Re: A simple mistake (was Re: Should we ship KDE in hamm?)
Raul Miller wrote:
>Oliver Elphick <olly@lfix.co.uk> wrote:
>> If you are looking at a legal document, you MUST look at what it
>> actually says. Since the GPL does not mention static versus dynamic
>> linking, one must see what it actually does say, which I analysed two
>> or three posts back. You have ignored this.
>
>Dynamic linking is like static linking in that in either case the program
>won't run without the library. Dynamic linking is unlike static linking
>in that the linkage is created every time the program runs, rather than
>every time the prgram is linked. Also, we generally do not make it a
>practice of shipping unlinked .o files, arranging to statically link
>them in the user's machine.
>
>That's about the extent of the technological differences..
They are not great, but what does a lawyer care about that?
>What you're ignoring is that we introduce a very strong association
>between the binaries and the libraries, using dpkg. This, in
>combination with some of the other associations (our testing process,
>the documentation on the program, and of course the way we build the
>package in the first place) make it very obvious that we intended that
>qt be used to make kde work.
Certainly, but I don't think it affects the issue. What does the licence
actually say? A court (at least in the Anglo-Saxon tradition) will
assume that things that are not forbidden are allowed.
>
>> >> But, as I pointed out, clause 2 only applies to modifications; we do
>not
>> >> modify KDE in any way.
>> >
>> >That's not true, when uncompressed the diffs against kdebase are about
>> >160k.
>>
>> The point was, that the KDE Debian maintainer is part of the KDE team and
>> the KDE debs are those published by KDE. WE, Debian, do not alter them.
>
>Hmm.. that's an interesting point. It is not sufficient for DFSG,
>but it is still an interesting point.
>
>Then again, the point is somewhat flawed. The licenses don't mention KDE,
>and there's not a really good way of determining who was a part of KDE
>and who wasn't. [Which leads us back to stuff like kmidi, where it's
>clear that the original authors did not take part in modifying to work
>with Qt -- and yes, I'm aware you're trying to address a different point,
>but this is related to the original problem: without a valid license
>you just plain don't know what's going on.]
>
I agree that the whole thing is a mess!
--
Oliver Elphick Oliver.Elphick@lfix.co.uk
Isle of Wight http://www.lfix.co.uk/oliver
PGP key from public servers; key ID 32B8FAA1
========================================
"Be not deceived; God is not mocked; for whatsoever a
man soweth, that shall he also reap."
Galatians 6:7
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