Re: QT Designer _NOT_ under QPL.
Joseph Carter wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 16, 2000 at 09:18:45AM -0400, Peter S Galbraith wrote:
> > The way I'm reading what you wrote is like so:
> >
> > - Troll Tech releasing GPLed code that links to Qt is legal
> > (because implicit permission is granted).
> > - But it's against Debian policy to accept the license if it's
> > not made explicit.
> >
> > Is that a correct summary?
> > If so, I disagree. If point 1 was true, Debian wouldn't have
> > grounds for point 2. I'm assuming point 1 is wrong where you don't.
>
> There are many licenses that pass by -legal which essentially say one
> thing and mean another. It is Debian's policy to take them at what they
> say, rather than what they mean and seek clarification since everyone
> benefits that way and at least in the case of things like pine the
> assumption of what UW means compared to what they say has turned out to be
> wrong.
Fair enough.
> > In a post to kde-licensing last night, you said:
> >
> > : Nobody here is going to question Red Hat should they include Qt Designer.
> > : There is clearly and obviously no problem with doing so. Debian has a
> > : policy problem with it though.
> >
> > You are effectively telling the world that implicit permission is
> > fine and legal, but that we have some ungrounded (one could say
> > random) policy against it. I disagree. Either we think it's
> > legal or it isn't.
>
> It is. It's a bad idea to rely on it and any lawyer can tell you so and
> give you a whole host of reasons beginning with it being a court's
> determination rather than yours as to what permission if any is implicitly
> granted. But it is legal.
>
> That doesn't mean Debian is willing to accept it. To much is totally
> subjective that way and Debian has always insisted that the licenses be
> cut and dry. KDE isn't and never will be.
Okay then. It appears to me that we need to clarify this
somewhere, perhaps on our web site. I have asked an upstream
author to add an exemption paragraph to the GPL to link against
XForms on the ground that redistribution was illegal. Now it
turns out it's not really illegal, but a bad idea and against
Debian policy. That's not quite the same thing and I now feel I
was untruthful to the author. That's bad for me and bad for
Debian. We need to be honest about these things.
Peter
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