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Re: DFSG Par. 9 and GPL "Virulogical" effekt



Hi,

On Sat, Apr 22, 2000 at 05:45:05PM +0200, Florian Lohoff wrote:
> The paragraph says "License Must NOT Contaminate Other Software".
> As Debian and the FSF agree that the GPL and QPL are incompatible
> and this is mainly the cause of the GPL which requires "the whole work"
> distributed under "THIS license" this means a contamination into other
> "programs" read: QT2 

No a program that is distributed under the GPL and a -seperate- program
(or library) distributed under the QT license can coexist on the same
medium. Debian includes both such programs.

The only way a GPL covered program and/or a QT covered program "contaminate"
each other is when they are combined in one bigger program which is a
derivative of both original programs (that means they can no longer be seen
as seperate Software programs). Then the program can just not be distributed
since the licenses conflict each other (except when one gives a special
exception to do this).

So the GPL (or QT) license does not "contaminate" until someone actively
makes a derived work that combines the (formely seperate) programs.
But as long as they are really seperate programs (or contain a special
exception) they can (and Debian will) distribute them.
(Note that Debian distributes libqt2.)

Cheers,

Mark


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