KBabel/win32: GNU gettext license

[Jaroslaw Staniek]

>>http://gettext.sourceforge.net/
>>
>>GPL license allows to link with nonGPL runtime libraries shipped with
>>compiler. That's unclear because we can pretty well consider unmodified Qt
>>as an runtime. 'Where's the boundary?' question looks like a philosophical
>>issue for me.
> 
> 
> The boundary is defined by the GPL, clause 3
> "However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include
> anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with 
> the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on 
> which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the 
> executable."
> 
> So in order to be able to link to a commercial Qt, that commercial Qt version 
> should normally be distributed along with one of the major components and not 
> along with the executable (kbabel)
 >
 > I think (but I could be wrong) that the difference here is that msvcrt is
 > normally distributed along with the Visual C++ compiler, and that Qt is
 > normally not distributed along with the compiler or any other major part of
 > the operating systme and that as such, you are not allowed to link to a
 > commercial Qt while you are allowed to link to msvcrt on the windows
 > platform.

Thanks for mentioning this.

I wonder if "Major component" is enough well defined anywhere... What if we 
can ship (what I also planned) KDElibs package together with Qt/win32 - which 
can be called _system_ package, _from_kde/win32_apps_point_of_view_, IMVHO.

AFAIK, the funny issue is that if we wanted to link against MFC (instead of 
Qt), nobody would oppose becasue it's shipped with msvc++ compiler ;(.

I do not try to find a clever workaroung for GPL, hmm... maybe GPL 3 will add 
some more evidence, but that's other story.


-- 
regards / pozdrawiam,
  Jaroslaw Staniek / OpenOffice Polska / Kexi Team
  Developers Wanted! Kexi 0.1 Beta 5 Released: http://www.kexi-project.org
  KDElibs/Windows: http://wiki.kde.org/tiki-index.php?page=KDElibs+for+win32