Re: Double Standard?

[David Johnson]

Chris Lawrence wrote:
> The bottom line is that Debian won't distribute KDE without clear,
> explicit permission from the authors to link their code (which they
> have licensed as GPLed without any exceptions) against Qt.  Debian has
> expected a clear license from everyone else whose software has been
> included, and I can't see where KDE is different.

My cynicism just kicked in again :-) So I am now doing a wee bit of
research...

I didn't check for every GPL application that uses Qt, only one example
is sufficient. The package licq 0.44-4, in stable, uses the Qt library,
along with being licensed under the GPL. It does not have any additional
clauses at all. I looked. I didn't find any.

Of course, I'm not currently running Debian at work, so I don't have any
means to extract licenses out of deb files, so I went to the licq
homepage and downloaded the current source. There exists the small by
finite possibility that the version of licq that Debian is distributing
has a disclaimer while the official and current licq does not. But I
doubt it.

So my question is this... Does Debian simply not like KDE, and
selectively targets it with legal pronouncements and banishment? Or was
someone sloppy by including licq? Is there a double standard? WTF?

David Johnson

Re: Double Standard?

[Terry Dawson]

David Johnson wrote:

> I didn't check for every GPL application that uses Qt, only one example
> is sufficient. The package licq 0.44-4, in stable, uses the Qt library,
> along with being licensed under the GPL. It does not have any additional
> clauses at all. I looked. I didn't find any.

If that was the case for 0.44-4 it has certainly been corrected in
current versions.
There is a clearly stated exception in /usr/doc/licq/copyright for the
licq-plugins-qt2 plugin.

Terry

Re: Double Standard?

[Mark Wielaard]

Hi,

On Mon, Jan 31, 2000 at 11:20:56AM -0800, David Johnson wrote:
> My cynicism just kicked in again :-) So I am now doing a wee bit of
> research...
> 
> Of course, I'm not currently running Debian at work, so I don't have any
> means to extract licenses out of deb files [...]

Everything you ever wanted to know about debian packages can be found
on . There you can find for every
package the Debian Changelog, the Copyright file, the currently open bug
reports, the original source code, the Debian diff file and the current
maintainer.

The license you are looking for is at:


> This program is licensed under the terms of the GNU GPL, with the
> exception that it may be compiled and linked with the TrollTech QT
> library without implying that any of the rights or restrictions
> associated with the GPL are applied to the QT library.

Cheers,

Mark

Re: Double Standard?

[David Johnson]

Terry Dawson wrote:
> 
> David Johnson wrote:
> 
> > I didn't check for every GPL application that uses Qt, only one example
> > is sufficient. The package licq 0.44-4, in stable, uses the Qt library,
> > along with being licensed under the GPL. It does not have any additional
> > clauses at all. I looked. I didn't find any.
> 
> If that was the case for 0.44-4 it has certainly been corrected in
> current versions.
> There is a clearly stated exception in /usr/doc/licq/copyright for the
> licq-plugins-qt2 plugin.

Curiouser and Curiouser. I looked again and I couldn't find it. So I
looked harder. There it was, hidden in
./licq-0.75.3a/plugins/qt-gui-0.70.4/doc, four levels down.
 
My apologies to the list. I had always assumed that licq dynamically
linked to Qt, instead of the apparent runtime linking that RMS
specifically allows. I figured if main.cpp did not have an exception,
then neither did the rest of the program (that's where I would put it at
the minimum). But licq is apparently two programs, one of which has an
exception, and the other that does not but whose configure script links
the two.

I will now go and hang my head in shame.

David Johnson

Re: Double Standard?

[Chris Lawrence]

On Jan 31, David Johnson wrote:
> I didn't check for every GPL application that uses Qt, only one example
> is sufficient. The package licq 0.44-4, in stable, uses the Qt library,
> along with being licensed under the GPL. It does not have any additional
> clauses at all. I looked. I didn't find any.

Please report these instances as bugs against the packages and
ftp.debian.org; if these are actual violations of the license, it will
be removed (whether part of KDE or not).  That may even include
removal from stable in 2.1r5.

As someone else pointed out here, licq does have the QPL exception
clause.  For the hell of it, I examined the copyright of every package
in potato I could find that depended on either libqt1g or libqt2
(excluding the trivial cases of the -dev packages).

tuxeyes (qt1): contrib.  Has a MIT/X-style license, and thus is Qt ok.

qweb (qt1): contrib.  GPLed w/o Qt exception; this appears to be a
  violation.  I am opening a release critical bug to that effect.

qcad (qt2): main.  GPLed with Qt exception.

licq-plugin-qt2 (qt2): main.  GPLed with Qt exception.

xexec (qt2): main.  GPLed, apparently w/o Qt exception.  Bug filed.

qps (qt2): main.  GPLed, apparently w/o Qt exception.  Bug filed.

xsidplay (qt2): main.  GPLed, with Qt severability clause.

xgmod (qt2): main.  Minimalistic license, so Qt ok.

regexplorer (qt2): main.  Appears to be QPLed itself.

qbrew (qt2): main.  MIT/X style license, thus Qt ok.

So, of 10 packages, 7 have the clause (or don't need one, since they
have minimal licenses that don't contradict the Qt ones).  The other 3
are likely to be removed very soon.

I may have missed some (I used apt-cache showpkg on the two library
packages; if there is such a thing as a "static Qt", it's possible
other packages include Qt code).


Chris
-- 
=
|Chris Lawrence| Get Debian GNU/Linux CDROMs|
|   <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>   |http://www.lordsutch.com/cds/   |
|  ||
|   Grad Student, Pol. Sci.|   Visit the Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5:   |
|  University of Mississippi   |   <*> http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/ <*>   |
=