Re: Draft new DFSG

[Raul Miller <rdm@test.legislate.com>]

Navindra Umanee <navindra@cs.mcgill.ca> wrote:
> Hmmm, the license contradicts itself?  Where?

In the terms under which the Qt code may be distributed.  There
are three conflicting concepts:

(a) may only distribute source plus patches,
(b) must distribute patches under different license,
(c) may distribute as part of application under terms
of the GPL.

Now, first off the GPL has a different set of restrictions and forbids
this patches-only mechanism.

Second, consider what happens if I take Qt and complete replace it's
code with harmony's and distribute that as a patch.  Anyone can use the
patch for any purposes, and that patch contains all the code in Qt.

Since I'm spelling this out, this conflicts with (c) because this
QPL draft requires that the patch be distributed without some clauses
which the GPL requires.  And, it conflicts with (a) because there's no
requirement that patches be distributed verbatim with other patches
applied to the patched code base -- anyone can extract the Qt source
from the patches and use it however they please.

-- 
Raul