Re: KDE liscence question
On Sat, Jun 12, 1999 at 01:32:47PM +0200, Francesco Tapparo wrote:
> The best solution would be to not distribute KDE.
that's not a solution, it's what we have to do. we are not legally
permitted to distribute KDE in debian.
> But if you really really want to put KDE in Debian, you can do the
> following:
>
> remove all the GPL'd code copyrighted by non KDE-people, and the
> redistribute the modified code. Moreover remove all the problematic
> code (for non commercial use code etc.). Then we can distribute the
> remaining code.
no, we can't. even if all the code written by non-KDE people were
removed we still couldn't distribute the remainder with Qt unless they
gave us permission to do so. they have consistently ignored requests to
provide that permission.
secondly: there would be a lot of work in removing large parts of the
code...there would be a lot of work just in determining which parts can
stay and which have to go. who's going to do that work?
thirdly: with a lot of KDE removed, would it still be correct to call it
KDE? i would consider it to be deceptive if we claimed to have KDE when
we really only had parts of KDE.
there should be a FAQ on this tiresome subject. it comes up way too
often. The fact is that the licensing problem wont be resolved until
KDE and/or Qt do something about it. They seem to be making some
progress in doing that. there's not a lot that debian can do until that
happens except encourage them to do so.
craig
--
craig sanders
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