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List:       kmail-devel
Subject:    [licenses] Qt exception
From:       Marc Mutz <mutz () kde ! org>
Date:       2003-02-01 10:13:43
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Hi!

Sorry to bother you with politics ;-)

After discussion with Cornelius, I've changed the license of all the 
fies that I own all the copyright in in KMail and libkdenetwork to 
GPLv2 with Qt exception. This reads:

/*  -*- c++ -*-
    identitymanager.cpp

    This file is part of KMail, the KDE mail client.
    Copyright (c) 2002 Marc Mutz <mutz@kde.org>

    KMail is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
    under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2, as
    published by the Free Software Foundation.

    KMail is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
    WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
    MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the GNU
    General Public License for more details.

    You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
    along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software
    Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA  02111-1307  
USA

    In addition, as a special exception, the copyright holders give
    permission to link the code of this program with any edition of
    the Qt library by Trolltech AS, Norway (or with modified versions
    of Qt that use the same license as Qt), and distribute linked
    combinations including the two.  You must obey the GNU General
    Public License in all respects for all of the code used other than
    Qt.  If you modify this file, you may extend this exception to
    your version of the file, but you are not obligated to do so.  If
    you do not wish to do so, delete this exception statement from
    your version.
*/

<disclaimer>
Cornelius asked to make libkdenetwork even LGPL, but I don't intent to 
do that for the files I own copyright in right now, so we seemed to 
agree on making it GPL with Qt exception
</disclaimer>

This text is based on input of several people and the GPL FAQ.
It's main features are:

- It's GPL
- It's not "or any later option"
- It properly identifies what project this file belongs to.
- It lists individual copyright holders, not fishy "the kmail authors"
- It includes the warranty disclaimer.
- It allows to link against any (also non-free) edition of Qt, without 
releasing the code user of the requirements of the GPL (except for Qt).

This license change allows KMail to be built against Qt editions for Mac 
and Windows. One could argue that for KDE apps and libs, Qt is as 
fundamental as the libc or the kernel and thus Qt didn't fall under the 
provisions of the GPL anyway, but this text removes any doubt about the 
status of Qt.

It also has the advantage (over making it LGPL) that it still protects 
the code against proprietary usages, since the GPL exception only holds 
for Qt and Qt alone, requiring users of the code to comply with the GPL 
in every other respect.

Not that KMail would be readily ported to Windows or Mac or Qtopia, but 
KOrganizier has been, and if it starts using parts of libkdenetwork, 
those parts need to be built against non-free Qt versions. Thus the 
change _now_.

So I ask everyone that has contributed to KMail over the time[1] to give 
his or her permission for the license change. Esp. the current active 
developers, important "lost" ones and the Aegypten and Kroupware 
people. Please answer with signed mail if at all possible to make it at 
least a little bit official.

I don't write to all people in the about box (yet), b/c I think that the 
vast majority of code is covered by copyrights from currently active 
people plus Stefan Taferner plus Michael Haeckel. If we have the 
permission of all those people, we can seek after other individuals 
(esp. Espen, Kurt, Sven) after identifying what their contributions are 
and either obtain the permission from them or reimplement the code they 
have copyright in from scratch.

A related question is whether or not we want to have our rights assigned 
to KDE e.V. to the largest possible extend permitted by local law to 
prevent this chaos in the future. I'd say yes. Details if we decide to 
want that in principle.

I'll start:

I hereby give the permission to re-license all my contributions to KMail 
and libkdenetwork under the license agreement shown above.
I'd be willing to assign all rights I have in the code to KDE e.V. to 
the largest extend possible under German law.
The second sentence is not yet binding.

Marc

[1] and whose code is still around, of course...

-- 
It takes 5 minutes to create [a OpenPGP key].
Of course it takes a bit more time to get it signed...
                                                 -- David Faure
[Attachment #3 (application/pgp-signature)]
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