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Re: Can we pull KDE?



On Wed, Sep 09, 1998 at 10:59:31AM -0600, Ward Deng wrote:
> > On Tue, Sep 08, 1998 at 04:19:44PM +0200, Anselm Lingnau wrote:
> > > Hamish Moffat writes:
> > > > The GPL specifically lets you link against standard system components,
> > > > free or non-free. That means free software can be linked with Sun's libc,
> > > > as well as with Motif etc on Solaris systems. It couldn't be linked with
> > > > Motif on a linux system because Motif is not standard on linux systems
> > > > (Debian at least).
> > > 
> > > On the other hand, Qt is standard on various Linux distributions (most
> > > notably S.u.S.E.). This would make it legal to distribute KDE binaries
> > > for those distributions under the GPL standard library exception.
> > 
> > Hmmm. I guess it would. All the best to them, then; I won't trade in
> > freedom for a license to use Qt.
> > 
> 
> I have a suggestion after I read all postings of this topic.
> 
> Can we have a commercial company to distribute a "commercial" version of
> Debian distribution with Qt as its bundled components? In this way, some
> programs with licensing problems can be avoided. People can choose to
> use "pure" official Debian distribution or buy a commercial version based
> on Debian. The company will return a percentage of the sales to Debian
> project.

That would work but...I don't see how "WE" can do that.
That really isn;'t one of the aims of the project to make money, however,
if anyone wanted to do this, I doubt anyone would object to a company
basing a distribution on debian 

> We simply do not want to see less software supported on Debian. Although
> we hope every free software program is licensed under GPL but the reality
> is ... (you should remember what the author of xpdf said a few days ago)
> And we found many users (even advanced users) like the idea of having all
> useful packages installed out of box. For example, Caldera packaged 
> netscape 4.04 in their COL 1.2, which pleased a lot of our users, while
> many users complained about missing pine binary in the Hamm distribution.

I agree...It is sad to see software which is itself free not be able to be
part of debian like this. (well actually even if it weren't for the
disagreements over licenses, it would still be contrib which i snot
"part of debian") However, such is life....there isn't much we can do about
it (except argue about it :) )
-Steve
-- 
/* -- Stephen Carpenter <sjc@delphi.com> --- <sjc@debian.org>------------ */
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