Re: KDE liscence question
On Mon, Jun 14, 1999 at 11:22:18AM +0200, Goswin Brederlow wrote:
> Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au> writes:
>
> > On Sat, Jun 12, 1999 at 01:32:47PM +0200, Francesco Tapparo wrote:
> > there should be a FAQ on this tiresome subject. it comes up way too
> > often. The fact is that the licensing problem wont be resolved
> > until KDE and/or Qt do something about it. They seem to be making
> > some
>
> KDE can't change from GPL to something else, because GPL forbids that.
that is self-evident. they can't change the license on existing GPLed
code. however, they can do whatever they like with their own stuff -
including re-licensing it under different terms (but that still wouldn't
override the GPL on the stuff they have already released).
KDE could provide permission to distribute THEIR stuff (i.e. the stuff
that they wrote themselves, but not the existing GPLed code that they
used) with Qt. All it takes is for them to provide that permission and
we could distribute it. they have ignored every request to do so (my
guess is that is because they don't want to admit that they have to)
Of course, that would still leave us unable to distribute any of the
pre-existing GPL-ed code that they modified for KDE...which is why the
BEST solution would be for Qt to be released with a GPL compatible
license.
> > progress in doing that. there's not a lot that debian can do until
> > that happens except encourage them to do so.
>
> By the way, has any law guys looked at the qpl? Maybe thats free
> enough to be linkable with GPL software?
please do some research before asking the same questions that have been
asked repeatedly for months. the subject really is very tiresome.
yes, the QPL does look like it will be DFSG free. No, it still won't be
legal to distribute GPLed code which has been linked with it as it is
not compatible with the GPL.
craig
--
craig sanders
Reply to: