Re: Trolltech GPL violation?
On Mon, Jan 02, 2006 at 01:50:54AM +0000, Andrew Suffield wrote:
> > 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).
The GPL says:
"The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for
making modifications to it. For an executable work, complete source
code means all the source code for all modules it contains, plus any
associated interface definition files, plus the scripts used to
control compilation and installation of the executable."
That clearly *excludes* compilers entirely, generic or otherwise. It
only includes scripts used to "control compilation", eg. Makefiles,
but not the build tools themselves (gcc, doxygen, luac).
It then says (and this tripped me up for a second):
"However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not
include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or
binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of
the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component
itself accompanies the executable."
Note that the list, "compiler, kernel, and so on", is not giving examples
of things which are excluded. Rather, it's listing things that *include*
those bits. Both the compiler and the kernel's header files are "distributed
with" the compiler and kernel. It's not the compiler itself that's excluded,
but the headers that accompany it--the compiler wasn't source to begin
with.
(If there's some other rationale for "the GPL explicitly includes such tools
as 'source'", I missed it.)
--
Glenn Maynard
Reply to: