On Mon, Mar 17, 2003 at 02:48:52AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote: > > I think you have a valid point; at the same time, we should have expressed > > it at the time Troll was drafting the current QPL. > > As you well know, the role of "spokesman for Debian" was arrogated by > Joseph Carter, who failed to, as I recall, accurately convey to > TrollTech the concerns about the QPL being expressed at the time. In > fact, so far as I know we have no record of his correspondence with them > on this issue.
No disputes there; however, it was Debian's responsibility to ensure that our spokesman -- official or not -- was accurately reflecting our concerns and communicating back do us. Failing that, Debian should have replaced him -- or at least had some other people participate in the discussions. So I don't think it's entirely a case of being able to pin it all on Joseph; the rest of us should have seen it coming and done something about it. (I include myself in that group) > > Now is, I think, too late to go back on that decision. There is value > > in being trusted. > > I think TrollTech sent a very strong message, and made a good move, when > they decided to dual-license Qt under the QPL and the GPL. Agreed 100%. > They were big enough to admit that they erred with Qt's licensing > initially, and they did not lose the respect of the community. Indeed, I think they did lose a lot of respect, and people continue to harbor ill will. In one surprisingly candid post[1] from Miguel de Icaza in response to a Petrely article critizing Gnome that ran on Slashdot, Miguel stated: "Those with long-term visions believe strongly that the foundation for building applications on Linux should be royalty free so Gnome is a good choice there." ... "Some people want gnome because it makes sense license-wise (Red Hat and Sun seem to be concerned about *this* particular issue)." [1] http://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2003-March/msg00026.html Now, obviously I don't agree that a GPL license is a problem or imposing royalties on anyone (where THAT came from is anyone's guess). But if someone like Miguel misunderstands, I don't think that Troll has fully removed the stigma from their actions yet. > KDE in particular continues to thrive. > > So why cannot we be big enough to admit that, if we have officially > declared the QPL a DFSG-free license (a declaration of which I can find > no evidence), that we erred, and that we recommend people follow > TrollTech's example and dual-license their works under the QPL and GPL > (with the footnote that many other DFSG-free licensing arrangements are > possible, and they should feel free to contact us)? I must admit, I'm beginning to see it your way :-) Do we have any idea how much and what software is licensed under QPL only, with no dual-license provision? -- John