[Konsole-devel] Embedded Konsole Ports - Was:Re: targeting OpenEmbedded at firmware environment on Motorola A780

[lars.doelle at on-line.de]

All,

i've googled a little around, and i'm not yet certain whether i find the
current situation a disaster or not and how to cope with this.

Various strains of konsole ports for embedded devices exists, of which
the qonsole and ekonsole are only the tip of the iceberg as they are
second or third generation derivates of the konsole. They are all
showing more or less (un)clearly the license and code.

I was aware that quite some illegal commercial "adoptions" exists,
but a growing public zoo of ports with more and more degenerating
license awareness could become an issue, if it is not already one.

Part of the problem is certainly too few copyright and license marks
in the headers of the konsole distribution itself. A typical head of the
konsole source states:

| Copyright (c) 1997,1998 by Lars Doelle <lars.doelle at on-line.de>
| This file is part of Konsole - an X terminal for KDE

A license is nowhere to be seen but in the topmost kdebase directory.
This was partially intentend, as there were some month where the
license for all the KDE programs was changed nearly daily to cope with
the latest QT/GPL compatibility issues and changing the license note
in all files by that frequency was nothing but a pain.

Now of course people copy only the stuff they need, and the topmost
kdebase directory is clearly not needed for a konsole port. Someone 
license-aware would still be able to track the sources back to the konsole
and could assume the derivate has to be under GPL, but cannot be sure
anymore.

Having worked with really old stuff, i can well imagine how hard this
can become in ten years to determine safely the legal situation for
any derivate.

Clearly, the headers should be reshaped for cases when a distribution
get ripped apart like in this case.

Actually, i would have need to write to any such port to ask them to
clarify the copyright in any case, as otherwise the konsole core would
gradually fall into PD and it would become harder and harder to
actually enforce the GPL for this work with all consequences.

Though i find it enjoyable, that the konsole has been picked up so well,
degrading and even only unclear licensing is really an issue.

Not clear how to cope with this, best. Part of the problem is clearly,
that the work is more and more picked up by people who do not
live in such a license-aware community and innocently make their
first steps.

The question is, which minimal standards should be tried to uphold and how.

-lars