Hallo Olaf, thanks for this comprehensive summary. I added a reference to it to the reddit thread.
Cheers, Mirko. On Aug 30, 2013, at 19:17 , Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer <[email protected]> wrote: > thanks for forwarding these comments. > > As a board member of the KDE Free Qt Foundation, I will give some quick > answers here while I consider how to communicate these facts to the wider > public. Please feel free to quote my answer, or to link to this email in a > mailing list archive. > > 1. The KDE Free Qt Foundation aims to protect all developers using the Free > Software called Qt. The contracts are therefore not limited to KDE. As one of > the largest volunteer-driven Free Software communities, KDE is well placed to > be the stewards of the interests of Free Software developers in general. > > 2. The LGPL licence of all current Qt releases allows use in both proprietary > and Free Software applications and contains to platform-specific > restrictions. > This licence grant cannot be retroactively taken away by Digia. In addition, > the KDE Free Qt Foundation can also relicense Qt under a different open > source > licence (such as BSD) for general, even more permissive use. The Foundation > agreed not do so as long as Digia continues to release Qt as LGPL and with > support for at least desktop Linux and Android (“Qt Free Edition”). > > 3. The contract with Nokia and Digia covers desktop Linux (X11, Wayland can > be > easily added in the future). Digia has signed a second agreement which also > includes Android (Necessitas) and is identical to the first agreement in all > other aspects. Both agreements prohibit Digia from releasing a sub-standard > version of Qt as “Qt Free Edition”. In other words: The desktop Linux version > cannot be incomplete compared to the Windows and Mac versions, and the > Android > version cannot be incomplete compared to the other mobile platforms. > > 4. The differences between the various platforms have massively decreased > during the last years. The same codebase is used for the various platforms, > with minimal platform-specific code paths. This makes it more easy for third > parties to provide support for platforms not officially included in Digia’s > LGPL > releases. We have opened discussions on whether to include the Windows and > MacOS platforms (first with Nokia, then with Digia), but we have not reached > any decisions yet given the legals pitfalls caused by the proprietary nature > of these platforms. For example, we do not know whether Microsoft or Apple > will prohibit or punish the development of LGPL-licensed libraries for their > platforms (cf. AppStore rules). Please feel free to contact me if you have > thoughts on this topic. > > The legal framework of the KDE Free Qt Foundation is now more than 15 years > old (see http://kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php). > During this time, Trolltech was bought by Nokia, and Nokia sold Qt to Digia. > We had anticipated such contingencies and included very strong legal language > in the agreement and managed to ensure the continued validity of the > protection in all such cases. In addition to protecting Free Software users > of > Qt, we have also accompanied various positive evolutions (relicensing to > LGPL, > inclusion of the Android platform, and especially the open governance of the > Qt Project). > > I invite developers using (or potential using) Qt to contact me with > comments, > doubts, questions or constructive feedback on our work. -- Mirko Boehm | [email protected] | KDE e.V. FSFE Fellow, FSFE Team Germany Qt Certified Specialist and Trainer
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