( was legal question )

[Serge Lussier]

Jerry L Kreps wrote:

> Bernd Gehrmann wrote:
> >
> > On Sat, 12 Feb 2000, Jerry L Kreps wrote:
> > > as long as your don't  sell or give your binaries to a third
> > > party you can use GPL tools till the Sun stops shining. If,
> > > on the other hand, you are distributing the binaries to
> > > individuals who are NOT working for your company, then you
> > > must release your modified source code  with the binaries or
> > > give the source to anyone who asks for it AND you must
> > > purchase a Qt license to continue using KDevelop for
> > > commerical production.  IMHO, but IANAL.
> >
> > Nonsense. <snip the rest of aa non-answer>
> >
> > Bernd.
>
> IYNSHO...
>
> Th First 5 conditions of the QPL are not listed, but
> condition 6 of the QPL EXCLUDES selling  any developed
> applications for more than the cost of distributrion and
> prohibits distributing  applications WITHOUT the source
> code.  That effectively prevents a company from selling
> applications that contain trade secrets and propriatary
> information embedded in code IF they want to keep secret
> such propriatary information.
>
> 6. You may develop application programs, reusable components
> and other software items that link with the original or
> modified versions of the Software. These items, when
> distributed, are subject to the following requirements:
>
>     a. You must ensure that all recipients of
> machine-executable forms of these items are also able to
> receive and use the complete machine-readable source code to
> the items without any charge beyond the costs of data
> transfer.
>
>     b. You must explicitly license all recipients of your
> items to use and re-distribute original and modified
> versions of the items in both machine-executable and source
> code forms. The recipients must be able to do so without any
> charges whatsoever, and they must be able to re-distribute
> to anyone they choose.
>
>     c. If the items are not available to the general public,
> and the initial developer of the Software requests a copy of
> the items, then you must supply one.
>
> Jerry
>
> Additional information sources:
>
> http://www.qtarch.intranova.net/README
>
>         We, Jeff Harris and Klaus Ebner, are the owner of
> the source for
> Qt Architect.  We intend for the source to remain freely
> available to the Qt
> community.  Qt Architect is distributed under the Gnu
> General Public
> License.  Qt Architect can be freely distributed, providing
> that this file
> be contained in the distribution
>
> http://www.troll.no/qtfree.html
>
> In order to support this effort, and to spread usage of Qt
> around the world, we have released the Qt for Unix/X11
> library free of charge for development of free software for
> X11. We call this the Qt Free Edition.
>
> In doing this, we seek to bridge the gap between the free
> software and commercial software worlds. We believe that
> such bridging is absolutely necessary if free software is to
> ever become a major player on desktops around the world.
>
> The Qt Free Edition (version 2.0 and later) is released
> under the Open Source license QPL. The Qt Free Edition may
> be freely copied and distributed, put on ftp-sites and
> CD-ROMs etc. Qt Free Edition is provided with no warranty
> and no support.
>
> http://www.troll.no/qpl/
>
> Included below is version 1.0 of the license used for
> version 2.0 of the Qt Free Edition. The license is called
> the Q
> Public License (or "QPL"), and qualifies as an Open Source
> license. It is thus appropriate for people wishing to write
> software under the Open Source model where all source code
> to the software is made available to all users and can
> be freely modified and redistributed.
>
> The QPL prohibits development of proprietary software. For
> Qt our Qt Professional Edition product is available for
> this.
> You may use the QPL to license your own software. We feel it
> is particularly well suited for anyone who wants to
> run an Open Source project and still have the possibility to
> earn some money to eat from sales to closed source
> commercial developers.

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Sorry if the above text is in HTML... Actually I don't know -
I have no ways in Netscape to know if it is HTML or ASCII.
( And Netscape prevents to use the gpm copy-paste with my third mouse
button.)

Anyway

First  thank you all of you who anserwed my question. I'm still scewed
but I
think I will be ok.

One thing I don't want is to hurt the (Q/L)GPL  "philosophy" in my heart
and in my
soul.

What I understand is that :
- I cannot uses QTFree for writing software which I won't distribute.
   -> I may separate the GUI from my hidden code, then release
         the GUI code as a library ( which will be VERY useless! ).
         But what happen with my program in its final form if I use the
public
         library ? It's a circular confusion !
         If this not hurt QPL, then the base libs of QTfree are also
free for use. (???)

- I cannot write QTFree software for explicit commercial profits.
  -> I am not using my program for commercial use / profits.

That's it.
In conclusion, I cannot use QTFree in my condition without hurting QPL.
What I'm going to do is forget QT for my project and continue with my
first
idea: Our Java license.

Thank you all. -;)

Serge Lussier
ICQ#53409121