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Allmost all of this windows developers release their material in a closed source fashion (you won't change this overnigth just because they are using Linux, is windows culture), then they have to pay Troll Tech money.

Then making Delphi not royalty free (thus changing their policy..., I doubt Borland want this)

"Not royalty-free" in what sense? The Pricing And Availability page for Qt says that

There are no royalties, run-time licenses or other additional costs. You can distribute your Qt-based programs either statically or dynamically linked without any additional charges.

I.e., you have to pay Troll Tech money to get Qt Professional edition, which lets you sell closed-source software, but you do not have to pay them per copy of that software sold.

Ouch. Poor micro~1. They have the "La Service de la Répression des Frauds" unleashed on them. In the international tax-dodging world, these guys are known as the pitbulls. If you ever try to claim you work for a company in the British Virgin Islands, or any other tax haven, you can be sure your dossier will end up on their desk. Then you can be sure of paying up or going to jail.

The SRF is known for creating teams of elite investigators to research the toughest white collar criminal cases in France. They are well funded, probably they have a budget bigger than the tax revenue they recover (but they make up for it by scaring all the little fry into being more honest).

M$ was put on notice last year of a preliminary investigation. That is two steps away from being charged with a crime. Today the morning radio had lots of commentary on this, with speculation that criminal charges would not be far behind. Fraud cases don't get this far without solid evidence and a guaranteed win in the courts.

The one nice/scary thing about France is that corporations don't shield individuals from criminal charges. If this case is won by the government, they will probably request prison sentences for the senior M$ employees who signed the contracts with the PC distributors in France. I would expect 5 to 7 people to get ~1 year sentences, and another 20 to 50 to get suspended (avec surcis, similar to american parole) sentences.

Watch this one carefully, the EC in Brussels (whom we all love to hate), is watching as well. Talk is that if the EC moves against M$ after a French win, you will not be able to buy windoze along with your computer, it will have to be purchased separately and installed by the user. This is where cool looking installation scripts like Caldera/TrollTech will help Linux get used by the masses.

the AC

The Qt free edition licence

The KDE Free Qt Foundation

But Qt isn't free, is it?
Why not code a L/GPL'ed Qt clone?

You PAY for the commercial QT 2.0 (which is also available for Windows and can make life easier for them moving Delphi from Windows to Linux).

They could easily include the runtime price in the total end user price..

Er... have you seen the Qt prices? A single-developer licence for Qt is $1550, for one platform only. I'm sure Delphi sells for a lot less than that.

And there is no 'runtime price' - the price is per developer only.

It is based on C++ and has a much nicer API. Unfortunately, though, its license has been a subject of controversy:
Red Hat's Marc Ewing speaks out on Qt License
QT Goes OpenSource

It doesn't hurt that the BeOS native compiler is EGCS [which will soon (already?) become the official gcc compiler].

Things are starting to happen. Search Freshmeat. You have at least the two projects Coin (QPL) and Scene (LGPL). Also check out Troll Tech's web site for a Qt-based .iv file viewer called Pryan.

• Is free with development libs
• Commonly available on any Linux box
• full-featured

The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.

However while the QPL is in fact a free license, it is not compatible with the GPL used by KDE. Of course, it's not the first free license to have this problem---the BSD license isn't compatible with the GPL either. I tried to make the QPL compatible with the GPL, but the methods I was able to offer them for this compatibility would have left them open to things such as immediate forks made just to spite them. Before the final license was published, I was was convinced their fears were not in the least unfounded. Fortunately the fires have cooled a bit now and hopefully in the future they won't have anything to fear from a GPL compatible Qt if not directly a GPL'd Qt. Time will tell.

In the meantime, there are two options which I see available to actually solve the compatibility issue:

1. Extra permission in addition to the GPL - A clause can be added to the license of KDE by its Copyright holders. Note for borrowed code from other programs not written by KDE, someone will have to contact the appropriate Copyright holders and make arrangements with them to use the portions of code required with this exception. As this is likely to be required still, my offer to assist with this stands.
2. KDE under a different license - The KDE team has expressed some complaints about the GPL as a license. It's not very short and simple and I swear if I gave three people a paragraph from the GPL, I'd get at least four interpretations back (granted, at least two of them are likely to not make much sense, but that's a seperate issue..) To address their concerns, a new license can be written. In fact I'm working on such a license when I've got the patience for it (the heat's getting to me of late) and will post a draft of the license to the debian-legal mailing list as soon as I have something worth posting. This still means that people whose code is being used by KDE must still be consulted for permission to use their code either under this license or under GPL+permission for Qt as above.

If you are looking for the best way to grant permission to a GPL program, feel free to email me.

Read the page at
http://www.troll.no/changes/2.0.html. It is not binary compatable. You must recompile Qt programs for use with 2.0. It is not 100% source code compatable; some things have changed.

No. Qt can (and will) however now be included in Debian proper ("main"), rather than being available in "non-free".

Or are the licensing concerns still as valid as they ever were?

The licensing concerns are that Qt's license is incompatible with KDE's (GPL). This has regrettably not changed with the QPL. Knghtbrd, one of Debian's developers, provided a lot of input to Troll Tech regarding the QPL, but they couldn't be convinced to make the QPL GPL-compatible.

If the licensing issue had been about Qt1's non-freeness by itself, KDE could simply be in the "contrib" section. But the licensing issue is an interaction between licenses that prevents us from redistributing KDE binaries.

Luckily, there are strong indications that the KDE developers will be changing KDE's license to one that does not interact badly with the QPL (e.g. an Artistic-like license); once that happens, KDE can go in Debian proper.

What Qt 2 being free means to Debian is that Qt itself will now become a part of Debian proper, and that Qt-using software that doesn't suffer from the licensing issue (e.g. like pi-address, which is GPL + exception clause) can go in Debian.

It appears that the 'stuff' url on the short description should be ftp://ftp.troll.no/qt/source/qt-2.00.ta r.gz

QT is a "GUI Toolkit" produced by a company called Troll Tech. A GUI Toolkit is a library that contains a framework for developing graphical applications. This prevents programmers from having to reinvent the wheel, so to speak, whenever a programmer needs to create a scrollbar in his/her application. QT is written in C++ and has the benefits that it's free for Open SourceTM use, has the source available, and is fairly handsome.

QT is the foundation upon which The K Desktop Environment and QT NetHack (of arguably greater importance) are built.

QT is a "GUI Toolkit" produced by a company called Troll Tech. A GUI Toolkit is a library that contains a framework for developing graphical applications. This prevents programmers from having to reinvent the wheel, so to speak, whenever a programmer needs to create a scrollbar in his/her application. QT is written in C++ and has the benefits that it's free for Open SourceTM use, has the source available, and is fairly handsome.

QT is the foundation upon which The K Desktop Environment and QT NetHack (of arguably greater importance) are built.

QT is a "GUI Toolkit" produced by a company called Troll Tech. A GUI Toolkit is a library that contains a framework for developing graphical applications. This prevents programmers from having to reinvent the wheel, so to speak, whenever a programmer needs to create a scrollbar in his/her application. QT is written in C++ and has the benefits that it's free for Open SourceTM use, has the source available, and is fairly handsome.

QT is the foundation upon which The K Desktop Environment and QT NetHack (of arguably greater importance) are built.

It is a GUI library, used by many programs including KDE. Just like X Motif, GTK+ and MFC (for Windows).

It's made by Troll Tech

Actually the new QT library 2.0 is out. The first public beta under the new LICENCE!!

And well koffice is freely downloadable and fas more advanced than Abiword or Gnumeric.

I don't see a problem mixing the two systems actually. If only Gnome/GTK apps reacted meanigfully to X hints and did not ignore every standard like session management, you wouldn't notice the difference between QT and GTK apps if you choose a plain theme.

Even Netscape looks like a native app due to krdb's style and color matching abilities.y

Even though the premise is good, there are some fundamental mistakes of fact which ought to be resolved:

Grenamier (jtruong@idirect.com) Wrote:
To me, it looks like Microsoft is creating its own distribution of Linux. For one clue, the title of the job is "Product Manager". No company has Product Managers for products they don't sell. Some of the duties include "product development for the development team" and "technical assistance for the sales force."[Emphases mine]

The position also advertises "high visibility" outside of the company. People who just watch competitors and make reports about them don't normally get much exposure (VinodV didn't get his 15 minutes on purpose). But if Microsoft is selling a "new" product, its Product Manager would be expected to flog it to the press.

So what's Microsoft up to? Scrapping NT for Linux? Of course not, they'd be throwing away all of their leverage. Trying to steal Linux technology for NT? Perhaps, but they wouldn't need to sell a product of their own for that.[emphases mine]

Yes, I agree completely. They wouldn't bother with a project unless they were planning to either make something for sale, or were planning a "grassroots" marketing effort. But they can't "Steal" something out in the open like a GPL'd package, so I don't know what you mean by that.

This is my wild speculation:

Free-sourced software is the Internet happening all over again for Microsoft...everyone in the industry is jumping on the bandwagon and stories about the success of Linux, Apache and Perl are everywhere. Microsoft missed the populization of yet another decades-old "phenomenon" and they've known it since Hallowe'en at the least.[Emphases Mine]

I really like that quote. It well describes the mentality which must be fermenting in MS upper management strategy meetings.

What did Microsoft do about the Internet? Embraced and tried to extend it. Now everything they sell has some Internet features, but they didn't manage to spread Active Server Pages everywhere, and Apache still tromps MS Internet Information Server.

I believe Microsoft will start by bundling Apache like Apple did, all "cleaned-up" with a Windows interface. Perhaps in the next Service Pack and in Windows 2000. Ballmer was saying the other day that Apache was simply better, in fact. They'll make a big deal about Microsoft supporting Open Source, and how they support innovations like that. [Emphases Mine]

This follows well.

Then Microsoft ActiveLinux 3.1 will come out (I thought that was the most probable name and no version number less than 2.2 - 3.1 is good luck for Microsoft.) They'll make it easily installable, perhaps add USB and NTFS support, and then use Active X and IE for UNIX to put a Windows interface on Linux that has some Win32 APIs, the way OS/2 had some Win32 API's with DAX.

No. I've got a couple problems with this. First, USB support is already in active development, as is NTFS support in the kernel... that point is moot. Of course they could always release a binary only driver, but like with VMware, I think they're likely to find kernel developers unwilling to maintain backward compatability to support binary only drivers. As well they should! What this means for Microsoft is that they will never control the momentum of kernel development unless they're willing to attempt a legal attack against the GPL; though that may well be in their interest.

I'd be willing to bet Microsoft keeps that interface closed. They'll argue using a creative interpretation of GPL or LGPL so that they won't have to reveal the source and perhaps any documented Win32 calls that they port over. What they do will probably be in violation of the (L)GPL, but what legal force will be able to challenge them? ESR doesn't have that kind of cash.

OK. More problems of minor ignorance. First of all, if MS were to release a proprietary Win32 widget library, this would be no different from The OpenGroup with their Motif product line, or Troll Tech with their previous QT-1.x product line. In both cases each company has (and had) every legal right to sell a proprietary binary only software package which could not only cost to develop for, but could even cost just to use in runtime licensing fees!

If these guys get to play that game, then certainly Microsoft can. The GPL only covers software which can be thought to derive from a previously GPL'd source base. For example, if I create a source tree completely by scratch the GPL has nothing to say about what kind of license I distribute under. But if I derive an offshoot from a previously GPL'd program, say my own special version of GNU ls, and I distribute this code in binary form for either free or for charge, then I must also offer to distribute source, and I can't prevent the recipient from also distributing either the binary or the source.

Harsh terms if you want to take something someone else wrote, change a line here and there (or not even that if you release under a BSD license), and then call it yours. But a Win32 emulation library, which has already been created for NT, is something wholly authored by Microsoft, and therefore completely their's to distribute under whatever license they choose. They don't even have to sell development libraries to third party developers; meaning they could, if they wanted to, completely monopolize the office software for Linux market given their current monoploy on office software and the immediate demand from the business community should they ever offer such a product. They could even use their old standard tactic of the Interface Shuffle by porting Win32 and MS Office to Linux, and then changing the Win32 layer regularly enough to prevent WINE from ever maintaining compatability.

This is what they mean by embrase and extend.

The LGPL license is another animal, designed to allow developers to offer a library of functions for other developers to include in their code without demanding that said developers using that library release their source upon releasing their software.

MS shops and ISV's won't care about that though. Those dyed-in-the-wool Microsoft groupies, PHBs and non-technical CEOs who've heard so much about Linux can try it without leaving the MS fold or the Windows interface.

And they'll be impressed. Instead of creating a bad distribution to discredit Linux, they'll create a really good one, with all the goodies and easy installation (that you can start from Windows like Caldera, probably). Microsoft users who need hand holding will use it, Windows users who want to get into Linux (but don't want to get their hands dirty) will use it, and ISVs will write to that closed interface, because Microsoft will give them tools to make an easy port that lets Windows program keep Win32 calls for the UI. Microsoft will make ActiveLinux become the path of least-resistance for users and vendors from the Windows world who want to expand into Linux but have no interest in free-source issues.

Microsoft won't do it unless they think it will significantly extend their MS Office monopoly. This is where the serious bucks are for them anyway. If MS ever begins to think Corel's Office for Linux, or StarOffice, might become a serious threat to MS Office marketshare (+15% of the market, say) then this is exactly the tactic I'd expect them to take.

If Microsoft succeeds in keeping the interface closed, and porting Office and BackOffice to their distribution, then it'll mean trouble because other distros won't look very competitive to the new users and the industry press. Microsoft could end up gathering more users than the other distributions, and then I don't know what...Microsoft was never able to get most of the web servers to run on MS-ware, so they didn't succeed there, but what if they managed to amass the biggest share of Linux users? Would it give them enough power to influence Linux's direction? [Emphases Mine]

You can't stop Microsoft from releasing their own commercial and costly Linux distribution with a proprietary Win32/MS Office kicker, they're in their legal rights to do so. This is no different from Apple releasing the core MACH and BSD components from MacOS-X under the APSL while keeping the crown jewels (Carbon and the OpenStep libraries) propritary. But like I said, the Linux core components like it's kernel and basic tools will never be under Microsoft's control unless they can pull a legal victory out of their ass which undermines the GPL. If they pull that stinker off the entire Open Source community is fucked. And it might well be in their interest to attempt this move if they ever think the dollar losses from OS/Office sales to Linux ever exceeds the potential PR disaster from such a move.

But baring such a casastrophic -- and unlikely -- outcome, we should expect that even if Microsoft released the most popular distribution of Linux, with all sorts of proprietary and expensive add ons to run commercial MS software, plenty of people will still just tinker around and maintain their own special Linux flavors. Do you really think Debian would go away? Not even if Caldera, Suse, and RedHat were flattened by the MS steamroller could they stop the Debian project without a Legal or Congressional victory (heh, maybe a bullshit Free Software Tax Act, that might make for good assault legislation against free software and is right up this congresses alley). Just like MS can't prevent end developers from creating a quality stable kernel and giving that away for free, they can't prevent a bunch of developers and end users from collecting a bunch of free software, creating a usable Linux distribution, and giving that away for free.

Just like how Microsoft can't control the kernel source tree, the Debian project is exactly why Microsoft could take over the lion's share of the Linux user market as a vector to generate revenue from a Win32 and MS Office port, yet still not control all the Linux distributions out there. I don't know about you, but I can live without MS Office for Linux. I won't be paying astronomical fees just to run bad software because Frank down the street is too stupid to convert his email to ascii. But hey, that's me.

[snip]

Even the first version of the QPL (0.90 IIRC) has been declared free software by RMS. He did, however, mention the 'patch clause' as an obstacle.

This patch 'requirement' has been changed into a 'recommendation', i.e. TrollTech recommends using patches (or CVS). The only requirement is that the new, non-TrollTech code be clearly marked as such.
That's nothing else than what the GPL requires (and is very sensible, as responsibilities for bugs and possible trojans are more obvious that way).

The QPL is pretty much like the GPL, and the main (or even only) reason why RMS thinks the current QPL is not GPL compatible, is that it doesn't allow 'secret' in-house improvements that aren't distributed outside e.g. a respective company.
This is, however, not a problem for average OSS developers, and IMHO it's rather a loophole in the GPL that it allows this than a flaw of the QPL.

To find the original sources please go to the Troll pages and the KDE licensing mailing list.

Instead they have "funky" html-pages or it's own strange "help system" :-(

HTML isn't bad; you can include images, use a little color here AND, most importantly, you can split the information up in managable chunks in stead of one huge document. Have you read the 'bash' manpage? It's more than 5000 lines!! It takes me forever to find something in there. Plus, you can make an index, crosslinks, keyword index, etc.

And, if you keep the fancy HTML stuff out of the pages you can even view them with a text browser like lynx. No, HTML isn't all that bad; look at the Qt Reference Documentation for an example of what I consider good HTMLized documentation. Lightweight, clear, consistent, links all over the place. I write my documentation like that.

As for "strange help systems": indeed, they are often more of a nuisance than help.

- Nemosoft

Qt 2.0 will be released under the QPL 1.0 which is a DFSG-free / Open Source license. ( development snapshots are already available licensed under the QPL)

The QPL 1.0 is however incompatible with the GPL (Debian's analysis still holds for QPL 1.0). Thus, to redistribute binaries, an exception clause is needed like pi-address has:

Additionally, you are granted permission to assume, for the purposes of distributing this program in object code or executable form under Section 3 of the GNU Public License, that the QT library is normally distributed with the major components of the operating system on which the executable or object code runs.

The KDE developers are reportedly preparing a different license change that will resolve this conflict.

Qt 2.0 will be released under the QPL 1.0 which is a DFSG-free / Open Source license. ( development snapshots are already available licensed under the QPL)

The QPL 1.0 is however incompatible with the GPL (Debian's analysis still holds for QPL 1.0). Thus, to redistribute binaries, an exception clause is needed like pi-address has:

Additionally, you are granted permission to assume, for the purposes of distributing this program in object code or executable form under Section 3 of the GNU Public License, that the QT library is normally distributed with the major components of the operating system on which the executable or object code runs.

The KDE developers are reportedly preparing a different license change that will resolve this conflict.

Qt 2.0 will be released under the QPL 1.0 which is a DFSG-free / Open Source license. ( development snapshots are already available licensed under the QPL)

The QPL 1.0 is however incompatible with the GPL (Debian's analysis still holds for QPL 1.0). Thus, to redistribute binaries, an exception clause is needed like pi-address has:

Additionally, you are granted permission to assume, for the purposes of distributing this program in object code or executable form under Section 3 of the GNU Public License, that the QT library is normally distributed with the major components of the operating system on which the executable or object code runs.

The KDE developers are reportedly preparing a different license change that will resolve this conflict.

Qt is not a WM, Qt is framework for creating crossplatform applications. Checkout the Qt homepage

Hopefully, this will be an incentive for KDE to work towards resolving the licensing issue so that the regular Debian distribution can offer KDE. Although there will soon be a DFSG-free Qt (under the QPL), the incompatibility between the GPL and Qt's license (see Debian's analysis) persists with a QPL-licensed Qt.

More important, some months ago some guy posted an url here. There was some sceenshots showing off Qt with a Next theme, surely looked awesome. Maybe someone remember the url, I don't??

I didn't, either, but AltaVista Is Your Friend; I eventually found this Linux Weekly News page, which said, near the bottom:

The beta version of Qt 2.0 has been announced. An anonymous source provided us with this screenshot of a partial port of KDE to Qt 2.0. It demonstrates one of Qt's new styles, the "platinum" look, meant to appeal to MacIntosh aficionados. In addition, a screenshot of the Qt "metal" demo (Qt widgets) is also available.

So, it's time for the KDE-haters to stop.

Like the GPL, Qt is free for use with free software only. Proprietary software needs a different license.

Gnome has its libraries LGPL-ed, and is thus OK for both free and proprietary software.

I still like Gnome and run it at home, but there is nothing wrong with Qt's license now.

Thanks

Bruce

It relies on QT. You can find its license here.

It prohibits modifications. Absolutely not GPL.

As an aside, if Troll Tech were to be made bankrupt, the license will switch to a BSD license. So die Troll! (Last sentence is a JOKE people )

Debian 2.1 ships GNOME (albeit a prerelease, as there was no release available before the start of the code freeze); Red Hat does so too (GNOME is in RH 5.2, right?).

It is very important to provide an unquestionably free desktop NOW. There is no time to waste. We have a parisitic company to fight. If they get control of critical libraries, Linux users will have lost their freedom.

I've been critical of Troll in the past, and I've been extremely annoyed by their dismissal of the importance of freedom. But since then, Troll have made what I think is a sincere effort at improvement in this area. They've worked on a DFSG-free license to be used for the forthcoming Qt 2.0, the QPL 1.0, and they've been quite responsive with regard to the input they've received from Debian's Joseph Carter.

Whatever Troll's failings in the past, in my opinion they deserve at least the benefit of the doubt for this change.

Let's worry over the remaining issue wrt KDE: is QPL 1.0 GPL-compatible, and if not, how do we get KDE to take licensing issues seriously, and get them to put in an exemption clause in their license to allow binaries of their code linked against Qt 2 to be redistributed (similar to how the LyX folks fixed the LyX license.

QPL 1.0, the license under which Troll Tech will release Qt Free Edition 2.0, is a DFSG-free license.

But the problem with KDE's licensing is more subtle than that. Debian can't at the moment distribute KDE at all (not even as part of "contrib"), because Qt's license isn't GPL-compatible. (See the news item for details)

Even when we have a DFSG-free Qt, there is still the issue whether its license is GPL-compatible. If it is (I haven't seen an analysis of QPL 1.0's GPL-compatibility status, so I really don't know), KDE can be included in Debian's main. If it isn't, the licensing issue continues until KDE's licensing changes (e.g. by an explicit exception clause to the GPL allowing redistribution of KDE binaries linked against a QPLed Qt [1]), or the QPL is made GPL-compatible.

[1] A similar exception clause for non-free Qt would have made KDE suitable for contrib. Unfortunately, the KDE project refused to take the licensing issue seriously, and did not chose to fix it this way, unlike for instance the LyX developers. With LyX, there was a similar situation of GPL-ed software linked against a GPL-incompatibly licensed (binary-only non-system) library (xforms). The LyX developers explicitly added an exception to the GPL's requirements wrt. libraries, making it possible for Debian to distribute it in "contrib".

I guess I'll have to do a closer reading of
http://www.troll.no/qpl... I don't see how it's significantly
different from the GPL right now.

Anyone got some insights?

-K

Uh, see http://www.troll.no/qpl/

-N.

If you are reach enough to by commercial Qt library, then you can make your application to compile under Linux and Windows without any change and with a consistent and very pleasant look and feel. But this is, of course, for your future development, not for the port from MFC.
Qt is much nicer to use than MFC. Download the free version and try. Commercial version includes some sort of OpenGL support - know nothing about it.

You can not link GPL code against QPL code, no matter what Troll Tech says. Authors may grant an exception, but often this has not been granted. The QPL is not more free. I can't fork the tree in any practical way. Who cares? Libraries should use the LGPL, not the full GPL. (apps can use the LGPL too)

Incorect. QPL-0.92 is GPL compatible READ IT HERE. Somebody got copyright Lawyers to verify it. Basicaly the conclusion was that either the GPL was incompatible with all Licenses but the GPL itself ( including the LGPL, BSD and X Licenses ... thus rendering Linux an ilegal product in any form ) or it can be linked against Licenses which alow the things the GPL demands. I.e. Redistribution of modifide source.

2 : The LGPL dose ALLOW and ENCOURAGE the development of 100% proprietary software. If LibC, GlibC and the Kernel headers were not LGPL there would be no commercial apps for Linux at all. Not WordPerfect, Not Netscape nothing.

Proprietary software itself is not evil. I would not object to a QPL application. System libraries must be totally free, without even a hint of doubt. Non-free libraries limit my choice to use free or proprietary software as I see fit. In particular, Qt sticks me with a pseudo-free system.

I like to use the DFSG to determine what is free and what isn't. Somebody on Debian proposed modifying it in such a way that the QPL wold fall outside. The problem is that such a modification wold kill around 1/2 of Debian. The "patch clause" was invented by TeX. QPL-0.92 makes it optional. This means the QPL alows all the GPL dose and then some.

3 : The Only people who have to pay to use QT are those developing proprietary apps. If you use a GPLed lib you just can't do that and your app must be GPL too. If you use LGPL then it's free for all ( encouragement I call it ).

Why discriminate against people? Those that want to use a totally free system should get to have it, without Qt popularity limiting their choice of software. Those that want to use proprietary software should not have to pay a Troll tax.

Ohh. So you want Troll Tech to provide a charity service to let you develop and sell proprietery aplications with the lib they wrote without paying for it or contributing your source code to the comunity ?

4 : The QPL allows you to make and Redistribute modifications to QT. That is Open Source and Free software. For all you people with no knolage (sic) of english or lacking the ability to think for yourselves RMS, ESR and Bruce Perens all say it's OSS/Free thus saving you the effort of having to think for yourselves. I want the right to get a group of fellow hackers together and fork the Qt development as needed. Xemacs, OpenBSD, and egcs would not exist without such a right. If you thought RMS supports you, think again: "The new license is inconvenient and inequitable, so it remains desirable to avoid using Qt."

The QPL grants this "right".

Simple. Set up a CVS server and put QT there. Then all you have to do is get people to contribute changes to it under the GPL that they don't want Troll Tech to use ( If the changes are QPL then Troll can take them but it must keep the resulting total QPL ).

The difficulty is that you will not find a single programer who is capable of leading the development of a GUI library who will do the work. You can't do it and neither can anyone who whines about the QPL being unfree.

There used to be a Harmony project dedicated to making an LGPLed QT clone. It could have been complete in another 9 months or so. As soon as the developers read the QPL they stopped working on it. All of them.

Why don't you pick up where they left off ? Harmony is still on ftp.kde.org and if you can't find it I have it on my hard drive.

The final source of contention is that the QPL isn't GPL compatible. Check out the last 50 posts on kde-licensing ( the log can be found under kde.org )

Just take a look, for example
at this