Re: Need GPL exception statement for Qt-using code

[Brian Ristuccia <brianr@osiris.978.org>]

On Fri, Mar 19, 1999 at 03:50:02PM -0500, Ben Pfaff wrote:
> "J.H.M. Dassen" <jdassen@wi.leidenuniv.nl> writes:
> 
>    What I need is a nicely phrased "despite what the GPL requires, it's OK to
>    link this code against Qt and redistribute the resulting binaries" statement
>    - can someone here provide one?
> 
> I would put the following license on each file in the program.  It is
> modified from a notice on the files in libio in glibc.
> 
>    Copyright (C) YEAR AUTHOR.
> 
> [ usual GPL splash deleted ]
> 
>    As a special exception, if you link this program with the Qt library
>    by Troll Tech to produce an executable, this does not cause the
>    resulting executable to be covered by the GNU General Public License.
>    This exception does not however invalidate any other reasons why the
>    executable file might be covered by the GNU General Public License.
> 

This looks like it might make a loophole for folks who want to distribute
binaries and not be affected by the GPL. Perhaps it would be safer to grant
permission for the person distributing the program to assume, for the
purposes of section 3, that QT is distributed with every operating system. 

-- 
Brian Ristuccia
brianr@osiris.978.org
bristucc@baynetworks.com
bristucc@cs.uml.edu