Re: Double Standard?

[David Johnson <djohnson@acuson.com>]

Chris Lawrence wrote:
> The bottom line is that Debian won't distribute KDE without clear,
> explicit permission from the authors to link their code (which they
> have licensed as GPLed without any exceptions) against Qt.  Debian has
> expected a clear license from everyone else whose software has been
> included, and I can't see where KDE is different.

My cynicism just kicked in again :-) So I am now doing a wee bit of
research...

I didn't check for every GPL application that uses Qt, only one example
is sufficient. The package licq 0.44-4, in stable, uses the Qt library,
along with being licensed under the GPL. It does not have any additional
clauses at all. I looked. I didn't find any.

Of course, I'm not currently running Debian at work, so I don't have any
means to extract licenses out of deb files, so I went to the licq
homepage and downloaded the current source. There exists the small by
finite possibility that the version of licq that Debian is distributing
has a disclaimer while the official and current licq does not. But I
doubt it.

So my question is this... Does Debian simply not like KDE, and
selectively targets it with legal pronouncements and banishment? Or was
someone sloppy by including licq? Is there a double standard? WTF?

David Johnson