Tim Smith <[email protected]> writes: > In article <[email protected]>, Alan Mackenzie <[email protected]> > wrote: >> Not at all. It's equally likely, in fact more likely, certain personages >> wish to sustain the illusion that it's "quite complex", and "possibly >> dangerous", for reasons best known to themselves. Simply reading it is >> sufficient to see its simplicity. What is complex is the copyright law >> under which the GPL must operate. >> >> Software writers of good faith have no difficulty at all with the GPL. >> Only to those seeking loopholes in it in order to violate its intentions >> is there any "danger" or "complexity". > > The KDE developers were operating in good faith when they dynamically > linked to non-GPL Qt. This is allowed under GPLv2, because Qt was > something normally distributed with the components of the operating > system on which KDE ran. > > But the FSF threw a fit over this, until the makers of Qt changed the > license.
Huh? Qt was not merely licensed "non-GPL" but non-free. KDE relied on the non-free Qt as a crucial infrastructure, so the FSF strongly recommended not using KDE. In a similar vein, the FSF strongly advised against using Java as long as it was licensed non-free. And other software. That has nothing whatsoever to do with "loopholes" or "complexity" in the GPL. It has to do with non-free software. The FSF stuck to its principles, and the makers of Qt decided to release it under a free license after all. Where is your problem with that? -- David Kastrup _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
