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List:       kde-licensing
Subject:    Re: The problem is not Qt
From:       Joseph Carter <knghtbrd () debian ! org>
Date:       1999-11-01 22:53:51
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On Mon, Nov 01, 1999 at 10:17:08AM -0800, David Johnson wrote:
> > (BTW, the only reason I bring it up at all is that Corel seems to be stuck
> > with a few cases that they want to use GPL software with Qt and some of
> > the authors are being stubborn about no special GPL exceptions..  While I
> > may not agree with everything Corel is doing or their methods of doing it,
> > it really sucks to see commercial interest in free software being strained
> > by politics, bickering, and general bullshit withing the free software
> > movement..
> 
> I do believe that Corel has a couple of "outs" with regards to the Qt.
> The first being that they can always make Qt part of their operating
> system. I've always found it strange that people get pissed off when you
> link a free library (Qt) to a free application, but could care less when
> you link a non-free library (Win32, Motif) with a free application.

Read the rest of the sentance...  They would have to distribute the GPL
code seperately in that case.


> Second, there is no prohibition in the GPL against dynamically linking
> to non-GPL libraries. The GPL specifically states that it does not
> restrict the *use* of a program in any way. Dynamically linking to Qt is
> a normal *use* of the library, and such an occurance does not happen
> until the end user launches the program. Corel never needs to modify or
> even look at the source code for Qt. All they see and use is the API.
> Some could argue that the GPL'd application is derived from Qt, but
> that's primarily a difference of definition. The the case that brought
> this whole debate up was not of derivation. In that instance, lib-apt
> was in no way derived from Qt.

True, this is the one that has people worried.  Provided the headers are
GPL'd or public domain or anything of the sort, you can't really do
anything with a Copyright license about dynamic linking.

-- 
- Joseph Carter         GnuPG public key:   1024D/DCF9DAB3, 2048g/3F9C2A43
- knghtbrd@debian.org   20F6 2261 F185 7A3E 79FC  44F9 8FF7 D7A3 DCF9 DAB3
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
I sat laughing snidely into my notebook until they showed me a PC running
Linux. And oh! It was as though the heavens opened and God handed down a
client-side OS so beautiful, so graceful, and so elegant that a million
Microsoft developers couldn't have invented it even if they had a hundred
years and a thousand crates of Jolt cola.
        -- LAN Times


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