Re: [awansink@ke.com.au: Re: Isn't a kde version of abiword illegal?]
> From: "Andrew Wansink" <awansink@ke.com.au>
> I am also not a lawyer but I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be sued
> by anyone so I don't care too much for licenses. I believe that a qt
> port of abiword is within the 'spirit' of the gnu license.
This isn't an uncommon feeling among open source developers, and certainly
among users. IMO, it's pretty reasonable if you're writing something to
scratch your own personal itch. However, Mr. Wansink should be aware that
such license incompatibility can make it difficult for others to
contribute to the program or to distribute the program.
On the other hand, as long as there's a version available that does NOT
link against the qt libraries, then that version is usable by anyone, and
the kde license restrictions (or the GPL restrictions, depending on your
viewpoint) hurt only the kde port.
On the gripping hand, if the owner of the copyright for abiword (which may
not be a well-defined entity if significant contributions have been made
by multiple people under GPL) chooses to link against restricted libs,
that's fine and dandy, as permission to do so is granted, by definition,
to oneself. This hybrid can't go in Debian (unless its released under a
different license than GPL), but nobody has broken any laws.
--
Mark Rafn dagon@dagon.net <http://www.halcyon.com/dagon/> !G
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