Re: kde and debian a long love story :)
On Mon, Jan 24, 2000 at 09:11:19PM -0100, Anthony wrote:
>
> 1) cracking the QPL, i mean finding an exploit in the QPL.
> a work for lawer-hacker :), it could be cool:)
Everything that violates the spirit of a license will probably
not find the way into Debian. We don't need foes.
If it is not extremely clear that we are allowed to redistribute,
we prefer just not to.
> 2) coding a Qt clone, it worked fine for motif. but Qt is big
> and it will take much time. a project known has harmony tried
> to do that.
Harmony obviously died the day QT was released under the other license,
but if you are interested (or other people), I am sure the code base
is still there somewhere.
> 3) coding a Qt clone but with empty function that will allow
> us to link kde without having to depend on Qt but kde wont
> run but it will be distrubuable with debian.
See above. Beside the moral issues (which are pretty strong by themselves),
why should we distribute something that doesn't run?
However, if your qt clone runs reasonable well (as lesstif does), we don't
care about bugs. But some basic functionality must be there, or we distribute
bit junk. (Then it is really easier to get the debs from KDE directly).
> 4) changing the license of KDE from GPL to LGPL,
> i think LGPL allow linking with QPL, so we convince
> all kde coders to switche and make a website inviting
> all contributor to allow their code to pass from GPL
> to LGPL.
Yes. However, you are talking to the wrong people then :)
I think quite a lot of people have tried to talk to KDE
about license change. Myself did it twice, once per email,
once face to face with a couple of the KDE developers.
It doesn't really help to mention their responses here.
> A QUESTION NOW : In the licence it is said that you
> can use GPLv2 or any upper version can't LGPL be considered
> as GPLv2.1 ?
>
Definitly not. The GPL is the GPL, and the LGPL is the LGPL. Both
have distinct names and their own version number (and, btw, the LGPL is
discouraged by the FSF, but this should not be of any worry to you).
> 5) making pressure on troll.no to change to LGPL. With
> all the hype currently around GPL. it could be possible.
I don't think troll is giving a dame to the hype around the GPL.
However, again, this is one of the possible good solutions, though
you are again talking to the wrong people, as we are not the copyright holder.
> Or asking RedHat or any linux-Startup to buy troll.no and
> do the change for them :)
Oh well. The question is if KDE continues to use the Qt after that, or if
they write their own toolkit.
(Remember that some people are involved in troll and KDE).
> 6) abolish Copyright on digitalisable media in the world (may
> take more time)
>
Just start with a small country and then go on one after another :)
> I HOPE i will get CONSTRUCTIVE answer. Remeber that i don't
> why we discuss here the WHY doing it, but only the HOW doing it.
Okay, let me summarize: Finding a loophole in one of the involved
licenses or buying troll is not constructive. Cheating will not work.
Changing the license of one of the involved pieces of software is the
only thing that might work. This means, either the GPL v3, the license of KDEor the license of Qt.
Of these, you can rule out the GPL 3.0 for now. When it appears, you can look
at it again, but I can 100% guarantee you that the viral clause will still be
there.
KDE is obviously not interested in changing their license. Contacing them about
it is probably only annoying them, however there is a KDE license discussion
mailing list you might try posting to.
Troll, well, I don't know. They changed their license once, maybe they change
it a second time, though Joseph says they won't. Again, contact them if you
want to go this route.
Debian however is not the copyright holder of any of the software.
We did the things we can do: We examined the situation and published
our result. We encouraged the involved parties to come closer to each other
(not as a group, but many people individually). We did not get a result
that makes it possible for us to distribute KDE in Debian.
I think you will not find the answer to the "how" here, sorry.
The easiest way for everyone is to get the license changed.
If this doesn't work out, the one thing YOU (and other people) CAN always do
is to clone Qt. In fact, this is the only decision you can make without
being dependant on other peoples decision.
My personal advice:
Of course, you can also port the good KDE applications to Gnome.
Thanks,
Marcus
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