll Tech intended for everything to
be compatible if the license doesn't say so.  Any time you try to
interpret implicit licensing terms you are forced to assume you know what
is intended.  That's a bad practice, even if it might be safe to do in
this one case.

I will be the first to admit that a lot of people in Debian have their
opinions of the licensing and the intent (both of the licensing itself and
the people behind it..)  This seldom has any bearing whatsoever on what
Debian does with the software.


Take another obvious example, qmail.  DJB is possibly more of an ass about
licensing than any single person in KDE (possibly excepting yourself
naturally (there's the random insult to perpetuate the thread..)) and
although the solid consensus of Debian is that he's a complete prick and
does things so completely wrong just to annoy everybody, because there is
one person out there who cared enough to upload the package, we have
qmail-src (the only way we can distribute qmail) in non-free.  Someone
else was at last check attempting to get permission to include qmail in
Debian package policy compliant locations (Debian's policy states that
binaries do NOT belong in /var, as per the FHS, but doing so violates
DJB's pathological binary distribution license..) and including symlinks
to /var for proper compatibility with other qmail-using packages.

To this I say lot's of luck to him because I believe DJB's intent is
clear.  But if he can get a clear statement from DJB that Debian is
permitted to do it (still in non-free because the rest of the distribution
terms still fail the DFSG, but something like that with KDE would have had
it in main a year and a half ago...  It would have needed to been either a
single message from all of the KDE developers or at least all of the major
ones and issues such as borrowed code and borrowed applications would
remain, but they'd have been much easier to work out.  flash forward 22
months now and the number of people willing to stick their necks out for
KDE is seriously on the decline.)


> > > Plus, do you think that what RMS likes and dislikes affects if he wants
> > > to fix the GPL so it can be legally binding in libraries? I certainly
> > > hope not. If he is then were all in trouble.
> > 
> > I'm sure he's above it too.  I was simply saying it's not to
> > going help Troll establish a collaboration with him by doing
> > this.
> 
> Your not in a position to say this either way.

But he is in a position to say that people aren't very inclined to want to
help you when you keep attacking them.  After receiving literally
thousands of pieces of hate mail from people (KDE supporters and
detractors alike) for trying to help see KDE get back into Debian even
though I didn't use it myself, I sure don't feel terribly inclined to
offer my help again.  It won't change the important things anyway.  KDE
has yet to even admit that maybe it needs to try and track down the
authors of ghostscript to find out if they're cool with kghostscript and
ask them to please put that in writing some place.

The only people who feasably could still have any bearing on this issue is
Troll Tech.  And it really isn't or shouldn't have to be their concern.
If they do something about it, it certainly would put KDE in main.  And
the problem Debian has is clearly not with Qt - that's in main now, it's
with KDE which we believe we cannot distribute.  Someone did point out
that with Qt in main it could be construed that the unofficial KDE debs
revkrusty distributes CAN be (and this is probably true, I accept it as so
based on a reading of the last paragraph of GPL §2(b)), but we can't.

Since KDE will do absolutely nothing about this, the only people who can
are the people at Troll Tech and those who still hold even the slightest
bit of hope this will ever be resolved should direct that hope in their
direction.  It all looks pretty damned dismal from my seat.

-- 
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

<Knghtbrd> CVS/Entries had the line I needed to "alter"
<Mercury> Knghtbrd: Was about to mention such.. <G>
<Mercury> Knghtbrd: Now, ready to commit?
<Knghtbrd> wish me luck
<Knghtbrd> Mercury: it's committed
<Knghtbrd> Mercury: and after all that, I should be too.

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