On Fri, Jul 04, 2003 at 06:41:43PM -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > As you say below, users on the Windows platform building binaries > linked to the QT non-commercial windows toolkit, and distributing them, > will be breaking the LyX GPL license.
You are right, but the critical point is 'distribution'. Everybody can have a native LyX/Qt on Windows without breaking any rule. Now look at the alternative: For a licence change you need the nod of every contributor. This means more than a hundred people worldwide. Not all of them are known anymore, not all of them are reachable and not all of them would bother to respond. So it is highly unlikely that the licence can be changed cleanly. Now if the 'current folk' just changes the licence without asking everybody, they will break the rules. So what you are actually proposing is that the current developers or whoever distributes LyX (including Kayvan, the Linux distributors etc) take some legal risk just for the benefit of a random Windows user that's neither able to compile LyX himself nor able to ask his colleague for help? Well. Even at Chrismas not every wish will be fulfilled... > Other contributors to this thread note the potential for LyX on the > Windows platform is in the "millions" (probably overstated). It seems > hard to escape the conclusion that a significant percentage -- probably a > majority -- of Windows installations will be binaries built in > contravention of the GPL. So what? Millions of people cheat with their taxes worldwide. Not my business at all. > Why? Because it is easily forgotten that coders on GPL projects are > often not only introducing "new" code, but also creating "derivative > works" of earlier contributions. Anything less than 100%, *very* formal > responses to relicensing--next to impossible--would leave the entire > project suspect. So we agree and I seem to have missed your point entirely... Andre', confused.
