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Not the only Cross-platform OSS/FS office suiteNot the only Cross-platform OSS/FS office suitePosted Sep 28, 2004 22:26 UTC (Tue) by AJWM (subscriber, #15888)In reply to: Even more important: only Cross-platform OSS/FS office suite by dwheeler Parent article: Marketing OpenOffice.org
Just because an app uses a non-free library on Windows (I assume you're referring to Qt/Windows in this case) doesn't make the app itself non-free. If it did, OOo wouldn't be free either, since the Windows version links to decidedly non-free Microsoft libraries.
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Don't be rediculous Posted Sep 29, 2004 14:51 UTC (Wed) by mark625 (guest, #13741) [Link] Sure OO.o links to Windows libraries, but it doesn't have to distribute them. They are already installed with Windows, and thus do not have to be licensed by OO.o. Qt/Windows is NOT distributed with Windows, and so it would have to be distributed with KOffice for Windows, and would therefore require (non-free) licensing of the Qt/Windows library code.That's exactly why Qt on Windows is not free. That is TrollTech's business plan. See their licensing matrix. Cheers!
Don't be rediculous Posted Sep 30, 2004 6:21 UTC (Thu) by aleXXX (subscriber, #2742) [Link] To develop an application with Qt under Windows you need a commerciallicense. Once you have the application, you can distribute the application together with the Qt library (I guess the dll only, or statically linked, but not the lib-file) (at least that's what I remember from reading the licensing terms). So you can develop free software with Qt under Windows and distribute your application together with the Qt library, but you, the developer, have to buy a license to do so. Alex
Don't be rediculous Posted Sep 30, 2004 9:09 UTC (Thu) by rjw (guest, #10415) [Link] But, it isn't free software if the user is unable to modify it - and modify it with no restrictions, including platform ones. If you make software depending on a non-free dependency, eg sun-only java features or Qt/Win32, it isn't really free.
Don't be rediculous Posted Sep 30, 2004 22:26 UTC (Thu) by gallir (guest, #5735) [Link] At the very right moment you distribute your program with some binarycode (or even source code) that cannot be freely modified and re-distributed it has lost its freedom, so it's not free software anylonger.
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