KDE Policies to commercial apps/distributions

[Vadim Plessky]

On Tuesday 26 November 2002 3:03 pm, Waldo Bastian wrote:
|  On Tuesday 26 November 2002 12:35, Vadim Plessky wrote:
|  > Note:  I am not saying that we should prohibit usage of KDE in
|  > commercial distros, which charge somewhat $99-$129 per set.
|  > But I think we should have guidelines what is allowed , and what is
|  > "no-no". Comparing pluses and minuses above, I have impression that
|  > project like this more hurts KDE, and doesn't help at all.
|
|  KDE being open source means that we have very little control over how
| others can use KDE (Assuming they abide by the license) The only control we
| could possibly have is through the KDE trademark but as you might have
| noticed, Xandros, Corel and Lindows hardly ever refer to KDE so its not
| that forbidding them to use the KDE trademark would make any difference.

Xandros mentions KDE:
--------
http://www.xandros.com/kdeadv.html

OVERVIEW 
KDE is a powerful Open Source graphical desktop environment. It provides a 
logical, easy to use, and clean interface for computer users. KDE consists of 
many components that are used to build the desktop environment. These 
components also provide the framework upon which to build leading class 
applications. As such, KDE provides: 

* Beautiful contemporary desktop
* Many useful applications, games, and utilities
* High quality development framework

 KDE is a completely open Internet project. Development takes place on the 
Internet and is discussed in mailing lists, user groups, and online chat 
sessions to which everyone is welcome. 
[...]
--------

Lindows.com is member of KDE League (http://www.kdeleague.org/) so I think 
they do not hide the fact that thyse use KDE.

What we are lacking at a moment is a way to communicate with those companies.
And KDE Policy how to do it *right*.
It's clkear that kde-core-devel is not o.k. for such communication.
May be, we just need mailing list where would be possible to discuss issues 
like this?

|
|  So I don't think that there is much we could do if we would want to.

Indeed, there are two questions:
* do we want them to give respect to KDE?
* can we enforce some actions, if they reject to give credits to KDE?

|
|  Personally I have no objection to these companies, I think it's nice to
| see how these companies use the freedom that they have with KDE. I also
| think it helps to promote the qt/KDE API in general somewhat.

I wouldn't have any concern if they use KDE 3.x series (instead of KDE 2.2.x), 
and took care to install XFree86 and Qt correctly, so that anti-aliasing is 
enabled, and fonts rendered anti-aliased.

My first reaction when I saw screenshots on web sites of those companies was 
"What a crap! Do they call it _an aletrnative to Windows_?"
But thanks, God: I have KDE 3.1 running, and I know that I had much better 
desktop than those guys are trying to sell even 1 year ago.
So, IMO such "showroom" makes more damage to KDE than brings any kind of 
benefits (publicity, distribution channel, etc.)
And I am concerned with this ...

|
|  Cheers,
|  Waldo
|
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|  Kde-policies@mail.kde.org
|  http://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-policies

Cheers,
-- 

Vadim Plessky
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