Re: Can we pull KDE?
On Sun, 6 Sep 1998, Raul Miller wrote:
> Supposedly, we have a policy of only distributing code for which we
> have a license. With one notable exception (KDE) we've consistently
> said: either the author needs to fix the license, or we don't distribute
> the package.
>
> For the case of KDE, we've been influenced into accepting the license
> "as-is" based on two arguments:
>
> (1) Since the code is in contrib and non-free, our policies aren't
> really relevant, and
>
> (2) KDE has blanket permission posted on their web site, giving us
> permission to distribute.
>
> Both of these are bogus. (1) because we shouldn't have code in contrib
> which we don't have a license to distribute and the GPL is very explicit
> about this case being one where we don't have a license to distribute,
> and (2) because this notice is dubious as a license and there are plenty
> of obvious examples where that blanket permission does not apply [see
> bugs 25903, 25630, 25628, 25627, and 24643, or recall the kde threads
> from just before hamm's release].
>
> I think we should just pull the kde packages out of debian. When new
> packages are available with proper copyrights, we can distribute those.
The whole thing with KDE seems to be, that KDE's GPL license and qt's
license have a major conflict[1]. The result from this is, that KDE can
not be distributed at all. Now, the KDE people (the copyright holders) are
the only people that can sue anybody for violating KDE's license and they
probably won't do that, but that's not the issue. It's just illegal to
distribute KDE, since its license is void.
I say, drop KDE. Just like Red Hat did, and for the same reason.
Remco
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