On Fri, Dec 18, 1998 at 09:24:28AM -0500, Kevin Forge wrote: > Joseph Carter wrote: > > <Sniped a Damed good post> > > Keep it up. Just curious. Is GPL compatibility essential for > putting QT & KDE in Debian main ?
It's essential for burying this license issue once and for all. It's not essential for Debian per se, other than that anything GPL will require the author's permission for us to distribute it at all. This is because the GPL is simply unaware of other free software licenses and is written to be compatible with itself (the only non-BSDish license of the time it was written) and that means it's limited to licenses which don't impose any other restrictions, or any different restrictions like those found in the Artistic license. > Or would a "simple" GPL-and-link to-QT License alteration sofice ? For Debian this is all that is needed. But GPL compatibility would solve the problem much more cleanly and the results would be better for KDE as anyone could take pretty much any Free Software out there and make a KDE aware program out of it using Qt, even in cases where the author is long lost and nobody has heard from the author in years. > I ask because the only item of concern for KDe are those few apps which > have some GPLed code from other developers built in. ( KFloppy comes > to mind ). Not just kfloppy. kdvi comes to mind as an example of having authors which can't be reached. Also you might be aware of kgimp, written but not released due to the GPL license compatibility. I really think GPL compatibility is in everyone's best interests as it will cause more Qt-using software to be written which might in turn cause more sales for Troll Tech. It's also a big win for us because we have the wealth of GPL software which can be ported to Qt. > Can someone compile a listing of those authors for so they can all > be asked to allow such a provision ? I personally can't see why any > would refuse. Those who did would likely be a small minority with a > limited amount of code. I.e. Somebody could rewrite those sections. There are many, I have a partial list but only a partial list and not all of it includes email addresses for authors. A few email addresses I have bounced too. All in all, it's not so easy to do it this way. Almost easier to rewrite the components used where possible. This would rightly suck and I hope to make it unnecessary. > Nobody seems to have noticed but there is a QPL-0.92 at > HTTP://www.troll.no/qpl now. I've noticed it (was emailled about it) and it has a few problems, I will be working on them soon as the new problems have provided me insight on how best to fix the older ones. => > PS : Commercial software has production schedules. When is QT-2.0 due ? > > > -- > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > -- NO ONE expects the Spanish Inquisition!
