Re: KDE not in Debian?
If you have something to say, say it to the lists.
(This will be my last post on this topic, barring egregious factual
errors that need correction---mine or those of others.)
> You haven't required it, AFAIK, from Gnome or other programs that
> link with X. And under your reading of the GPL (at least if you
> agree with the others I have been debating this issue with), if Qt
> is incompatible with the GPL, so is XFree. Oh right, it would
> really suck if you couldn't distribute XFree, so you can just ignore
> that transgression. Or am I missing something? (Please respond to
> my post with Message-ID <38955EF0.52C053CC@mieterra.com> so I don't
> have to drown this list in repeating it).
XFree is not distributed under a license more restrictive than the
GPL. Qt is. That's it. End of story.
>From section 2 of the GPL:
These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If
identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program,
and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in
themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those
sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you
distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based
on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of
this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the
entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote
it.
There are no provisions of the XFree license that stop XFree code from
being aggregated with GPLed code (the result being GPLed). By
contrast, the "QT FREE EDITION LICENSE" (which is what Qt 1 is
distributed under) specifically forbids the modification of Qt:
Your software does not require modifications to Qt Free Edition.
Nothing in the X license forbids modification of X by third parties.
You are also forbidden from distributing modified versions of Qt1;
nothing in the XFree license prohibits distribution of modified
versions (see, for example, xfs-xtt, which is based on XFree's xfs
implementation).
As far as the QPL (Qt2) license goes, I leave the discussion to Joseph
Carter, who actually helped Troll write it (with the specific intent
of allowing Qt2 applications to be "pure GPL") before the lawyers got
involved. My belief is that the provisions that might require you to
give your source code to Troll, even if the binary code is not
distributed to others, were the most egregious (the GPL only obligates
you to give source code to people you give binaries to; if you don't
give someone binaries, you don't have to give them source either).
For example, if I modify Emacs, RMS can't demand that I give him my
changes unless I give him a binary of my modified Emacs; however, if I
make a modified Qt2 (to create my own whizz-bang desktop that only I
use), or even a program based on Qt2, Troll can demand a copy of it.
That seems more restrictive than the GPL to me; I'm amazed it even
meets the DFSG.
Anyway, if you've followed this thread, you know that Debian has also
thrown out (or not let in) other software with ambiguous license
terms. XForms and Motif-based programs have gotten the same
treatment (as have Qt-based programs from people other than KDE).
Chris
--
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| Chris Lawrence | Get rid of Roger Wicker this year! |
| <quango@watervalley.net> | http://www.lordsutch.com/ms-one/ |
| | |
| Debian Developer | Are you tired of politics as usual? |
| http://www.debian.org/ | http://www.lp.org/ |
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