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Re: Trolltech GPL violation?



On Sun, Jan 01, 2006 at 11:25:35AM -0500, Brian Nelson wrote:
> <halbtaxabo-debml@yahoo.com> writes:
> 
> > 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 "source code" for the documentation is embedded as comments in the
> program source code, in a doxygen-like way.
> 
> Trolltech has not, to my knowledge, released the tool they use to
> generate the HTML from the comments.

Then we do indeed have (yet again) a non-redistributable Qt bundle -
the GPL explicitly includes such tools as 'source', with the singular
exception that it doesn't include things normally shipped with the
operating system (like generic compilers).

I don't see how Trolltech are violating anything though, since they
own the copyright. They just aren't being particularly useful, so we
can't redistribute the offending html documents. Do we?

The simplest solution would be for Trolltech to release the tool, and
the next simplest would be for them to release the html documentation
under a more permissive license. Shouldn't be too hard to get one of
those done.

-- 
  .''`.  ** Debian GNU/Linux ** | Andrew Suffield
 : :' :  http://www.debian.org/ |
 `. `'                          |
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