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List:       koffice
Subject:    I know this is annoying, but
From:       Claus Wilke <claus.wilke () gmx ! net>
Date:       1999-10-29 10:01:49
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regarding the recent thread on slashdot 
( http://slashdot.org/articles/99/10/28/0847235.shtml )
I just have to ask this question:

According to the koffice web-site, and in agreement with what I found when
I just checked some koffice files, the whole of Koffice is released under
the GPL. As you all know, there are people who object about linking a
GPL-Program and a QPL-Program (Qt) together, but anyway, this is not the purpose of
my mail (I personally think it is alright, if RMS himself links (or at
least offers the option to link) emacs against motif).

But I think there is a much more important problem with the GPL that you
should seriously consider, and not just disregard as "the boring legal
stuff". If you release KDE under the GPL, as opposed to, e.g., the LGPL, you
prohibit *any* commercial plugins to your software. And I think this is something
you should consider very carefully, and use the GPL only if you really want
to do this. As koffice, as far as I can see, turns more and more into a
collection of useful libs that can interact with each other and are open to all
sorts of plugins, it is, at least from my point of view, a serious drawback
if it is not possible to write some commercial plugin to do whatever is
currently not provided by free software.

By the way, this of course applies also to the whole of KDE [konqueror,
e.g., is GPL, whereas kicker is artistic, and kparts is nothing :-) ]. If
there are any basic libraries that are GPLed, then KDE will *never* be a viable
Desktop for commercial software, and companies that want to develop some
proprietary stuff would move somewhere else. This is the reason why the
GNOME-Project, by the way, uses the LGPL for most of their stuff, as far as I know
(I haven't really checked this, but GTK, for example, is LGPL). It is no
(legal) problem to link most of the gnome stuff to mozilla, for example, but
you could not do this with koffice in its current state.

And then, a liscense like the LGPL would of course remove the problem with
the QPL.

For these reason, I think you should seriously consider sorting this out
before it is too late (e.g. before the Krash release), if you haven't chosen
the GPL because you are against any other form of "less" (in RMS sence) free
software whatsoever. But if you were, you would probably not have chosen Qt
in the first place.

Otherwise, KDE might become the desktop of the GPL-zealots that many think
gnome is currently (which it is not if they really use the LGPL).

Any opinions, objections?

Best wishes,
  Claus



P.S. sorry if there is a Reply-To, I am writing from the GMX web mailer
and have no control on that.   







 

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