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Trolltech GPL violation?



Trolltech releases the "Open Source Edition" of Qt
under the GPL. The complete package downloadable from
their website includes the libraries, tools like
qtdesigner, and documentation in .html format. Source
code for the libraries and tools is provided.

However, no source code is provided for the .html
documentation files.

The GPL is explicit on the definition of source code:
"The source code for a work means the preferred form
of the work for making modifications to it." The term
"source code" has a precise meaning within the GPL,
which differs slightly from the everyday use of the
term. The html files are not source code as the term
is used in the GPL license, because the documentation
is maintained in a different form, and converted to
html. Html files, while human-readable, are extremely
inconvenient to modify. They are certainly not the
"preferred form" for making modifications.



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