> Qt was originally licensed under terms which many people considered > not open source or not GPL compatible. I think a consequence of this > was that the GNOME project took off in order to develop an alternative > to the KDE desktop environment, which originally was developed with Qt > using the above licensing terms. Fortunately (to me, at least), > Trolltech revised the licensing terms and now Qt is GPL compatible. > You can say that there's only one version of Qt, that's the open > source version. If you use Qt in an open source project (that's GPL > compatible), then you don't have to pay any cash to the company that > owns the copyright to Qt. However, the same open source version of Qt > can also be covered by a business license. This means that if you use > Qt in a closed source, propriety product and you plan to distribute > that product for royalties, then legally you must obtain a "business" > license from the company that owns the copyright to Qt (translation: > pay the dough to get the go).
I've talked to a friend which works for a big company that uses Qt with the commercial license. He said that, even though one making patches to the GPL version might think that code is also GPL'd, Trolltech has the right to use that patch as part of Qt distributed with the commercial license. He also noticed that even though that may seem "unethical" at first, it isn't because: 1) Who makes the patch first "takes advantage" of who made the initial software; 2) Who makes the patch must be aware of that before making the patch, as it's also part of the dual-license agreement; 3) and most important, if Trolltech thinks the patch worth it, the patcher can be hired as a contractor to receive compensation for that patch, and to avoid litigation. So, with that in mind, some stuff I said in previous e-mails may be inaccurate (as some in this e-mail may also be, since IANAL). Ronan Paixão --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ To post to this group, send email to sage-devel@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sage-devel URLs: http://www.sagemath.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
