On Mon, Jan 24, 2000 at 09:11:19PM -0100, Anthony wrote: > BUT instead talking about that, I WANT to FIND a solution to allow > kde be part of debian. I want to discuss with motivated people > that will examine all possible solutions of this problem and > find out a solution (and we will find one). Whatever solutions > are, from coding a QT clone to changing the US constitution. > All are welcomes. I think we must only think in a pratical > way and consider the time factor. First let me say that KDE will _never_ be part of Debian until the license issues are resolved. I tried several times over the past 18 months to do that. I left it more than 6 months ago with the assurance that it would all be handled completely "soon". _Nothing_ has happened since. > I see five solution possibles, let's begin with them. > > 1) cracking the QPL, i mean finding an exploit in the QPL. > a work for lawer-hacker :), it could be cool:) It's badly worded enough in places (not my fault, their lawyer's "clarity" additions made it so ambiguous in places the license has entire sections that would not be enforcable. That's a moot point however since Debian would not accept the result as sufficiently covering our own (and our CD vendors') asses, so to speak. It would also be a cheap attempt to circumvent Copyright law and the social contract. I must violently oppose such. > 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 was such a project. Troll Tech and KDE's sudden change of heart and interest in cleaning up their act legally-speaking effectively killed the project. > 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. (Imagine that > lesstiff is early design, but aleready has all .h files > we could link program with it program won't run but if > you buy motif and ln -s libmotifcommercial libXm at the place > of lesstif it will run) The program is linke dynamiquely with > lesstif but it run with motif :) a question of words... > a lawer may help here too Again, a cheap attempt to circumvent Copyright law, the DFSG, and the GPL in fact. I will even more violently oppose this than your first suggested solution. > 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. They won't even consult authors of code they didn't write or update the code they did with a simple Qt-exception clause. This seems to be a nowhere-going solution. > 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 ? No. > 5) making pressure on troll.no to change to LGPL. With > all the hype currently around GPL. it could be possible. > Or asking RedHat or any linux-Startup to buy troll.no and > do the change for them :) That would solve all of the legal problems (not the trust problems at all) but Troll Tech would never do it. They are not even entertaining the change I suggested to TWO CLAUSES of the QPL which would achieve GPL compatibility as far as Debian would be concerned. > 6) abolish Copyright on digitalisable media in the world (may > take more time) Yeah, right. -- Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@debian.org> Debian Linux developer http://tank.debian.net GnuPG key pub 1024D/DCF9DAB3 sub 2048g/3F9C2A43 http://www.debian.org 20F6 2261 F185 7A3E 79FC 44F9 8FF7 D7A3 DCF9 DAB3 <wc> red dye causes cancer, haven't you heard? (; <Knghtbrd> fucking everything causes cancer, haven't you heard? <Knghtbrd> => <archon> no, that causes aids
Attachment:
pgpOxBFyGfwzl.pgp
Description: PGP signature