Re: KDE not in Debian?
Craig Sanders wrote:
> everybody else has to abide by the terms of the license under which the
> software is released, and the GPL is quite clear about what you can
> and can't do. In particular, you have to distribute all of the code
> under the same terms as the GPL (with an exception for system libraries
> that normally come with the OS/compiler/etc, *except* when those system
> libraries are distributed along with the code in question. Qt doesn't
> qualify because it is not a system library normally distributed with the
> OS and even if it was, we still wouldn't be allowed to distribute it
> along with, say, KDE or kgv).
IANAL, but I near as I can figure, Qt is normally distributed with my
OS. To quote: "...the source code distributed need not include anything
that is normally distributed ... with the major components ... of the
operating system on which the executable runs...". In the case of
Caldera and Corel, Qt is part of their installation, definitely a major
component. On my box, KDE itself is a major component, and even the
default wm/desktop of the distro.
> other dists may choose to ignore this fact. Debian actually cares about
> free software and about licenses and we only distribute software when
> the license allows us to do so.
The other distributions actually *do* care as well. No offense to any
Debian developers or users, but Debian is not sacred. Attempts to
portray it as morally superior to other distros is very insulting to
developers and users of those distros. A person is not morally deficient
merely because they reach different conclusions than you.
> there are two "easy" solutions to this problem:
There is a third way. And that would be for GPLv3 to specifically allow
dynamic linking to non-GPL libraries.
David Johnson
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