Happy 15th birthday, free Qt

Posted May 20, 2015 19:50 UTC (Wed) by dlang (guest, #313)
In reply to: Happy 15th birthday, free Qt by josh
Parent article: 20 years of Qt

similar arguments could be made about how MySQL wasn't OpenSource, in spite of the fact that it used the GPLv2. They sure made enough noise about how you had to buy a license to use it for anything commercial.

Happy 15th birthday, free Qt

Posted May 20, 2015 20:17 UTC (Wed) by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946) [Link]

Well no. MySQL was free and open source software regardless of the quibbles over their interpretation of licensing and general business model.

Happy 15th birthday, free Qt

Posted May 20, 2015 23:34 UTC (Wed) by JoeF (guest, #4486) [Link] (7 responses)

Hmm, sorry, no.
MySQL used the GPL. You can of course use GPL'ed code in your own product, even in a commercial product. You just may have to make your product GPL, too.
For customers who didn't want that, MySQL offered their commercial license.
At no time were you required to buy a MySQL license for your commercial product, as long as you complied with the terms of the GPL.
I would expect people on LWN to know these kinds of things...

Happy 15th birthday, free Qt

Posted May 20, 2015 23:39 UTC (Wed) by andresfreund (subscriber, #69562) [Link] (6 responses)

For a while there was quite some disagreements from the mysql side to what it meant to use their client library, even if that was only used via php or similar. Some mysql employees even argued that implementing their wire protocol would not put enough distance inbetween a closed commercial product and mysql.

> I would expect people on LWN to know these kinds of things...

Weee!

Happy 15th birthday, free Qt

Posted May 21, 2015 0:01 UTC (Thu) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (4 responses)

Maybe, but the musings of MySQL empoyees have no impact on whether GPL'd software is free software.

Happy 15th birthday, free Qt

Posted May 21, 2015 1:50 UTC (Thu) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link] (3 responses)

But it does have an impact on the chances that they will sue you. Which is a good reason to stay away from people (and their software, no matter what the license) who think like that.

Happy 15th birthday, free Qt

Posted May 22, 2015 6:30 UTC (Fri) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (2 responses)

By that logic, SCO made the Linux kernel non-free.

Happy 15th birthday, free Qt

Posted May 22, 2015 18:55 UTC (Fri) by dlang (guest, #313) [Link]

That's exactly what they were trying to do, and they did sue people over it.

If they had not been slapped down in court (and by IBM) the way they were, they would have made the kernel non-free

Microsoft has effectively make Android non-free at this point in that they are making more money from their Android Patent shakedown than they are from Mobile Windows.

but there is a substantial difference between third parties like Microsoft making statements and the copyright owners/developers making statements. The latter case is much more significant.

Happy 15th birthday, free Qt

Posted May 25, 2015 10:43 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

They didn't *make* it non-free, they *claimed* it was non-free. Unfortunately, under the US legal system, that's often "a distinction without a difference" :-( from the victim's point of view. Hence MS's Android shakedown - if you fly the Android flag you're inviting the MS pirate to attack :-(

Cheers,
Wol

Happy 15th birthday, free Qt

Posted May 21, 2015 12:51 UTC (Thu) by paulj (subscriber, #341) [Link]

There are definitely lawyers out there who will tell you that if code A depends heavily and specifically on code B for its function, that code A may then derive from code B, regardless of implementation technicalities. Which would mean the authors of code B get some rights over code A.

It was very surprising (and disappointing) to me when I first heard that. I thought that that clear technical boundaries would be meaningful to the law. That, e.g., the case where A was using B via function calls was clearly different enough to say a case where A was using B via message passing and that this would make a difference to the lawyers. However, the lawyers (corporate counsel) didn't really care about that.

I've since spoken to a different lawyer about this manner of them looking at software at a much more abstract level, potentially ignoring the technical details that seem important to programmers. That lawyer told that that is what they are trained to do, and that that is what the courts will do.