[moving from -private with permission] On Wed, Apr 21, 1999 at 04:57:22AM -0300, Lalo Martins wrote: > Oh boy, I'm disagreeing with knghtbrd. Close the curtains, the > world is coming to an end. Heh > > Debian is the only distribution which has not already adopted KDE. > > RH hasn't and won't. I'd hate to think they're more comitted to > freedom than us. On the contrary, in less than 3 weeks if their development schedule holds Redhat 6.0 will include KDE. > > We want the rest of the legal issues sorted out first. GPL Qt > > is the death of Troll Tech. You don't seem to care about that, > > you just want your GPL code. > ... > > LARRY WALL DOES NOT SELL PERL. Find me one successful GPL application > > which is being sold and is turning a profit. > > Try the GnuPro suite at Cygnus. They make pretty good money out > of it. It's also not entirely free software. They had to add non-free software to make a sellable product. OTOH, Qt is the same product if you download it or if you buy it. > Perhaps I'm going to be called "Stallboy" again, but I don't > think "selling software" is a valid or moral economic model. If > Qt was really good (as an old-time OOP guy I think it sucks, but > that's really way off the point) Troll's customers wouldn't mind > paying Troll for support or whatever. People pay loads of money > for GNU/FSF CDs and the GnuPro suite and lots of other things > they could just download off somewhere. I disagree.. I think things like GNU Pro are great for people who need them. I'm saddened that the extra components of it are non-free and would be much happier if they were free software for the development of free software and the payment were only required for development of non-free software (ie, the same thing Troll Tech is doing with Qt) and as a consiquence I will not buy GNU Pro. However, being completely free software, I might just pay for Qt at some point if I found I really needed it. Paying for it may give me the right to write non-free software, but that doesn't mean I'll do so. People's complaint with Qt is that its license allows Troll Tech to accept payment to treat the code as if it were under the X license more or less. I see nothing inherently evil about this. I also don't see how this would be possible under the GPL. > IMO software is _not_ "a product"; software is information. > "Selling software" consists primarily in restricting the freedom > of users with their consent. I fail to see why should we be > doing something to support this. People pay credit bureaus to collect credit information do they not? The payment is for the service of providing the information in a usable manner. Better example, telefone directory assistance... You pay for that too. The information is available but you pay to have someone else retreive it for you. How is software different? > Qt's license is yet another example of the "have your cake and > eat it too" problem that permeates the "open source" hype. > Companies want to "open up the source" and have hackers > improving it, but still have the right to close it back or use > it in closed ways. Reminds me of the termination clause. Scary. The right to close source again if you're the only copyright holder is also present in the GPL. But you can never take away the GPL version. There is no provision in the QPL for Troll Tech to close Qt and take away the free version. And they have no intention either. And IIRC the license says that in order to accept a QPL patch they must release the result under the QPL as well as any other license. > Actually, I'd easier think Troll/Qt is the one who's > freeloading; freeloading on the KDE team's back. Because not a > lot of people would care to buy Qt, it's "just another OOP GUI > library"; people rather care to buy "the library used by KDE". By KDE's choice. > I appreciate the fact that there is money to me honestly made > from Free Software. I appreciate the fact that RedHat, Cygnus, > LinuxCare and others are doing well. Cygnus makes money selling proprietary software based on the free software they give away. LinuxCare sells a service, not a product. Redhat sells a box and technical support, not software. Troll Tech sells SOFTWARE. You claim this is immoral but RMS claims it's perfectly acceptable to sell software and that the GPL doesn't prevent this. I don't see how he can say that. Neither does Troll Tech. If either of us could, Qt might be GPL right now. Because we can't, Qt is under another DFSG compatible license which Troll Tech may never take back and requires any patches released either remain patches or be allowed to be incorporated with their codebase. The only possible way the GPL could be used with this model is if Troll Tech demanded the Copyright on derived works be transferred to them, which would anger people and suddenly you'd have a fork on your hands from people who have already made up their mind that Troll Tech is evil. Troll Tech doesn't want that. > But I really don't appreciate Troll's model - which really > doesn't sound to different from Sun/Apple/etc's model of > "jumping on the `open source' bandwagon because it sounds cool > and that's what everybody is talking about but actually doing as > much as I can to not compromise". Where is the compromise? Sun and Apple have non-free licenses. Troll Tech has a free license and their whole product is under it. The license like the GPL requires the result of derivitives be Free Software. For all practical purposes, the Qt library is under a license which is probably best described as a LGPL that can only be used with Free Software (whereas the GPL according to RMS may be used only with the GPL or any license which directly allows you to use the GPL in place of any other license...) Is Mozilla alsi evil in your eyes? Every complaint you have tried to make of the QPL is DIRECTLY applicable to the NPL and MPL. Every single one. -- Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@debian.org> Debian GNU/Linux developer PGP: E8D68481E3A8BB77 8EE22996C9445FBE The Source Comes First! ------------------------------------------------------------------------- * dpkg hands stu a huge glass of vbeer * Joey takes the beer from stu, you're too young ;) * Cylord takes the beer from Joey, you're too drunk. * Cylord gives the beer to muggles.
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