[kde-community] How Qt will stay Free; License update

[Michael Brade]

Hi Olaf,

thank you so much, this is really good news! :)

cheers, Michael

Am 13.01.2016 um 14:07 schrieb Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer:
> Dear KDE fellows,
> 
>  
> 
> today we were able to announce a revised agreement between the KDE Free
> Qt Foundation and The Qt Company:
> 
> https://dot.kde.org/2016/01/13/qt-guaranteed-stay-free-and-open-%E2%80%93-legal-update
> 
> 
>  
> 
> I am one of the two KDE people on the KDE Free Qt Foundation:
> 
> https://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php
> 
>  
> 
> Since not everyone will be familiar with the foundation, I am adding a
> bit of background here.
> 
>  
> 
> The KDE Free Qt Foundation is a legal entity, set up by KDE e.V. and
> Trolltech, the company originally developing Qt. It aims to safeguard the
> 
> availability of Qt as Free Software and already fulfilled an important role.
> 
> Trolltech was bought by Nokia, who sold Qt later to Digia. Digia then
> 
> transferred Qt to a sister-company “The Qt Company”. The contracts stayed
> 
> valid during all these transitions.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> The new agreement announced today means major improvements for us
> (more platforms; more Free Qt modules; inclusion of Qt Project; many
> small details).
> 
>  
> 
> The agreement also comes with a change to the licensing rules of Qt.
> 
> We have carefully checked them to ensure that all existing Free Software
> developers can continue with their Qt usage, and that the changes for
> authors of proprietary software are also reasonable.
> 
>  
> 
> I would like to highlight three details:
> 
>  
> 
> 1. Qt now uses GPLv2+/LGPLv3, but no longer LGPLv2.1. It is legally
> possible to use both in the same application, so our Frameworks can
> still be used.
> 
> 2. Compatibility with GPLv2 will be kept for all functionality currently
> in Qt, and for the core part of Qt (Essentials) and for the Applications
> inside Qt.
> 
>  
> 
> 3. We now allow that completely new Qt add-ons can be licensed under
> GPLv3 only. The alternative would have been to keep those separately
> from Qt, since they have a dependency to the Apache license (which is
> compatible with GPLv3, but not with GPLv2). We decided to have more
> functionality available as Free Software for those who can use it.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> The new agreement follows nearly two years of negotiations, with
> intensive scrutiny by KDE e.V. members and a helpful review by our
> lawyer, Till Jaeger.
> 
>  
> 
> I am very happy that we have finally concluded this.
> 
>  
> 
> Best regards, Olaf
> 
>  
> 
> 
> 
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