Matthew Palmer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > It's certainly an issue of bad wording; if instead of "under this license" > they had said "under the terms of this license", I'd be right. If they > replaced it with "as permitted by this license", you'd be right. As it > stands, the Annotations nudge, but I don't think they close the matter > properly. And they don't help in the useful cases, because Trolltech aren't > the copyright holder on anything that is affected by these discussions, and > hence the annotations aren't real useful.
Fortunately, it doesn't matter too much -- to be Free, I have to be able to distribute binaries. Distributing binaries requires me to distribute source under the QPL, so I have to give a more permissive license to somebody than I had. So I can't distribute a binary to the initial author under the same license under which I received the work from him. DFSG 1, 3, and 4 in combination require me to be able to do this. It's not enough for me to be able to get any two of those freedoms at a time, sacrificing the third. > A question for you (and pretty much orthogonal to which interpretation is > correct for the above point): do you think that the QPL requires patches to > be distributed under the terms of the QPL, or can the licence for > (source-only) distribution of the patch be any licence you choose? If exercising my full DFSG freedoms and distributing a binary, then I have to distribute source under the QPL. But to answer your specific question: if distributing *just* source patches, then I can license them to most others as I please. I don't think I can give them to the initial developer under the GPL, only under the weird permissive QPL3b license. I understand that you disagree with that last point. If you're right, then yes, I can distribute source only under any license I please. -Brian -- Brian Sniffen [EMAIL PROTECTED]