Re: KDE questions
On Wed, 7 Jun 2000, Gregor Hoffleit wrote:
) Date: Wed, 7 Jun 2000 20:10:18 +0200
) From: Gregor Hoffleit <gregor@hoffleit.de>
) To: Josip Rodin <joy@cibalia.gkvk.hr>
) Cc: Stefan Westerfeld <stefan@space.twc.de>, debian-devel@lists.debian.org
) Subject: Re: KDE questions
) Resent-Date: Thu, 8 Jun 2000 09:00:24 GMT
) Resent-From: debian-devel@lists.debian.org
)
) On Wed, Jun 07, 2000 at 05:13:52PM +0200, Josip Rodin wrote:
) > On Wed, Jun 07, 2000 at 03:16:43PM +0200, Stefan Westerfeld wrote:
) > > What has been suggested by debian to relicense every line of KDE code to a
) > > special purpose GPL with an extra addition. Although this is advocated
) > > to be a solution of the problem, it is only theoretical: It is completely
) > > impossible to convince each and every author/contributor that once in his
) > > life wrote a line of KDE code to change his license. So in that respect, no.
) >
) > It's not completely impossible; usually copyright is retained (by the one
) > who sent the patch) on non-trivial, major changes. I doubt you have several
) > hundreds or thousands of those, per KDE program (i.e. per one program
) > author/maintainer who'd have do the boring work, requesting license changes
) > from those who wrote the patches).
) >
) > Another solution would be to rewrite those parts that contain other people's
) > code. I doubt anyone would volunteer normally; however seeing that $3K
) > offer, I wouldn't be surprised if someone does. :)
)
Wine did something similar recently - basically, if anyone has any
problems with the change, say so, your code will be removed. Surely
there's a full list of contributors in the ChangeLogs?
) Well, I haven't seen to most obvious problem mentioned:
)
) If the KDE project would change the license of the code they control from
) GPL to GPL+clause, anybody would see that as a sign that there *is* indeed a
) problem using GPL code with Qt. Once this view had been established, they
) would no longer be able to use any GPL code without asking the author to add
) this clause. That would be a major competitive disadvantage to KDE or Qt.
But that problem already *does* exist, it's the reason behind this thread.
)
) Or they had to establish and promote among OS developers something like a
) GQPL, a GPL that includes this Qt clause. Would it be possible to come up
) with such a license and make it compatible with GPL code ? I don't know.
I'm sure there are few people who would mind adding the clause *if asked*
- even Gnome people would probably bend over backwards to help.
)
) Gregor
)
)
Jimmy
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