[bt-devel] Licensing

[Daniel Glassey]

On 12 Jun 2000, at 16:52, Joachim Ansorg sent forth the message:

> Hi!
> 
> On Mon, 12 Jun 2000, you wrote:
> > Hi, 	I don't know if anyone has followed the problem with Debian
> > and KDE because of the incompatibility of the GPL and QPL(Qt
> > licence). afaik bibletime is covered by the pure GPL so it's going to
> > be in the same boat unless it is changed.
> 
> Could you please explain what the problem is ?

I'll do my best ;)
The GPL says (http://www.fsf.org/copyleft/gpl.html)
'
2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it, thus 
forming a work based on the Program, and copy and distribute such modifications 
or work under the terms of Section 1 above, provided that you also meet all of 
these conditions: 
b)  You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in 
    part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be 
    licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this 
    License. 
These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. 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. 
Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to 
work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is to exercise the right to control the 
distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program. 
In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the 
Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume of a storage or 
distribution medium does not bring the other work under the scope of this 
License. 
'

This means (AFAIK) that an app that links with Qt must either be distributed 
separately from Qt or include Qt along with itself all under the GPL.
I haven't found the exact reason, but people seem agreed that the QPL license 
doesn't allow you to relicense with the GPL (which is fair enough).

Afaict this means you can't distribute statically linked binaries and the app can't 
be part of a distribution.

> I do only know that it can't be used in comapnies with current license, right?
> But why is it a problem now?

probably because I'd like to package bibletime and get a decent bible program 
as part of Debian and have only recently found out what all this is about ;)

> AFAIK it wasn't an issue before. 

I think it's probably been an issue, it's just that it's never come up.

> Is it only a problem with Debian?

They seem to the only ones that have a problem (everyone else is burying their 
heads in the sand pretending nothings wrong or interpreting things correctly 
depending on your point of view).

> > (I'll try and explain if someone wants me to).
> >
> > 	Would it be possible to change the license of Bibletime by adding
> > the exception:
> > 'As a special exception, you have permission to link this program with
> > the Qt library and distribute executables, as long as you follow the
> > requirements of the GNU GPL in regard to all of the software in the
> > executable aside from Qt. ' ?
> 
> Last time this was on the KDE-Devel list. But isn't it forbidden to use QT in
> companies using the free QT license? Or am I wrong here?

I think so. I think that may be the problem. AFAIK you can make money from GPL 
programs but you must keep the source available (the free speech thing).

> > This comes from http://www.fsf.org/philosophy/license-list.html as
> > the solution to the issue.
> >
> > Thing is I assume that a license change like is would require consent
> > by all of 'The Bibletime Team'. And the consent of the original
> > coders of ktipofday and any other GPL'd code from other sources if
> > it is to be included.
> 
> KTipOfDay is from the KDevelop team.
> In 0.3 we use some code from Konqueror and KDevelop.

This may be a problem.

> In 0.2 we used code from KDevelop, KHexEdit and perhaps some other programs.
> 
> > After further checking it also looks like swords license needs
> > modified (to allow bibletime to be linked with it and Qt). I haven't
> > found yet what a suitable exception is, but will let you know if you
> > like when I do.
> 
> SWORD doesn't use QT so it's not linked to QT ;-)

Bibletime does though! This one came up with Debian before. Apparently GPL'd 
libraries don't like being linked with non-GPL-compatible libraries (otherwise 
they could be used in a proprietary product). When bibletime links sword and qt 
together in one package all the licenses need to be compatible.

Hope this helps.

Regards,
	Daniel