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List:       kde-linux
Subject:    Qt/KDE licence issues [was Re: [kde-linux] What is small, square check box, at lower right hand of K
From:       Sean McGlynn <sean () tmiau ! com>
Date:       2003-03-31 19:50:28
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On Monday 31 March 2003 17:10, Derek Fountain wrote:
> > I don't really understand this argument. Trolltech exacts a fee for each
> > developer's seat. Now, if (say) IBM bought a few seats so a couple
> > developers could build and optimize KDE for distribution with AIX would
> > they need to pay Qt a fee for each AIX seat sold with KDE? Is that why
> > you say "they might be able to afford to pay  Trolltech, the end users
> > can't"? I wasn't aware of this.
>
> First, Trolltech don't sell developer seats, they sell named developer
> licenses. If IBM (say) want 10 licenses, they have to name the 10
> developers. If IBM then want to change 2 members of the team, they have to
> apply to Trolltech to have the names changed. Trolltech may or may not do
> that - there's small print, like "only once in any 6 month period".
>
> Second, if the guy who buys the hypothetical AIX box with KDE as the
> standard desktop wants to develop commercial desktop software - or in fact
> in house desktop software which isn't GPLed - he'll need a Qt developers
> license. IBM don't want to put their customers in that position, which is
> why they, and all the big UNIX vendors, favour GNOME. GNOME is built on a
> largely unrestricted library - gtk.

Hello Derek et al.,

I think some of the comments above are based on common misconceptions about 
the GPL. There is nothing to stop anyone from using the GPL'd X11 version of 
Qt to "develop" commercial applications. The only thing they cannot do is 
"distribute" those applications if they include the Qt library.

"Distribution" is kind of a grey area though. I believe that Richard 
Stallman, aka RMS, of the Free Software Foundation, has stated that 
"distribution" only refers to "public" distribution as far as the GPL is 
concerned. This means that commercial developers can create and "distribute" 
applications "within" their organisation, using the GPL'd version of Qt, 
without having to pay any licence fees to Trolltech and without GPLing their 
source code for the world to see. This might go against the "spirit" of the 
GPL'd Qt, but it does not, as far as I know, go against the copyright laws.

Also, an organisation that distributes a commerical operating system, such as 
IBM, Sun, HP etc., with their Unix variants and SuSE, Mandrake etc., with 
their Linux variants, could simply buy one commercial Qt licence, build the 
Qt library and distribute it with their OS. There are no per machine royalty 
fees and no per application restrictions. You or I could then use the GPL'd 
X11 to create a commercial application and sell it without releasing the 
code. The app would then be dynamically linked to the Qt library on the users 
machine and everything is above board and legal. The whole notion that anyone 
who develops an application using the GPL'd X11 libs "must" make the source 
code available to anyone and everyone is simple not true. Neither is the 
notion that anyone who wants to distribute their app under a non-GPL licence 
must also distribute their own version of the Qt library. Any version on the 
users machine will do (providing it was compiled in a way compatible to the 
apps that use it).

Now for the obligatory disclaimer that I should have stated before I started 
writing: "I Am Not A Lawyer!". These are just my own interpretations after 
having seen these same discussions on and off for many years now :-)

As for the reasons why Sun etc. chose Gnome instead of KDE, here are the 
three reasons that I have heard stated by one of the people involved in 
making the decision:

1) the perceived (but incorrect, IMHO :-) problem of the Qt licence 
situation, as you repeated in this thread.

2) the notion that the direction of Gnome could be manipulated by themselves 
(and others) via the Gnome Foundation; (something they would not have been 
able to do with KDE for many reasons, not least the Trolltech factor)

3) (and perhaps the most important from those developers involved in 
choosing) - Gnome and the underlying Gtk are written in C whereas KDE and the 
underlying Qt are written in C++. Most of the Sun etc. developers had been 
writing CDE and Motif software, in C, for many, many years. They are expert 
in C. To suddenly put all that to one side and start coding in a "foreign" 
language, like C++, for such a major project would have been extremely 
difficult, if not impossible, for them.

Anyway, just my two pennies worth. If anyone replies, please remove the
[was Re: ... ] stuff from the subject line, ta!

Cheers,
Sean
-- 
Sean McGlynn
sean@tmiau.com

It has been pointed out to me that a recent email sig of mine
may have caused offence to accordion players. For this I humbly apologise :-)
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