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

[Agustin Benito (toscalix)]

Hi,

great news. Many thanks.

Saludos

On Thu, Jan 14, 2016 at 8:37 PM, Michael Brade <brade at kde.org> wrote:
> 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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>>
>
>
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-- 
Agustin Benito (toscalix)
KDE eV member
Profile: http://es.linkedin.com/in/toscalix