Re: KDE/Qt Status in Debian dists
On Wed, Apr 07, 1999 at 00:45:31 +0000, Terry Hancock wrote:
> On the Hamm CDs, the "Qt" library required by KDE is not included for
> licensing reasons.
> However, the Troll Tech website claims the newer versions of Qt are "free"
> software,
Qt 2.0 will be licensed under the QPL 1.0, which is a license that is free
according to the Debian Free Software Guidelines, and thus is suitable for
inclusion in "main".
Qt 2.0 is currently in beta; it is not released yet.
> apparently resolving previous licensing conflicts. (?)
No. The analysis given in http://www.debian.org/News/1998/19981008 still
holds for a QPL-licensed Qt, as the QPL is not a GPL-compatible license.
There have been rumours that KDE's licensing terms will change though (e.g.
by explicitly allowing KDE to be linked against a QPL-licensed Qt (a la the
LyX license (http://www.lyx.org)), or by switching to a BSD-style license),
which would resolve the licensing conflict, and allow KDE in Debian (in main
once we have Qt 2.0). I am not aware of an official promise by the KDE
developers in this regard; does someone have a pointer?
> The Qt library debian package _is_ on the FTP site, but unfortunately,
> when I try to update the package from there using dselect, I get a cascade
> of dependencies -- basically dselect wants to upgrade my whole system to
> the Slink distribution. This would be okay, except for the downtime.
Aren't there KDE and Qt packages for Hamm in .deb format on ftp.kde.org?
(Or else, there's at least a Qt for Hamm at
http://archive.debian.org/debian-archive/dists/hamm/non-free/binary-i386/libs/).
> I'd prefer to get the "Slink" CDs, but will the Qt library be on them?
No. There was no free Qt yet at the time of Slink's code freeze; there isn't
one now yet. There is of course a Qt package for use with Slink in
dists/stable/non-free on the FTP sites.
HTH,
Ray
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