FLA

[Marc Mutz]

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On Thursday 06 February 2003 18:15, Cornelius Schumacher wrote:
> On Thursday 06 February 2003 16:57, Waldo Bastian wrote:
<snip>
> > I think it leads to a very murky licensing situation when people
> > include GPL licensed code in code that is licensed
> > "GPL+Qt-exception". That either constitutes unlawfull relicensing
> > and/or the exception part is void from that point on. Given the
> > average (lack of) licensing-awareness of KDE contributors, I think
> > this is bound to create problems down the road because of the lack
> > of distinction between GPL and GPL+Qt-exception.

Well, the implications are clear: You may only execute the right that=20
the Qt exception gives you if all of the GPL code that is linked into=20
the given application contains the Qt exception. Otherwise, the=20
resulting aggregate will be under the GPL and thus, the Qt exception=20
cannot be executed by the user.

Depending on the application, this might work reasonably well=20
(KOrganizer) or not at all (KMail, due to gpgme being linked in).

> The "GPL+Qt-Exception" licence works around the problem that Qt isn't
> considered a system library. That this makes it impossible to include
> GPL licenced code is a pity, but we have to live with that.

=2E..until we have GPL'd Win/Mac ports of Qt.

> > Instead of GPL+Qt-exception it might be clearer to use QPL or BSD
> > instead.
>
> This wouldn't fit the intentions of all developers (at least it
> wouldn't fit mine). Both the QPL and the BSD licence have some
> siginificant disadvantages compared to the GPL.
>
> I think we should add a standard "GPL+Qt-exception" licence to the
> licences on developer.kde.org and use that were appropriate. If KDE
> developers licensing-awareness isn't sufficient to make correct usage
> of these licences we should work on improving the licencing-awareness
> instead of making compromises with the licencing itself.

I agree whole-heartedly with both paragraphs above.

Marc

=2D-=20
If free-software authors lose the right to disclaim all warranties and
find themselves getting sued over the performance of the programs
they've written, they'll stop contributing free software to the world.
 -- Bruce Perens: Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution

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