Re: Please do not use Qt (fwd)

[andersee@et.byu.edu (Erik B. Andersen)]

William Burrow wrote:
> 
> While the Qt authors may have different concerns than Knuth does over 
> TeX, the idea may be the same:  modified versions may reflect badly on 
> Troll Tech.
> 

I don't understand why everybody is getting their underware in a wad over
Qt.  As I read their license it seems to encourage GPLed software.  Freely
distributable programs may use Qt for free.  It states three conditions for
their free liicence: 

1) You accept this license. 

	Ok no problem.  This means we accept the other two conditions.
	

2) Your software does not require modifications to Qt.

Remember this is C++ we are talking about!  There is no reason to
change their library to make it do different things than what they
originally wrote it to do.  Write a new class that utilizes one of their
classes but has new behavior built in. and you accomplish the same thing
while leaving their stuff completely unchanged.  Changing their library is
completely and totally unnecessary.

3) You satisfy ONE of the following three requirements 

Users of your software can obtain source code for the software, freely
modify the source code (possibly with restrictions on copyright notices,
attributions and legal responsibility), and freely redistribute original or
modified versions of the software.  

OR

Your software is distributed under the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE, version
2 or later, as defined by the Free Software Foundation. 

OR

Your software is distributed under the GNU LIBRARY GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE,
version 2 or later, as defined by the Free Software Foundation. 


And I don't see the big problem with this.  Debian is by definition GPLed. 
Anything Debian releases which uses QT, and releases the source code under
the GPL is therefore free, and may be used by anybody for any reason,
commercial or otherwise.  Troll tech has specifically authorized the
release of Qt as a Debian package, since Debian is completely GPLed (or
otherwise declared free on a per package basis).  Under these terms, I see
no problem here.  I believe that this discussion has been fueled by people
who have not read the licence.

 -Erik

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Erik B. Andersen        Web:    http://www.et.byu.edu/~andersee/ 
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