Re: korganizer debian package (OT: licence interpretation)
On Mon, Oct 05, 1998 at 05:27:23PM +0200, Moritz Moeller-Herrmann wrote:
> >> Hi Rainer, thanks for the package and the announcement. Just one minor detail:
> >> We should not repeat that Debian nonsene in public. Of course, korganizer does
That's what I really like about this kind of discussion. They are so
rational.
I'm sorry, but this kind of wording makes me feel angry about the kde team.
Why on earth do you call our opinion nonsense? We don't do that about yours.
> >> not suffer from any licensing problems. It's Debian that has problems with
> >> their weird and rather irrational interpretation of the GPL.
How about asking RMS then?
> >> It's prefectly legal to distribute KDE programms in both source and binary
Yes, but not those that incorporate GPLed source without asking the original
author.
> >> form (that's why virtually all linux distributors do it) so there is absolutey
Virtually all? Gimme a break. The last time I checked Red Hat didn't. Debian
does btw, but it seems your're counting them as not. So according to
Slashdot's poll that's about 75% of all Linux installations. Granted you're
german as I am, so you may believe SuSE is front runner, but internationally
they are not.
> I study law. And I can tell you that there´s not a problem with the GPL
> licence in the KDE project. Even if the GPL (read very narrowly and literally)
> prohibited the use of QT, every judge/lawyer would reinterpret this licence to
> allow the use of QT , if the author of kpackage used it to distribute his
> program. What I am trying to say is, a licence can be interpreted in many ways
I agree. But how about authors who didn't? Or did anyone ask the original
authors of ghostview e.g (assuming KDE uses that code, I didn't check)?
> Problems could only arise if another copyright holder´s rights were violated,
> for example if a second GPLd program were merged into kpackage, and the author
> of this program read the GPL in a much more strict way than the author(s) of
> kpackage. Then we´d have two licences (both of identical wording: GPL), which
> could be interpreted differently, because the people who use the licence have
> opposing intentions with their licence. Since you distribute a binary DEB file,
Yup, that's it. And I bet (simply because I know) that RMS reads it this
way.
> the problem can´t come up.
Sorry, I don't get that. Why isn't it a problem when we distribute binaries?
The license clearly holds for binaries as well as source.
Michael
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