[plug] KDE licence (was Debian was Mandrake)

[John Summerfield]

> On Sun, 27 Feb 2000, Beau Kuiper wrote:
> > On Sun, 27 Feb 2000, John Summerfield wrote:
> > > My reading of the document is that it describes what USERS can do and doe
> s 
> > > not constrain the copyright author.
> > I agree, People seem to forget that the licence the author gives to users
> > doesn't actually apply to the author! :-)
> No, I don't think anyone has forgotten. John just didn't read things
> carefully enough and thought we were discussing code for which the KDE
> team held copyright. The code we were discussing is that which the KDE
> team have licensed under the GPL from third parties.
> > even if the above were true, KDE developers will not come after you for
> > linking their programs with the library it was clearly designed for!
> No, but the third parties might very well go after the KDE team and anyone
> else who distributes KDE, since they have not given KDE permission to
> distribute modified versions of their code linked to Qt.

The objective of the GPL is to promote free code. Even if possible, I 
don't see that going after KDE developers would promote free code. Nor is 
there any obvious involvement of Dollar Bill.

If I can take the component parts and put it all together to get the same 
final results, I don't see that suing me is going to server anyone any 
useful purpose. Neither do I see it holding up in court, but then I'm not 
a lawyaer or judge, and I HAVE been astounded at some High Court decisions.

> 
> Also, since Troll Tech (copyright holders for Qt) do distribute KDE, it is
> arguable that someone could demand their right to license Qt under the GPL
> from Troll Tech as part of Troll's licensing of KDE to them. That person

That's a risk to TT, not to we users.




-- 
Cheers
John Summerfield
http://os2.ami.com.au/os2/ for OS/2 support.
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