2003 Linux Timeline: December [LWN.net]

2003 Linux Timeline: December

Posted Dec 17, 2003 16:10 UTC (Wed) by hingo (subscriber, #14792)
Parent article: 2003 Linux Timeline: December

Not to pick on Bruce, but I vote for the final immortal quote to be something about qt
being a problem, because it's GPL:-) After all, it is a historic turn of events that
someone would ever say such a thing!

henrik

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2003 Linux Timeline: December

Posted Dec 17, 2003 18:28 UTC (Wed) by lovelace (subscriber, #278) [Link]

Seconded. I couldn't believe he was actually saying that when I read it. I mean, isn't the GPL
supposed to protect the users rights more than any other "free" license? Why call it
"UserLinux" if what you're actually worrying about is companies' ability to write non-free
programs?

qt license

Posted Dec 17, 2003 20:47 UTC (Wed) by ken_i_m (guest, #4938) [Link]

Better re-read the licensing the code is released under.

http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/freelicense.html

"The Free Edition licenses do not allow the development or distribution of commercial software."

http://www.newsforge.com/software/03/12/16/0029234.shtml

"It is possible for us to make our system entirely royalty-free for solution developers, both Free and proprietary. This dictates some software choices: GNOME and PostgreSQL rather than KDE and MySQL, simply because of the way those products license proprietary developers."

As Bruce points out KDE is not the only project that does not have extra strings attached when it comes to proprietary developers. Additionally, KDE and MySQL are not the only projects with such strings. They are just two of the better known ones. The moral here is to read the fine print of the licensing attached to any and all code. Parse the wording thoroughly as they may well only tell you once.

UserLinux is the thin edge of the wedge to drive FOSS into the corporate desktop market. As such it is trying to gain a foothold in an environment where the ideals of FOSS are not just alien but viewed as hostile to their worldview of "self-interested market players".

cheers,
ken

qt license is QPL or GPL, your choice

Posted Dec 18, 2003 1:39 UTC (Thu) by bignose (subscriber, #40) [Link]

> http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/freelicense.html
> "The Free Edition licenses do not allow the development or
> distribution of commercial software."

That web page is incorrect. (And not just because it calls the GPL the "GNU Public License".)

The Qt libraries are available under the recipient's choice of the QPL or the GNU GPL. Software licensed under the GNU General Public License can be used and included and distributed in commercial software; it explicitly allows this. What it does not allow is the restriction of users' freedoms beyond the existing restrictions in the GNU GPL.

The fact that the author of the above web page doesn't know the difference between "commercial" and "proprietary" does not change the terms of the GNU GPL under which Trolltech have released their software.

qt license

Posted Dec 18, 2003 8:34 UTC (Thu) by hingo (subscriber, #14792) [Link]

Yes yes. I was not trying to imply, that Bruce's decision is completely illogical and
laughable. Having a proprietary-friendly Linux is ok with me, and GPL'd libraries is a
problem if you want to take that route.

I'm just saying, that when put in perspective, this development is truly historical. I mean
a quote like that would also encompass the historical facts of Qt once not being GPL,
all the arguments about that, leading to the birth of Gnome in the first place, a lot of
other things (some too nasty to mention here), and then the release of Qt as GPL. We
have gone thru all these things together, and now someone says that Qt is a problem
because it's GPL. In the short history of Linux, one could almost classify "the story
about the gnus and the trolls" as one of epical (is that a correct transformation of the
word epic?) magnitudes.

(And additionally we should not forget the fact, that Bruce being the person saying this
thing, put's some irony into the story. The greeks have Oidipus, we have Qt. Hmm...
perhaps that's not a good comparison, I don't see this as a tragedy. Forget that, it
doesn't fit.)

henrik