On Wed, Apr 21, 1999 at 10:17:50AM -0400, Jonathan P Tomer wrote: > > 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. > > how about releasing it under gpl, with a notice in the dist saying "for a > price, we will give you an x-licenced copy"? Because while the license on the commercial product is equivalent to the X license, it's not the X license---you can't give it to anyone else under that license (but you can give it to them under the QPL) Also, the GPL is designed specifically to make this sort of licensing difficult. The only possible way to do this is to require that the person submitting the patch transfer the Copyright to Troll Tech, however a great many of people would refuse to do this and you'd have an instant fork and fragmentation of Qt. In fact several people were threatening to do this before the ink was dry so to speak on the QPL! This most certainly made Troll Tech very wary of the GPL and in fact made my job harder. > (and by the way, isn't the windows version of qt strictly non-free? not that > it matters, really, four our purposes, but...) Not under the QPL. Under the QPL, Qt is Qt all around. You may port it where you like and you may use it with your software wherever you like as long as your software is under a free license (note if Qt were GPL it would be "as long as the software is GPL").. It's completely fine until you want to make something that is non-free. For that you have to pay Troll Tech. Or you can pay them and be allowed to make non-free software and just not. But you can't unless you pay them. => -- Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@debian.org> Debian GNU/Linux developer PGP: E8D68481E3A8BB77 8EE22996C9445FBE The Source Comes First! ------------------------------------------------------------------------- <zarkov> "NT 5.0. All the bugs and ten times the code size!"
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