Re: Qt license change

[luther@maxime.u-strasbg.fr]

On Wed, Nov 18, 1998 at 06:55:57AM -0800, Jim Pick wrote:
> 
> luther@maxime.u-strasbg.fr writes:
> 
> > but there is still the problem on commercial software production
> > with Qt, you have to buy Qt commercial to produce commercial Qt
> > products. I am not entirely sure but they were comments saying that
> > this is not FDSG compliant. and i seem to remember there is some
> > limitation on this, something about fee you can charge, or other
> > such.
> 
> Under the DFSG guidelines, restricting proprietary use is OK.  Don't
> confuse that with licenses tha restrict commercial use - they aren't
> allowed.  Remember, we allow the GPL, which can't be used for
> proprietary apps either.
> 

i am not entirely sure here, but it seems to me that you can produce a
commercial app with GPL stuff, and sell it. I think with QPL you have to buy
their commercial Qt version to developp apps. Is this DFSG free ? are you sure
of it ? if yes i think this is ok, but as i understood thinks up to now, is
that for a library to be free you also have to have free developpement tools
for it. Also i think that the QPL don't agree with the non discrimination
clause of the DFSG, altough i wish some more informed person would look into
it.

6.No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor 

          The license must not restrict anyone from making use of the program
		  in a specific field of endeavor. For example, it may not restrict the
		  program from being used in a business, or from being used for genetic
		  research. 
		  
I think in the case of a software library, the use of the library includes
developping software with it, and not only using programs developped for it.

in this case i think the QPL discriminate against people wanting to write
commercial software with Qt.

It is true that this is an interpretation of it, and not very clear, i think
this is a choice debian will have to make. In any case i feel this license
change is not enough for debian to consider building a distrib around kde,
beside the other issues like C vs C++, and other such. You can still ship it
in non-free though, what was not possible before.

hope this clarifies my previous posts a bit, i hope there will be ample
discution about this though, because this is an important issue.

Friendly,

Sven LUTHER