Re: When will KDE and Debian get together?
On Thu, 25 May 2000, J.H.M. Dassen (Ray) wrote:
> In a letter to LWN you write:
>
> >What is ironic about the exclustion of KDE from Debian now, is that the
> >Qt-1 library is actually officially supported by Debian!
>
> It is not. The "non-free" section of Debian mirrors (from which qt1 .debs
> are available) is /not/ an official part of Debian GNU/Linux and is e.g. not
> included on the official Debian CD images (http://cdimage.debian.org).
"Supported" is perhaps a poorly chosen word. However, if you search the
packages list on the official Debian web site, Qt1 is there large as life in
the non-free section while KDE is not to be seen at all. I still think this
is an ironic situation.
> >But in the interests of fairness, I don't see why this official Debian
> >discrimination against KDE continues.
>
> Because there have been no fundamental changes in the situation. After
> analysis of KDE's and Qt's licensing terms (both the non-free Qt1 licensing
> terms and the free QPL), the Debian project has concluded it cannot legally
> distribute KDE binaries.
Every other distribution has concluded that they can. I am actually in
sympathy with much of Debian's philosophy, and I prefer their
"differentness" from the commercial distributions. But it sometimes is good
to bend a little. Are you *positive* the rigid stance in the KDE case here
is because of high moral principles or is there an element of revenge here
going back to the old flame wars? I ask this admittedly loaded question
because I am concerned that Debian is shooting itself in the foot over this
issue. Derivative Debian distributions such as Storm and Corel immediately
include KDE (mostly because the vast majority of users want it), and
perhaps it would be in Debian's interest not to ignore KDE any longer.
Debian has been willing to compromise on many fronts by allowing lots of
non-free software (such as Qt1) to be officially listed on their web site.
I applaud these compromises, and I don't see why a similar compromise could
not be made for KDE.
>
> For the Debian project to be able to legally distribute KDE binaries, KDE's
> and Qt's licensing terms would have to be made compatible. This could be
> done in many ways, the most relevant of which are:
> - license KDE under the GPL plus an explicit exception granting the right to
> (re)distribute binaries linked against Qt
> - license KDE under a different free license like the Artistic License
> or
> - release Qt under a BSD-style license; see
> http://qt-interest.trolltech.com/auo1.html
>
> Many people within Debian have lobbied with both the KDE project and Troll
> Tech for one of these changes to be made. Regrettably, so far this has not
> resulted in a change that would allow the Debian project to legally
> distribute KDE binaries.
IANAL, but I suspect this is not clear-cut and instead is a legal grey area
since every other distribution (including all Debian derivatives) have no
problem with it. Thus, it might be time for Debian to back down and
compromise in their own best interest. I am not much of a fan of KDE1, but
it is extremely popular, and some exciting things are apparently coming for
KDE2. Debian users do have workarounds so KDE1 or KDE2 can be accessed
(e.g., at ftp://debian.tdyc.com/ and related sites) as deb packages.
Nevertheless, it would be a much better situation all around if access could
be had from the official Debian website just like for many other packages
(e.g., Qt1, the source of the original controversy) that have been judged by
the Debian community to be freedom impaired in some way.
Alan W. Irwin
email: irwin@beluga.phys.uvic.ca
phone: 250-727-2902 FAX: 250-721-7715
snail-mail:
Dr. Alan W. Irwin
Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria, P.O. Box 3055,
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, V8W 3P6
__________________________
Linux-powered astrophysics
__________________________
Reply to: