Re: Debian KDE philosophy
>
> As I read in some postings (slashdot.org and several other mailing
> lists) debian is planning not to distribute KDE (and qt) anymore.
>
> Could anyone tell me the reason why kde should not be distributed via
> the non-free-tree (ftp)... Netscape is available as well (and this is
> software what I call NONFREE in terms of GPL). What about a
> kde-installer.deb-package?
The problem is not that it is not free, but that the licenses it uses
conflict. The requirements of the GPL and the Qt-license cannot be
applied consistently to KDE with the Qt library, if Debian distributes
the binaries. For the KDE code, this could be resolved using a modified
version of the GPL. A bigger problem is that the KDE code uses and
includes other GPL-ed software, for which the respective copyright
holders should give their permission to change the license. What it
boils down to is that debian could be sued for distributing KDE binaries
with the current licenses.
> What annoyes (sp?) me is that people say "Linux needs a nice workspace"
> - and for me, kde is one - and then say, "well, kde is nice, but not
> free and therefore we dont want to distribute it". I dont want to start
> a flamewar here, maybe somebody could explain technical or legal-reasons
> to me.
Debian is about creating a free (in the GPL sense) operating system. I
fail to see how that can annoy anyone. If you don't care for this, it
is OK. But don't flame debian for trying to do just that. There are
plenty non-free solutions around to choose from.
HTH,
Eric
--
E.L. Meijer (tgakem@chem.tue.nl) | tel. office +31 40 2472189
Eindhoven Univ. of Technology | tel. lab. +31 40 2475032
Lab. for Catalysis and Inorg. Chem. (TAK) | tel. fax +31 40 2455054
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