[ Please don't Cc: me when replying to my message on a mailing list. ] Martin Konold: > So [Qt] is really free and can be well used for gpled sw. Well, yes, for some definitions of the word free. Free is one of those words that everyone likes to define for themselves. For Debian, the relevant question is whether the package can go into the main Debian distribution, or whether it should be put into contrib or non-free. The answer is found in the policy manual, chapter 2, "Package copyright" (see /usr/doc/dpkg/policy.html): All packages in the Debian distribution proper must be freely useable, modifiable and redistributable in both source and binary form.[1] It must be possible for anyone to distribute and use modified source code and their own compiled binaries, at least when they do so as part of a Debian distribution. Qt is clearly not suitable for the Debian distribution proper, since we can't modify it ourselves. It belongs to contrib or non-free, instead. As it happens, Troll Tech have said it's OK to put it into contrib. This is good, because then it goes onto more CD's. Packages that use Qt can't go into the Debian distribution proper, either: Packages [- - -] * which depend for their use on non-free or contrib packages[2] [- - -] may only be placed in the semi-supported contrib section of the Debian FTP archives (unless they need to be in non-free - see above). This means that in Debian, KDE goes into contrib. Too bad. There's a number of other toolkits that could have been used, such as V. I don't know about their relative qualities, but the copyright issue is enough to kill interest in Qt and KDE for a large number of people. -- Please read <http://www.iki.fi/liw/mail-to-lasu.html> before mailing me. Please don't Cc: me when replying to my message on a mailing list.
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