On Mon, Jul 12, 2004 at 10:48:57AM +0100, Matthew Garrett wrote:
> Branden Robinson wrote:
>
> >Sounds good. You may or may not want to take into account the Debian Wiki
> >page on DFSG-free licenses[1], and what it has to say about the QPL.
>
> I disagree with this to some extent:
>
> > The DFSG-freeness of this license has been called into question. Some
> > people appear to believe that because the Qt library is in Debian main,
> > that the QPL is DFSG-free. That is a hasty conclusion, however, because
> > the Qt library is also licensed under the GNU GPL (see
> > http://www.trolltech.com/newsroom/announcements/00000043.html).
>
> As I mentioned on IRC, we shipped QT in main under the QPL before the
> GPL was added. I don't think the above is a terribly convincing
> argument.
I'm not terribly convinced that you've cited a valid precedent.
The Qt library, once it was relicensed under the QPL, might have been
retained in main by accident.
Back in 1999, Raul Miller and Wichert Akkerman -- who was the DPL at the
time[1] -- questioned the DFSG-freeness of the license[2][3].
A long thread (by the standards of the day) ensued, in which Joseph Carter
vigorously contested the non-DFSG-freeness of the license. It is worth
noting that Mr. Carter was not a disinterested party, having earlier
appointed himself Debian's spokesman to TrollTech AS regarding the license
on the Qt library. (I can't find a mailing list cite for this -- I'm going
by my recollections as an interested bystander at the time.)
Most of the thread was preoccupied with the question of whether the QPL was
GPL-compatible, probably because the overriding concern at the time was
whether we'd be able to ship KDE in main. Those who remember that far back
can likely recall what a cosmically huge issue it was at the time. Raul
later reversed himself[4], but then decided that the QPL was only non-DFSG
free due to an "ambiguity"[4].
No one else seems to have wrestled with the issue at all. Wichert didn't
return to it.
Other people are welcome to review the thread for themselves if they fear
I'm misrepresenting it. Be warned; the vast majority of it is a set of huge
digressions: the meaning of the GNU GPL, whether Joseph Carter fairly
represents RMS's opinions, what the ideal license for a library is, and
whether the practice of copyleft is a restriction on "true freedom" or not.
Go ahead -- read the thread if you don't believe me. :)
My conclusion is that the QPL was never properly analyzed in the first
place. Therefore the acceptance of Qt into main under the terms of the QPL
isn't a proper precedent for anything (it was apparently an improper
precedent for letting cervisia and ocaml into main, as Nathanael Nerode
noted[6]). Moreover, I was told on IRC that the only reason the Qt library
was placed in main in the first place -- back in 1.0 days, back before the
advent of the QPL -- was because the archive administrator responsible for
doing so made a mistake. I won't name him because A) he's not an archive
admin anymore (so save your flames), B) I don't know if this true, and C)
the best thing to do if we really want to confirm or refute this is the FTP
admins. I have no idea if the ftpmaster alias has an archived list behind
it, so it may be that the truth is simply lost to history.
[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel-announce/1999/02/msg00002.html
[2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/1999/03/msg00069.html
[3] http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/1999/03/msg00072.html
[4] http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/1999/03/msg00084.html
[5] http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/1999/03/msg00089.html
[6] Message-ID: <[🔎] cctb3r$s2$1@sea.gmane.org>
http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2004/07/msg00266.html
[As an aside, in reviewing that old thread, I came across a message that
sounds eerily familiar:
The Debian Free Software Guidelines are *guidelines*. The DFSG is not a
legal document.
-- John Hasler, http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/1999/03/msg00331.html
If that's a heresy, it's not a new one.]
--
G. Branden Robinson | There is resilient security in
Debian GNU/Linux | openness, and brittle security in
branden@debian.org | secrecy.
http://people.debian.org/~branden/ | -- Bruce Schneier
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