[kde-community] Repeating concers regarding the KDE Free Qt Foundation
Mirko Boehm
mirko at kde.org
Sun Sep 1 13:32:47 BST 2013
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 <ojschmidt at kde.org> 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 | mirko at kde.org | KDE e.V.
FSFE Fellow, FSFE Team Germany
Qt Certified Specialist and Trainer
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