KShred / artistic license in kdelibs

[Andreas Pour]

Waldo Bastian wrote:
> 
> >On Sat, Nov 09 2002 at 05:55:59pm +0100, Tim Jansen wrote:
> >>  Hi..
> >>
> >>  I just discovered that the files kio/kio/kshred.* in kdelibs are under the
> >>  artistic license, at least that's what the header says. According to the FSF
> >>  the old artistic license is not GPL-compatible.
> >
> >Why would that be a problem? Is it linked to anything GPLd?
> >Notice that Qt's QPL is compatible with the AL.
> 
> It should be LPGL because it is part of a library. See also
> http://developer.kde.org/documentation/licensing/policy.html

Well this is a slippery slope.  Technically your running copy of Qt must be GPL
to run with KDE, since most apps are GPL.  This means that technically you need
a separate Qt library that's licensed under the QPL for proprietary apps, but
that would hold also for kdelibs, since the one linking to Qt must be GPL (since
Qt must be GPL to link to the apps).

That said, I don't buy the FSF's arguments on what is and is not
GPL-compatible.  They are internally inconsistent.

> >>  So shouldn't it either be re-licensed or removed?
> 
> Yes, it should. Preferably relicensed but otherwise removed. Removing
> it is bad because it breaks backwards compatibility. I suggest you
> ask Andreas whether he wants to change the license to either LGPL,
> BSD or X11.

I don't really care as long as the disclaimer is what I have it now.  I think
the one for X11 and BSD in particular are woefully inadequate.

Ciao,

Dre