Re: Consider banning KDE?
Henry Ficher wrote: All this is very interesting, but I got stuck on the first word: What on earth does IANAL stand for? I hope is not as lurid as it sounds. ;-)~ I Am Not A Lawyer. Fortunately, it is a lawyer and not a translator. Imagine that somebody asked what is "IANAT", and everybody answered him "I am not a translator"; His automatic response should be: "So why do you respond? Let other people, who are translators, or at least know the answer, respond"... -- Eli Marmor = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Consider banning KDE?
- Original Message - From: Henry Ficher [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, June 19, 2000 8:29 PM Subject: Re: Consider banning KDE? All this is very interesting, but I got stuck on the first word: What on earth does IANAL stand for? I hope is not as lurid as it sounds. ;-)~ No, it does not stand for "I am anal" ;-) I Am Not A Lawyer. Gavrie. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Consider banning KDE?
On Sat, Jun 17, 2000 at 11:45:56PM +0300, Ira Abramov wrote: Gnome are also a long way from a friendly GUI (I'm using the latest from Helix), but it's not as restrictive. can't explain it in words, but Gnome is more intuitive and flowing for me. Yalla yalla. Go tvtwm! -- believing is seeing [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.forum2.org/gaal/ = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Consider banning KDE?
Recently I switched to FreeBSD and decided to give GNOME a try. Built all gtk/gnome components from sources (using the excellent BSD ports system) - latest stable versions. Took me two days to realize GNOME is not nearly as stable as KDE1 is. While mostly, it works, various components (e.g., the help application) crash repeatedly and sometimes restarting X seems like the only option... I used to have the problem, at list in my case the problem appeared to be a bugy window manager, because onced I switch everything was solved. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Consider banning KDE?
This is a short range vs. long range conflict. In the short range, KDE is more stable, has more nice software, etc. But in the long range, what will happen to KDE and software based upon it? THE reason for Stallman's GPL is to vest with users of software the power to modify it and tailor it to their needs and fix bugs found in it. Even if Gnome is not stable today, it has better prospects of being powerful and stable in the long range, because of its pure GPL. Let's argue instead how much of the above powers are really given up (if any) due to using KDE's license/s instead of GPL. On Sat, 17 Jun 2000, Nimrod Mesika wrote: Ira Abramov wrote: I have reached a decision to do away with KDE on systems I'll install from now on. I may install applications based on QT if I must, but only from source I suppose. I wish useful products like Konqueror are ported to GTk somehow one day. feel free to comment, but don't make this into a religious war between KDE and other competitors, this is about license violations and ideologies. Question is, do we really have an alternative? I have used KDE1 on Linux for quite some time and have found it generally useful and stable. Recently I switched to FreeBSD and decided to give GNOME a try. Built all gtk/gnome components from sources (using the excellent BSD ports system) - latest stable versions. Took me two days to realize GNOME is not nearly as stable as KDE1 is. While mostly, it works, various components (e.g., the help application) crash repeatedly and sometimes restarting X seems like the only option... Now with KDE2 in beta tests, GNOME will continue playing catch-up... What do you think? --- Omer WARNING: By sending me unsolicited commercial/political/religious E-mail message/s (known also as "spam"), you irrevocably agree to pay me US$500.- (plus any legal expenses incurred by my trying to collect the amount due) per unsolicited commercial/political/religious E-mail message - for the service of receiving it. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Consider banning KDE?
On Sat, Jun 17, 2000 at 01:40:56PM +0300, Ira Abramov wrote: feel free to comment, but don't make this into a religious war between KDE and other competitors, this is about license violations and ideologies. Not to argue on which's better today, KDE was the best thing that happened to Linux in the latest few years, and the KDE team deserves all the respect for that. -- Best regards, Ilya Konstantinov a.k.a Toastie = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Consider banning KDE?
NM Took me two days to realize GNOME is not nearly as stable as KDE1 is. NM While mostly, it works, various components (e.g., the help application) NM crash repeatedly and sometimes restarting X seems like the only NM option... Seems you have bugs in your X installation. Never saw GNOME lock X, and I don't think it's really should be possible. Also, IMHO GNOME is much more visually-appealing than KDE, especially with good themes. KDE still tries to copycat windows look-n-feel, which might be good for Windows user, but not good for one that doesn't happen to think Microsoft everything-is-gray-and-square design is something to adore. And Helix GNOME has that blue flower - I love it :) -- [EMAIL PROTECTED] \/ There shall be counsels taken Stanislav Malyshev /\ Stronger than Morgul-spells phone +972-3-9316425/\ JRRT LotR. http://sharat.co.il/frodo/ whois:!SM8333 = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Consider banning KDE?
On Sat, 17 Jun 2000, Matan Ziv-Av wrote: and to the more politicly aware linux users I explain my other ideological problems with their cathedral practices and license problems. I guess you also don't use bind (cathedral), sendmail (cathedral), qmail (cathedral). Also, read lkml and see how many patches not accepted into the kernel only because linus/alan don't know the patch sender. I didn't disqualify the cathedral methodology on the whole. for mission critical servers and kernels it's not too much of a bad idea, but that's not the case with the linux kernel either. The GPL never was and never was meant to be some kind of a goal to reach or a flag to wave. The only reason the GPL was written is to promote the free software cause. Being pro-GPL is stupid. Being pro Free Software is good. KDE is free software. Qt-2.* is free software. Debian's position on illegality of kde is petty lawyerese from the distribution that's supposed to be farthest away from this stuff. QT is NOT free software, and as such it does not settle with GPL of KDE as it is distributed today. violating or bending the GPL is one thing, but taking others' GPL code from outside the KDE project when the clash is a known issue is REALLY rude. KDE is starting to look like windows. features stripped away from the GUI to dumb down the experiance, and a few products (the item mentions kISDN, haven't checked) are moving from GPL to Shareware. now I know it's not a sign for everybody else's opinions in the KDE developer community, but it's making me uneasy. therefore I avoid it. -- Ira Abramov (@- Gnu/Linux, Free Speech, RFC 1855 whois: IA58 //\ Peace, Love, Music, Slow Food www.scso.com v_/_ Citroens, Camels, Penguins, Cats = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Consider banning KDE?
Ira wrote: QT is NOT free software, and as such it does not settle with GPL of KDE as it is distributed today. According to RMS it is free (check www.gnu.org). The requirements are that users are allowed to distribute the code, modify the code, and distribute their modifications. All those are allowed by qpl. Hetz wrote: Nop. KDE is not free software, but Linus, ESR and others call them open-source. and open-source doesn't mean always free software. ??? All of kde is distributed under GPL, Artistic license, BSDL and similar. How is it not free software? -- Matan Ziv-Av. [EMAIL PROTECTED] = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Consider banning KDE?
On Sat, 17 Jun 2000, Hetz Ben Hamo wrote: (scroll to fourth item) http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=00/06/13/1642213 You're more then welcome to take a look at the kde-devel archive at: http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-develr=1w=2 to see their response. I remembered that I posted an email there to ask about their reply. You can read all of them here.. actualy on kde-licensing: http://lists.kde.org/?t=9605937562w=2r=1 and I see that they could not agree amongst themselves. they agree that in a strict "lawyer" POV it may be a problem, but not in spirit, and that basicly compiling the sources instead of taking them in ready-made RPMs is fine. it IS a bit grey, I agree. QT is NOT free software, and as such it does not settle with GPL of KDE as it is distributed today. Nop. KDE is not free software, but Linus, ESR and others call them open-source. and open-source doesn't mean always free software. KDE is GPL, QT is QPL. there is a slight problem there, but the more I read now I see I have jumped the trigger. Debian are really arguing on a techincality... http://lists.kde.org/?l=kdem=96074125928892w=2 I suppose Qt is no more "non-free" than pine, apache, Mozilla or Zope, so there's nothing hurting in this. not unless you stay stuck on a few small letters in the GPL... KDE is indeed looks similar to Windows in some parts. GNOME is doing the same.(and may I remind anybody the article that Miguel bragged about buying an Excel book to copy part by part all Excel look to GNOME?). Gnome are also a long way from a friendly GUI (I'm using the latest from Helix), but it's not as restrictive. can't explain it in words, but Gnome is more intuitive and flowing for me. People who are lots of years using Unix/Linux as their only platform (ot most of them) tend to forget one thing. Its very hard to teach user a gui it shouldn't be. I haven't tried Kleopatra yet, but between the current stable KDE and Gnome 1.2, I feel Gnome is more flexible and managable. we need spare newbies to test on with control groups. volunteers? :) If I'm going to move a user from Windows enviroment or I want to teach him Linux - I WILL put him/her in front of KDE screen and not run-level 3 login prompt. And thats the main reason why we have KDE Gnome - primary target == newbies! I'm giving a course to newbies this summer, and I'm not at all certain I'll give them a GUI at all till the 3rd lesson! then again, they might be scared away :-) ok, then Gnome... And regarding all the legalstaff - I had my share of fights with Marc, Ury, Mike Asaf :)) on OSS vs. closed? I hope they decide already :) -- Ira Abramov (@- Gnu/Linux, Free Speech, RFC 1855 whois: IA58 //\ Peace, Love, Music, Slow Food www.scso.com v_/_ Citroens, Camels, Penguins, Cats = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Consider banning KDE?
Oops, I mean that QT 2.0 is open-source, but its not free. You can use it for open source project, but once u start selling, u need to pay to Trolltech. Sorry, Hetz Matan Ziv-Av wrote: Ira wrote: QT is NOT free software, and as such it does not settle with GPL of KDE as it is distributed today. According to RMS it is free (check www.gnu.org). The requirements are that users are allowed to distribute the code, modify the code, and distribute their modifications. All those are allowed by qpl. Hetz wrote: Nop. KDE is not free software, but Linus, ESR and others call them open-source. and open-source doesn't mean always free software. ??? All of kde is distributed under GPL, Artistic license, BSDL and similar. How is it not free software? -- Matan Ziv-Av. [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Hetz Ben Hamo Intelligence Research [EMAIL PROTECTED] Aduva Inc. = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Consider banning KDE?
On Sat, 17 Jun 2000, Matan Ziv-Av wrote: Ira wrote: QT is NOT free software, and as such it does not settle with GPL of KDE as it is distributed today. According to RMS it is free (check www.gnu.org). The requirements are that users are allowed to distribute the code, modify the code, and distribute their modifications. All those are allowed by qpl. http://www.trolltech.com/products/download/freelicense/license.html I haven't dug into it, but there was something about the passng of copyright on patches to the trolls. other than that it seems to be GPL compatable. but IANAL. certainly more free than pine or Zope for that matter :-) -- Ira Abramov (@- Gnu/Linux, Free Speech, RFC 1855 whois: IA58 //\ Peace, Love, Music, Slow Food www.scso.com v_/_ Citroens, Camels, Penguins, Cats = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Consider banning KDE?
IANAL, and I would love to get into the guts of the licensing
problem. The fact that KDE/Qt is not GPLed does not bother me per se
(since I don't develop KDE-related stuff), but if they violate GPL
that's a big problem that might lead me to dropping KDE indeed.
However, the slashback article contains a statement that KDE violates
the rights of the authors of GPLed components and patches included in
the distribution. However, there is no good explanation or example of
that, and that's what I'd like to see.
GPL seems to be unequivocal on the following:
"If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the
Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate
works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to
those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when
you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work
based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the
terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to
the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who
wrote it."
I don't think there can be an argument that KDE is distributed as one
piece. However, conceivably one can argue that there is Qt and a
collection of programs that are designed to work with it, and it is
the latter that is KDE. IMHO (IANAL!) this is weak, and my
understanding is that KDE without Qt is not GPLed either.
I still don't understand the following though. The argument is that
KDE disregards the fact that some s/w ("patches") contributed to it is
GPLed. The people who contributed the patches etc knew in advance it
would be used in KDE, linked with Qt, etc. Note item 10 of GPL:
"10. If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free
programs whose distribution conditions are different, write to the
author to ask for permission. For software which is copyrighted by the
Free Software Foundation, write to the Free Software Foundation; we
sometimes make exceptions for this. Our decision will be guided by the
two goals of preserving the free status of all derivatives of our free
software and of promoting the sharing and reuse of software
generally."
It is conceivable that by contributing to KDE the s/w authors allowed
- implicitly or explicitly - KDE to use their products, and so KDE is
not technically in violation of GPL. This could have caused the
allegations of "violating the free software spirit". The latter is
understood differently by different groups, and can be perceived as a
lame punch when no actual wrongdoing has taken place (I said
"perceived", didn't I?). This might explain why Red Hat, who certainly
can afford a lawyer or two now, despite the dismal stock performance,
have no problem with that. Has any of the contributors complained that
their rights have been violated?
This turned out long. Sorry. To summarize, KDE's using non-GPLed
software is not a grounds for a boycott in itself. They could have
chosen Qt as the best or the most suitable at the time, for technical
reasons. If they violate GPL, it's not enough to uninstall it - the
instructions in http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl-violation.html should
be followed, I suppose. However, violating GPL is different from
violating "free software spirit", the definition of which depends on
who you talk to.
--
Oleg Goldshmidt [EMAIL PROTECTED]
"Inventions ... cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."
T. Jefferson.
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Re: Consider banning KDE?
Hi, Nimrod! On Sat, Jun 17, 2000 at 04:08:25PM +0300, you wrote the following: Recently I switched to FreeBSD and decided to give GNOME a try. Built all gtk/gnome components from sources (using the excellent BSD ports system) - latest stable versions. Took me two days to realize GNOME is not nearly as stable as KDE1 is. While mostly, it works, various components (e.g., the help application) crash repeatedly and sometimes restarting X seems like the only option... The uptime of my Gnome session at work is about 40 days, and I see no reason why it shouldn't stay up for 40 more days or 80. (After that I'll probably want to upgrade. :-) And that's not even the stable 1.2 release. So much for Gnome instabilities. (And boy do I abuse this machine -- it has 128 MB of RAM, and I'm curently about 320 MB into the swap; I have 8 desktops, 7 of them are full with applications, and indeed almost all of them I use all the time.) I don't know what kind of problems you had, but it's a very common theme of messages -- KDE users installing Gnome and complaining how unstable and bloated it is, and Gnome users installing KDE and complaining about the exact same thing. I think we've seen many such messages on this list alone, and definitely Slashdot is full of them. It's a very simple effect -- a KDE user that loves his KDE, and installs Gnome just to prove himself how right he is in his choice and how Gnome sucks, and vice versa of course. And the same in many other areas in life. We're human... -- Alex Shnitman| http://www.debian.org [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] +--- http://alexsh.hectic.netUIN 188956PGP key on web page E1 F2 7B 6C A0 31 80 28 63 B8 02 BA 65 C7 8B BA NOTE: if this message has reached you in error, or if you would simply like to be removed from our mailing list, please call the 800 number listed above and slowly speak and spell your e-mail address so that we may process your request promptly. Thank you! -- Excerpt from a spam letter = To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
