On Tue, Feb 01, 2000 at 10:27:08AM -0500, Raul Miller wrote: > > I share your feeling that things 'may not be effective'. But having a FAQ > > for the benefit of our users is surely a good thing. > > I'm including the draft. It's important to emphasize that this is > a draft. For example, where it mentions "kvt, kghostview/kgv, kdvi, > kmidi, kscd, or kfloppy": [..] Good, I have corrections.. => > =head2 Why doesn't Debian distribute KDE? > > Because KDE has been distributed under the GPL, but to make it work you > need to use Qt. And these licenses conflict. > > Background: About thirty years ago, when unix was written, computers [..] Too long. => The question was why we don't, not "will you give me a philosphy of free software lesson?" > =head2 Is it legal to distribute KDE under Solaris? > > No, because it's still the same combination of GPL and QPL code. Why this question? Seems irrelivant to me. > =head2 Doesn't QPL 2 let you distribute KDE? > > No. When QPL 2 was announced, it was advertised as the solution to this > license conflict, and this announcement convinced some distributors (such > as Red Hat) that it would be ok to go ahead and keep distributing KDE. > However, when it was released, it had failed to achieve GPL compatibility. Qt 2, not QPL 2. The QPL version is 1.0. > =head2 Why those package? This is a very good question. => > =head2 How in the world is KDE abusing the GPL, since they are the licensor? > > Two ways: one, by pretending that the GPL allows proprietary > redistribution, and two by pretending that since they can do this with > this with code they wrote themselves that they can also do this with > other people's code. The first part does not apply to the QPL. > =head2 If KDE is the wrongdoer, how could anything Troll Tech do change that? > > They work very closely with each other. And, essentially, Troll Tech > wouldn't have a commercial product without KDE. You don't talk about what Troll Tech could do here. They can change precisely two clauses in the QPL which would result in a GPL compatible license. These are the top of section 3 specifically the word "seperate" is a problem (but I'd rewrite the sentance) and 6(c) which also needs to be rewritten to allow conde not distributed to anyone at all to remain only in their hands. This of course doesn't change people's opinions of KDE, which is that they don't really care. The only fix for that is for KDE to show that they DO care and let their actions speak for themselves over time. > =head2 Have they refused to change their license? > > As far as I know: not yet. Some have informally said they wouldn't, but I don't recall exactly whom it was that said so. They might be more amenable to if 6(c) of the QPL were not there (a LOT of people have a problem with that clause..) > =head2 Why did Red Hat start distributing KDE? > > Because, supposedly, Troll Tech was going to fix the Qt license so that > it wasn't proprietary, and KDE would be using some other license than > the GPL. Do we have a statement that makes this a fact o is it just what we think? If we don't know it for certain we should not claim we do. => That said, AFAIK that is why. > =head2 Aren't you all just a bunch of paranoid trouble makers? > > Well.. no. Debian may at times be contentious, but to our knowledge > debian is the highest quality linux distribution available. Of course, you don't have to claim that is an opinion. ;> -- Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@debian.org> Debian Linux developer http://tank.debian.net GnuPG key pub 1024D/DCF9DAB3 sub 2048g/3F9C2A43 http://www.debian.org 20F6 2261 F185 7A3E 79FC 44F9 8FF7 D7A3 DCF9 DAB3 <Flood> can I write a unix-like kernel in perl?
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