Re: Corel's apt frontend
(Quick summary - Ian Jackson believes that Corel's new Apt frontend which
links to Qt and calls dpkg as an independent program is violating dpkg's
GPL license. (The violation of Apt's GPL license was solved by the authors
of Apt giving special extension.))
On Fri, Oct 29, 1999 at 07:55:01PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> David Starner writes ("Re: Corel's apt frontend"):
> > On Fri, Oct 29, 1999 at 01:58:09PM +0100, Ian Jackson wrote:
> > > However, of course, lib-apt isn't the only thing that is bound
> > > together at run-time with Qt in this program. dpkg is too - the fact
> > > that the interface is program call rather than dynamic linking is an
> > > irrelevant technical detail.
> >
> > No, actually it's not. If the interface is by program call, than the
> > GPL doesn't affect it.
>
> I don't think this is true, but I'm not here to discuss it with you.
> I want to discuss it politely with Corel (and possibly RMS).
Wouldn't it be better to discuss it first with people who have an
objective view of the matter, instead of going directly to fight
the dragon?
> > But the frontend actually has to be linked to GCC. A more similar one
> > is the M3 frontend, which evades the GPL restrictions by installing
> > a new frontend (which is GPL), and using program calls to link to that
> > program.
>
> Does RMS know about this ? I suspect that RMS would take a similar
> view in this case.
Yes, he knows about this. He was not amused, but the fact that the
frontend to M3 was XFree-style licensed probably helped a little bit.
--
David Starner - dstarner98@aasaa.ofe.org
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