Re: GPLv3 suggestion to solve KDE/QT problem and others
On Mon, Feb 21, 2000 at 04:52:19PM -0500, Raul Miller wrote:
>
> > > That's because code reuse wasn't seen as a relevant issue for
> > > building a distribution. The DFSG is simply an attempt to define our
> > > minimal requirements to maintain a piece of software as a part of our
> > > distribution.
>
> On Mon, Feb 21, 2000 at 11:25:53PM +0200, Adi Stav wrote:
> > I thought the DFSG was written of moral reasons rather than
> > practical...
>
> I'd say that morality represents adoption of practical decisions by a
> group of people.
Yes.
> > But in that case, why not allow any freely-distributable binaries? If
> > the binaries don't conform to policy they cannot be included anyhow.
>
> What about buggy freely-distributable binaries? What about
> freely-distributable binaries which impose structure on our system which
> conflicts with other software on our system?
>
> If we don't have permission to modify the software, and distribute
> changes, then it's better to leave distribution of that software to
> someone who can deal with such issues.
Yet non-free is, for all practical purposses, a part of Debian
(whatever the official stand may be). This is because by supporting
non-free Debian is already taking upon itself the burden of dealing
with these issues. The only gain I see in officially declaring them
not to be a part of Debian and not allowing depends relationship from
main is to discourage the use of proprietary software. Wouldn't you
say that this is one of Debian's goals, explicit or otherwise?
> ...
> > But what I meant was that I was surprised that the FSF added the QPL
> > to its list of Free licenses. Maybe there are other points to consider
> > that might mean the QPL is Free?
>
> I think you're reading too much into the mere appearance of the QPL on
> that page, and not reading enough into the accompanying text.
Well, the accompanying text says (along with warnings and criticism)
that the QPL is a Free license.
> > > Also, I should point out that the FSF is not associated with Debian,
> > > except as an upstream author. Talk about changing the GPL doesn't
> > > really belong on debian-legal...
> >
> > Yes... But these issues do affect Debian a lot. There has been a lot
> > of talk lately of the KDE problem, and I thought that one solution
> > (changing the GPL) did not get sufficient attention.
>
> There's been a lot of talk about the KDE issue for at least the last two
> years. You see, Debian tries to get along with upstream authors, but we
> do ask that they give us proper licenses before we distribute their code.
> But in the case of KDE, we've been under a lot of pressure to distribute
> code without proper licenses. And this is particularly troubling,
> because some significant parts of KDE were written by non-KDE authors.
>
> That, and there was serious talk on the part of Troll that they were
> going to re-release the QPL under a license which fixes this issue.
>
> But changing the GPL in a fashion which violates its rationale (which
> is spelled out in the preamble of the license) just plain doesn't strike
> me as a good solution.
Having GPL software linkable with other Free Software seems to me to
be perfectly within the principles the preamble is outlining.
What bothers me here is the middleground. If a certain restriction the
to the distribution of software is acceptible and does not mean the
software is not Free, why do linking to it from GPL software would be
a problem? And if such a restriction does have a problem, even the
slightest one, why should the license be considered Free?
And I do see linking as different from a derived work in the regular
text-editor sense. You can't, for example, take GPL code, modify it
and license the result under the BSDL. Yet you can take GPL code,
modify functions through the use of a BSDL linked library and release
the result (the whole will be GPL but the specific BSDL part will not
be). This cannot be used to make the GPL code proprietary because
those BSDL modification will not even be usable if made proprietary
(they need to be linked to the original GPL work to work).
>
> --
> Raul
>
- Adi Stav
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