On Tue, Feb 01, 2000 at 08:16:36PM -0500, Andreas Pour wrote: > While I could respect your different reading of the GPL, I cannot see > how your reading of the GPL allows linking with XFree code but not Qt > code. To date, nobody has explained this to me, except by claiming > that the XFree code can be licensed under the GPL. When I went through > a thorough exercise of showing why this in fact can't be done (my > post bearing Message-ID <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>), nobody has > responded, perhaps b/c you agree that I am right.
The basic issue is that the XFree code doesn't impose any restrictions on the resulting program that the GPL doesn't already apply while Qt does impose some additional restrictions. Your first paragraph in the [EMAIL PROTECTED] message said: I think you stated at some other point that if a right is not granted you don't have it. I think we agree that under copyright law you normally do not have a right to make copies and redistribute. The BSD license says you can redistribute. To go from that to say you can redistribute under any terms, rather than continuing to distribute under the original terms, you want is IMHO a stretch. Maybe a court would rule so if the situation arose, but as you appear to be concerned about the threat of a lawsuit and/or complying with a social contract I would think this uncertainty would trouble you as well. The point is not that BSD code is being redistributed under any terms, but it's being distributed under terms which don't grant any rights beyond those which were originally present. Likewise, for the GPLed case, no rights are being asserted beyond those which were originally present. And (this is particularly important when talking about the GPL), the BSD license does not *remove* any of the rights which are available for the GPLed code. [This last issue doesn't matter for the BSD license by itself -- I've got BSD code running which I can't get the source for because it's being distributed under terms which don't give me a right to access the source code.] -- Raul
