On Sat, Jun 12, 1999 at 12:56:06AM +0100, Philip Hands wrote:
> Piotr Roszatycki <dexter@fnet.pl> writes:
>
> > The best solution might be to distribute KDE as non-US part of Debian.
> > Many of european vendors distribute non-US on separate CD. Why
> > couldn't we do the same with KDE?
>
> KDE currently has an invalid license. Why ? Because the QPL only
> allows modification in the form of patches, whereas the GPL insists
> that a) all the code for a program distributed under the GPL be
> distributable under the GPL, and b) that this gives you the right to
> modify it. These are incompatible conditions.
Not so.. The QPL doesn't limit modifications to patches, however they
are preferred form. Essentially the limit is that whatever modifications
you make must be clearly be modifications. The wording they used isn't
good, but they have an annotated version of the license that explains
what they mean more clearly and it ends up being pretty much that as long
as the original is available and your modified version is obviously
modified, you're fine.
> I realise that the KDE developers do not intend to mean that, when
> they use the GPL, but unfortunately that like saying Grandad didn't
> really mean what he put in his will.
The above isn't even the problem RMS raised about compatibility. Under
the QPL, any program you write using Qt 2.0 must be made available to the
public under free license pretty much on demand. If you don't like that,
use the commercial version. The GPL permits you to do whatever you want
in the privacy of your own terminal.
RMS pretty much conceded that what the QPL demands for modifications
isn't outside of the requirements of the GPL given that you may
distribute a modified version, the failure of the QPL to allow for
privacy (an essential freedom in his mind and an issue I wish had been
raised before the final QPL was released so I'd have had more chance to
do something about it)
At any rate this is all academic as we're not lawyers. I would really
like someone who IS an IP lawyer to have a look at the GPL and QPL and
comment. Could someone in a more representative capacity perhaps ask
Corel to have their lawyers mull this over and answer these issues?
If they decline, so they decline. If they are willing to do so we'll be
able to hear from people who know what they're talking about. This would
be good because either these lawyers will tell us there is no problem
(unlikely I suspect) or they will tell us exactly where the problems are
and we will have something concrete from a lawyer and we can talk to the
KDE and Troll people and possibly get the necessary changes made.
> If we allow the KDE GPL situation to pass without comment, then it
> devalues the GPL for everyone, not just in the context of KDE.
>
> Similarly, if people took to saying ``Till death do us part'' when
> they meant ``Till the end of next month'', then pretty soon the whole
> institution of mariage would be discredited. Oops, too late ;-)
The problem is that none of us really know what a lawyer or a judge is
going to say. We really need to find out.
> I do wish the rumoured change of the KDE license would materialise, so
> we could drop this.
I'm working on it, I'm working on it! Part of getting the right things
done involves convincing people that I've thought this through and I'm
not just an anti-commercial GNU zealot making unreasonable demands. I've
got to show there's really a problem and that it's worth the effort to
fix, essentially. So far they've been listening.
If I had the opinion of an impartial lawyer, it's possible that I might
even convince Troll Tech to release a 1.1 of the QPL which makes it GPL
compatible... Don't hold your breath on that though, the Trolls are not
exactly willing to give up the ability to profit from Qt. I understand
that and I agree that they shouldn't have to. However I don't think
making Qt GPL compatible would hurt their profits any and hope they can
be convinced.
--
Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@debian.org> Debian GNU/Linux developer
PGP: E8D68481E3A8BB77 8EE22996C9445FBE The Source Comes First!
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Personally, I don't often talk about social good because when I hear other
people talk about social good, that's when I reach for my revolver.
-- Eric Raymond
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