Time for some Clarity (KDE, Qt, Open Source...)
Ok, now time for some clarity.
The Debian developers made it extremely clear that they don't want to
every include software that is not Open Source because for both
philoshical and legal reasons.
In the process you also discovered that that due to a confusing
license the kdebase package is illegal. Also you seam to think that
Troll Tech does not want you to distribute their software.
Now the confusing license of KDE is unfortunate however I am 100% sure
that they did not mean it that way. What they mean is that you may
modify the KDE software but not the Qt software. I am also 99.99%
sure that they have no problem with distributing using the package.
While else would they have a page devoted to listing distrutions that
ship with the K desktop (http://www.kde.org/kdeships.html). For there
statement of the Qt issue go to http://www.kde.org/whatiskde/qt.html.
If you still see a program with kdebase then you are redefining the
term paranoid.
As far as Qt goes read the FAQ at http://www.troll.no/
faq-freeedition.html before you start arguing over the legal aspects
of it. Also check out the announcement of the KDE Free Qt Foundation
at http://www.troll.no/announce/foundation.html. Also read
/usr/doc/qt*/copyright included with any of the Qt packages for a
dissusion of packaging Qt.
The orignal reason I even brought the topic up is becuase I would like
to see Debain get more user friendly. In fact I wanted Debian to be
THE model for a complete user friendly system.
Things I would like to see:
An extremely easy to use install program that groups things not by
the particular program names but buy there functionality. For example
instead of having just one large X windows section have a sub category
called viewers then from there have options for gif, jpg, dvi, gs etc.
Based on what views the user wants it will install the nessasary
programs. If the user wants to control exactly what's installed there
would be a option to prompt them for conformation. The system will
naturally support the addition of additional packages such as the Debian
non-free section.
Once installed an extremely easy to configure system. Linuxconf
sounds good here. The system needs to be easy to use but powerful
enough to get the full functionality out of the programs. Ie, not just
some cheap configuration scripts/utilities.
A coherent documentation section. No more of this info, man, html,
plain text, etc documents files all over the place. The system will
orignise all documents in a logical fashion under one system. HTML
sounds like the best canadate as info and man pages can easily be
converted to HTML. As much as possible the HTML would be lynx frindly
so that people don't need X to use the view the documentation.
A easy to set up X windows system. When setting up the display the
system will automatically get the appropriate server with out the need
of the user having to chose which one.
Once set up the X desktop should be so nice that users will never
want to go back to the Windows 95/98 again! KDE sounds really good
here.
However unlike some other distrubation the OS should not have to use
X to get the full functionally of the distrubtion. This way it can be
easially used where the primary point of the machine is a server.
Now does Debian have the same goals?
If not I might just consider creating a distribution of Debian that
has these things. Never mind the fact that I have no idea what I am
doing. But hay, I managed to learn the C++ language with a project
for a C++ API for MySQL so why not...
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