On Fri, Oct 09, 1998 at 06:36:12PM -0700, Steve Lamb wrote: > >the last sentence, from "However, as a special exception" is particularly > >relevant here. > > Sooooo, if Qt were disttributed with the OS then it would fall under the > special exception? :)
Some people argue that it would. RMS argues that to wouldn't in the case of Linux at least, however none of that matters since Debian does not and will not ever make Qt part of Debian. Personally, I would just like the KDE people to admit that at least in some cases, linking with Qt isn't going to work with the GPL. Some of the core developers and all of the Troll Tech people refuse to do this because they don't want to deal with asking for permission. Or rather, they refuse to admit they need to. Even if some sign was handed down from some divine power saying that KDE needed an exception to link with Qt, they would not admit it even then. Truth is, both Redhat and Debian say that KDE does need permission. Redhat won't distribute Qt because they don't like it. Debian won't distribute Qt because it's non-free. At least on both Redhat and Debian, according to Slashdot the two biggest distributions, won't include Qt as a standard part of their distributions. On those distributions, Qt is not a system library. It could be argued that it's not on SuSE or Caldera either, but I'm not going to touch that argument now since the point is that at least SOMEWHERE, KDE linked with Qt can't be distributed. Now, I won't install Qt even for the parts of KDE I like. (I don't like KDE as a whole integrated answer to life, the universe, and unix GUIs) If Troll Tech does something like make Qt compatible with the stock GPL when linked with the stock GPL, I'll consider it. However, they are under no obligation to do so, and I'm not one of those who advocate forcing them to give away Qt. If harmony ever manages to see the light of day and KDE does not intentionally break KDE with harmony any time there's a good excuse to do so, I'll probably use those parts of KDE I like with harmony. This is a long way off I suspect. If I could code worth a damn, I'd be helping harmony rather than writing these silly emails. Instead, I'd rather see KDE available to anyone who wants to use it, including Debian users. I've offered several times to help KDE get the permission it needs to link Qt on slashdot and a couple more times on irc. If KDE is willing to try and fix the problem, I'm willing to help them even if I won't use the results myself. Why would I do this? Because KDE is too big a project, too useful to too many people, and all around too important to be killed because of uncertainties in licenses and people's stubbornness. So far, none of the core KDE developers has been willing to admit there is even any controversy to the whole KDE/Qt thing with the exception of Stephan Kulow. Ignoring the controversy won't make it go away. It won't make KDE any better. It won't make KDE any more popular. In fact, it makes more people reject the whole KDE project because it seems pretty clear that the only thing we're hearing from any of the core developers is that there is no problem and if there is we're imagining it. I know that if any code of mine were ported to KDE without my permission, I would be extremely pissed off about it. Whether I'd give permission or not, not asking would anger me quite a bit. What's wrong with "This software is Free Software and may be used according to the terms of the GNU General Public License version 2 or, at your option, any later version. Additionally, you may link this software with the Qt widget library written by Troll Tech AS, even for platforms on which use of the Qt library would normally be prohibited." That solves any question of whether or not you can link Qt. Of course, you'll still have to get permission for GPL programs which are ported to KDE, but I've already offered to help with that myself.
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