Re: Your petition to GPL Qt
Kevin Forge wrote:
>
> Raul Miller wrote:
> >
> > Kevin Forge <forgeltd@usa.net> wrote:
> > > Keep it up. Just curious. Is GPL compatibility essential for
> > > putting QT & KDE in Debian main ?
> >
> > It is if KDE remains under the GPL -- otherwise, no.
> >
> > > Or would a "simple" GPL-and-link to-QT License alteration sofice ?
> >
> > Huh?
>
> Basically the GPL with a provision to allow linking to QT. For the bulk
> of KDE that isn't needed since it was WRITTEN to use QT. This is an
> "implicit declaration" ( I think that's the term ).
>
> For those items which were not initially written with QT in mind a
> statement
> from the authors is needed.
>
> Essentially in the end the headers and whatnot will read "This
> application
> is licensed under the GPL. We also allow linking it to code licensed
> under the QPL version 1.0".
>
This shouldn't be neccessary, when considering your first statement. If
an "implicit declaration" is enough in the first case, it is also in the
second.
I'd suggest to ask the authors of borrowed code to give an explicit
*permission* to link it to the QPL, and to allow to change the license
in an "legal emergency", i.e. in case of a lawsuit.
The reasons for not appending the above clause:
o license additions should be avoided, if they are not necessary (says
RMS)
o the legal situation is far from clear: Caldera, Mandrake, SuSE, DLD
etc. have considered distributing KDE as it is today legal (qt as system
component). It's not tolerable to implicitly accuse them of illegal
actions now by requiring a licence change. Debian is just a party with
its own interest in this debate, not a judge (legally, maybe morally
they are)
o morally, a simple consent of the author is absolutely enough
o until the decision of a court, "in dubito pro reo" has to apply, i.e.
nobody can be considered guilty or threatened (although that may be
common in many US civil cases)
o it is not clear if a modified GPL is still compatible with the GPL, in
all cases. Some people will argue that it is not. If a developer wants
to use code under "modified GPL", does then the whole work have to carry
the license addition, even if Qt is not needed there? Or take a
qt-programme with a modified GPL, that is temporarity 'linked' to a
"pure GPL" programme without Qt calls, is this legal (note that this is
the "plugin case", which is unclear anyway). For another example look at
the p.s.
I could go on on with such examples literally for hours. Much of the
trouble is due to the GPL v.2 being unclear, vague or partially made
obsolete by technical progress (e.g.Corba). Thus the complexity of GPL
discussions is usually divergent.
The point of all this was to demonstrate that we gain nothing with such
a license addition, and have potentially continuing trouble. This is
obviously a bad thing (unless you intentionally *want* KDE to have as
much trouble as possible).
So I am against such a license change and in favor of a more informal
consent of the authors. If an author does not agree, the respective
programme should not be in the Debian packages, unless Debian officially
grants Qt the 'system library status' to use the respective exception
clause in the GPL.
For other distributors, it's their own responsibility to make sure they
don't violate copyrights.
> I was told a long time ago this was what debian wanted ( before QPL was
> mentioned ).
Yes, they expressed it in their annoucement to drop KDE. Unfortunately
Debian didn't mention the system library clause and why *they* didn't
want to use it (DFSG don't allow non-free libs to be part of the
system). The announcement gave the impression that the expressed reasons
were universally (and undisputedly) valid, which was IMHO quite
offensive to other distributors.
Regards
Avus
[...]
p.s.:
What if a KDE lib (LGPL) that doesn't use QT is (at the same time)
linked to a 'regular' KDE app ("modified GPL") and a KDE aware app using
e.g. K.Tk ("pure GPL"). The LGPL'd KDE lib has to "fall back" to the GPL
(for the "pure GPL" app) *and* to the "modified GPL" (because of the KDE
app). Of course this is nonsense, as the GPL doesn't cover running an
application, but that won't detain people from using this argument: If
those two apps would have to be run at the same time, you can argue that
there is the clear intention to break the GPL in the described way when
distributing it, therefore distribution is illegal. Unlikely? Alan and
Raul stated the same when arguing against the legality of a KDE source
distribution. "there is the clear intention to link to Qt (with
alternatives not yet working properly), therefore distribution is
illegal."
Things like this are not very relevant at the moment, but when more
non-qt KDE apps are developed and KOM/OpenParts will be used with other
toolkits, this may quickly become a hot topic. And even if such claims
are void, it may again lead to a lot of bad feelings in the community.
(Guess we should better use LGPL for everything)
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