Re: Debian i386 freeze

[Philip Hands <phil@hands.com>]

> Please get it clear that kde's GPL licence can only apply to kde code.

I agree that the KDE folks are the only people that can force people to abide 
by the GPL on their code, and that they have no right to do anything about the 
way people deal with the Qt code.

Where I disagree however is that the GPL confers rights to the recipient of a 
program, as well as upon the distributor, and those rights are enforceable by 
the recipient (otherwise people could GPL their code, wait for it to get 
popular, and then withdraw the GPL, and cash in).

In the case of KDE, the rights that are supposedly being given are neither 
ours, nor the KDE folks' to grant, so the GPL should not be used.

> and in any case the kde package does not include  Qt, which is, of course,
> a separate library.

So KDE is compilable without using the Qt header files, is that right ?

I don't think so.

And if you are correct, why is this clause in the GPL:

   For an executable work, complete source code means all the source code
   for all modules it contains, plus any associated interface definition
   files, plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of
   the executable.

I think the header files it's compiled with and the libraries it was linked 
against count as ``interface definition files''.

You cannot say ``It doesn't apply, because the KDE folks didn't write it'', 
because how can someone obtaining a binary package from our site determine 
which bits of the package are covered by the GPL.

At the moment the copyright file says all of the package is covered by the 
GPL, whereas this is not in fact, since you certainly could not rebuild it 
without access to the Qt stuff, which conflicts with the GPL.

Cheers, Phil.


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