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KDE to RMS: That's Absurd.
A retierd War Corespondant writes "KDE has issued a formal response to RMS' latest editorial on KDE and GPLed QT. Favorite Quote: "This entire thing is just too absurd and we refuse to play this game." They also point to the listing of licenses and Authors within KDE." Update: 09/06 11:38 AM by H :Some of the authors have written as well.
When you violate a license agreement, you lose the rights to use the software. That's simply what happens. You can't use that software again until the author forgives you for it and allows you to use it.
So, why is RMS forgiving KDE when not one semicolen of FSF code is included in KDE? And why does he single out KDE when there have been other violators of the GPL throughout the years? Did Corel get forgiveness from RMS, Linus Torvalds, and yes, the KDE developers? Did GNOME get forgiveness from KDE when they inadvertantly misappropriated their code?
The problem is not so much that RMS grants some sort of legal forgiveness, but rather that he singles out KDE and KDE alone as needing to be forgiven.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
The GPL clearly states in more than one location that it only applies to the "Program and works based on the Program". Or as the law states, copyright only applies to the copyrighted work and its derivatives. The GPL also clearly announces that it is operating under copyright law.
So, that being said, the question to ask is whether Qt is a work based on KDE, or the other way around...
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I think having both GNOME and KDE is a positive thing, since they're in competition, and therefore will both try to make a superior product. Though, I do think increasing compatibility between the two would be very beneficial.
Frickin' semantics. It was still distributed by Debian.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Liberty? Now the Free in Free Software can been a lot of things, but it doesn't mean liberty! My liberty is NOT, repeat NOT, dependant upon a software license. Get a real dictionary instead of the one that RMS gave you.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
It is and it is!
---------
And isn't that what freedom is all about? ('Not having that', not 'having that') :)
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
Why is it that no one seems to understand that
`forgiveness' used in this context is a legal term?
Was kimp not availible in CVS format?? I could of swore it was. But if not I am sorry for claiming as such. Kimp was only an EXAMPLE however.
-- You can be a geeklord too
I see a Shakespeare for Nerds theater production: Gnomeo and K-D-et. Two teenagers from feuding GUI development mailing lists fall in love and meet a tragic end right before Friar Malda was going to marry them.
Tired of corporate power? Vote Nader
grep -ri 'should work'
If it is (a) the individual coder, then simply ask your buddy to 're-release' the code and you're fine since he is not affected by the GPL violation and nor is the 'pure' code either.
If it is (b) the KDE foundation (if such a thing actually exists) then still the coders could do so in their own right since they first and foremost own the copyrights to their code.
Option (c) is to create a legal entity on paper simply for doing this job. Subsequently the new code can be handed back to the original coders.
Any of these options are pretty much braindead and should not really be necessary. Some people think that the GPL is the One Free License. The QPL had nice bits, too, such as the request to release changes done in-house.
You're right, of course, and the reasons why RMS does not compromise where the GPL are concerned are very valid ones. But, and this is a problem where RMS is concerned, revolutions are as much about co-existing with your fellow revolutionaries as they are advancing your ideology.
RMS is a really smart and dedicated guy, but all I've ever seen from him are missives about what everyone should be doing. Even if he's right, he's going to piss people off to the extent where he will make people want to disagree with him on principle, no matter how correct he is.
His latest KDE article thing is a perfect example. TrollTech finally releases QT as GPLd software, and what does he do? Point out that all the old stuff is probably incompatible, and mention that because of that they've lost their right to redistribute their software unless they beg everyone for forgiveness.
That is an example of an unwillingness to compromise endangering his revolution... and if it should ever fail, he'd only have himself to blame for it.
He should write code less and study history more.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
I dont know which is more disgusting -- RMS's position on system security or the site at the other end of that other link in your post.
~dlb
Really, what more can the KDE guys do to win our trust and full support !?
I think you answered your own question: start calling it GNU KDE.
P.S. This post was typed in 100% GNU ASCII.
Work for hire is the only fundamentally financial part of copyright law. In court I can get an injunction (with serious penalties if you infringe further), recover attorney's fees, and probably even demand your profits (if greater than my losses). It could be argued that copyleft is a commercial license requiring payment in kind, and lack of same has severely harmed my profession and career.
He's forgiving any violations that may have occured. There may not have been any violations commited, but if they were committed they've been forgiven.
treke
I agree. When I read the editorial yesterday, I thought -- for RMS -- it was unusually civil and even forthcoming.
People here are actually pissed off because he said "go gnomes" at the end. KeeeeRIST on a minibike!! Can't the guy cheer for his own team?
He said there were still some stray bits of code that needed to be explicitly "forgiven" just to make sure all of KDE is 100% spic-and-span GPL... Nitpicky? Sure. (But this is RMS, after all... is anyone surprised?)
The KDE folks dispute the amount of "questionable" code, and vow to replace it with their own. Good for them.
Either way, it looks as though the path is now clear for everyone to quit bitching about this IDIOTIC war between Gnome and KDE, and get back to the business of WorldDomination[tm]...
Cheers,
--jrd
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
That's the stupidest demand I've seen on this board to date.
Isn't this basically (in a lose sense) the format for most talk radio?
Apparently you missed that announcement that QT2.2 will appear for download Weds, Sept. 6, which depending on when you read this, may be now.
Let it rest. This is all so rediculous.
--
see shy jo
Wrong. He never said anything about begging, he simply pointed out what the KDE team needs to do to be certain that the license problems are behind them. He even made a gesture analogous to unilateral disarmament, by publically forgiving (clearly using the term in a legal sense) any and all violations he had the legal right to forgive.
I've always been pretty neutral towards KDE, but this is too much. If this is the way the KDE team wants to reply to his gesture of goodwill, if they are really so blinded by hatred of Free Software that they would throw this in his face... you fill in the blanks. I'm a bit too pissed off right now to trust myself to be diplomatic.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Consistency is the hobgoblin of the little minds.
Translation: stubborn--bad.
Why does this matter? Because section 4 of the GPL says that if you copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the work other than as provided in the license, your rights to the work are terminated. It does not say that your rights are reinstated later if you fix the problem. In other words, the KDE group's rights to the GPL'd code in question were terminated in the past, and need to be reinstated if they want to continue using any of that code.
My reading of Stallman's statement is not that he was demanding that anyone beg and grovel, but that we was generously agreeing to reinstate any such rights on software owned by the FSF.
I think people on both sides of this issue are far too thin-skinned and too quick to attack.
about the GNU/Stallman editorial.
Its an interesting view from the developer's pov.
To quote
Many of us woke up this morning and read Richard Stallman's editorial on
Linux Today with a growing sense of incredulity. At first, some of us thought it
was a joke -- it didn't make any logical sense, after all. But after it sunk in
that Stallman was doing yet another snowjob on KDE, a lot of our incredulity
turned to anger.
bullshit. RMS just doesn't like KDE and QT. period. even after QT has been GPL'ed he has to go and spout crap about KDE's apparent continued non-conformance in some way.
as for knowing anything about licenses... if there was a legitimate breach of the GPL then he is obliged to prosecute that breach. he and the FSF didn't. hell, the GPL hasn't even been tested in court, so it, like RMS himself, remains academic.
i think he's still dirty that KDE is such a long way ahead of his beloved gnome, and that noone calls linux GNU/linux anymore.
And, while it is true that the X11 license is "more free" than the GPL in that it has fewer restrictions, the issue is whether those freedoms are good. There are, after all, bad freedoms (such as the freedom to steal). Some might say that the freedom to steal is bad because it is incompatible with the freedom to own. RMS says the freedom to create proprietary software is bad because it is incompatible with the freedom (of the user) to control his software. Whether or not this is the case I would rather not address here -- but certainly the GPL cannot be dismissed through such an overly-simplistic application of the concept of freedom as "less restrictions == better". It is not incompatible with freedom to restrict a person's ability to infringe upon others' freedom (whether or not it is, in the case of the GPL, a good thing).
Such as when? Why don't you back your accusations with evidence? I've never seen any implication of the sort, and while I have not read everything he has said, I have read several essays by and interviews of RMS. DUH! "Lesser" does not mean less free. You are, of course, correct if you assert that RMS believes that the GPL is preferable to other free software licenses most of the time (however, you can see from his essay on the LGPL[link] that there are times when he finds the LGPL preferable) -- but that is not what you previously asserted. What you asserted was that RMS believes that non-GPL free software licenses are not free software licenses. This is patently false and given your access to the facts, libelous. If I didn't see you post so much I'd conclude from this that you are a troll. Any license that allows relicensing without new restrictions -- e.g. the X11 license -- allows relicensing under the GPL. There doesn't need to be a specific GPL surrender, though obviously a surrender to relicensing must exist, as well as the lack of extra-GPL restrictions. However, I challenge you to find imposed by the X11 license "any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein" (to quote the GPL).Oh right. I forgot about what we were originally discussing -- whether RMS considered Xfree to be non-free. What were you saying about that?
And then, at some point, the intervening centuries come crashing down, with a resounding, "What the heck!?!" Did this guy really... no, I already know, he did really believe all this. He absolutely lived in this elaborate, invisible realm, which requires the most careful tread once you've made it your own.
RMS manages to evoke the same sort of response from his contemporaries; and small wonder, since his own moral realm seems absolutely personal, mostly crafted by his own hand. Suddenly, just when you least expect it, RMS feels it absolutely necessary to... forgive you.
Odd duck, but I like him. You can certainly tell why he was such a coder anyway... sitting down to the keyboard, he's just slipping from one abstraction to another.
"The best we can hope for concerning the people at large is that they be properly armed." - Alexander Hamilton
So? Your point is?
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Looks to me like KDE achieved their mission, AND they did it the right way.
This really is progress, people - you should be celebrating that yet another company finally 'gets it'! two (and more) major free desktop projects that are equally free (at least once Qt 2.2 comes out?)
As for RMS, I admire him for his contributions, but some people aren't happy unless there is a (perceived) problem to fight. I fear he may be one of them.
Disclaimer: I use KDE except for the wm, for which I chose enlightenment instead...
obviously it was not distributed under the gpl as you can see that bsd licsence on it means that is how its distributed. Furthermore glibc is lgpl. you are a moron, but the moderators fell for it. Congrats. +5 on a total troll.
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
http://www.trolltech.com/company/announce/qt-220.h tml
In spite of all that, RMS has forgiven all past GPL violations by KDE that infringed on FSF copyrighted code. That seems pretty generous to me, I don't know how KDE can complain about it.
Even if you subscribe to RMS's view that linking GPL'd code to prior versions of QT was a violation, there's no evidence that KDE ever did that with FSF copyrighted code.
It looks like the potentially disastrous legal situation has cooled. KDE and Gnome may still not be the best of friends, but at least it looks like we may be to a point where healthy competition, and not vitriolic rivalry, is possible.
Sean Daugherty "I have walked in Eternity -- and Eternity weeps."
Good going, KDE...it's time someone told RMS he's full of prunes...
--
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
Thank you, KDE team, for standing up to the tyranny of RMS in a culture where fewer and fewer people are willing to quesiton anything that comes out of his fucking mouth. It's unfortunate you were forced by political pressure to bend even to the point where you had to use *his* license (my way or the highway), but I'm glad you're willing to stand up for what you believe in. When Stallman demanded you beg for forgiveness, you (respectfully) spat in his face, even though you were far more civil than I probably would have been if something I had worked so hard on for so long had been chastised and attempted to be shoved into the mud over some propagandist's megalomaniacial agenda.. OK, getting carried away. Anyway, good job. Whenever Stallman offers you "forgiveness" for your imagined heresies, I hope you always have the stones to tell him where to stick it. By the way, I'm very excited about KDE2. It makes me want to use linux agaain.
Founder's Camp
Founder's Camp
News for non-Nerds. Stuff that matters.
good points, though I think in this case he made it relatively clear. I would add that after an emotional debate as this one was, the KDE side probably doesn't particularly want to hear his personal preferences at the moment. I think he meant it in a lighthearted way and didn't realize that he doesn't know how to be lighthearted. He gave Gnome the old Al Gore kiss!
Though it has its origins on Usenet, I think you'll find it being applied much more broadly today. I have myself seen it invoked numerous times right here on Slashdot. The principle is valid, regardless of context. Do the laws of logic only apply in ancient Greece, simply because they originated there?
2. Godwin's Law specifies accusing one's opponent of being Hitler or a Nazi. No such accusation was made here.
"the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one".
Note that it doesn't say "the probability of one party being compared to Hitler", simply the probability of a "comparison involving Hitler." Which is what this was.
Please don't link to Airsick Raymond's bastardized Jargon File.
Dicto simpliciter -- or the fallacy of sweeping generalization -- is the logical fallacy of making a general statement and then assuming it must be true of every individual case. For example: "Germans are stupid. Therefore, Einstein was an idiot."
More to the point, whether "Airsick Raymond's" jargon file can be trusted in general isn't relevant. The better question is whether his presentation of Godwin's law is accurate. Near as I can tell, it is.
Thanks for your reply.
Lee Kai Wen -- Taiwan, ROC
yeah, RMS is intelligent, but not intelligent enough to realize that life isn't GPL/non-GPL, but shades of GPL mixed with QPL mixed with MPL, mixed with BSDL, and that's ok. RMS would have you believe that simply because software isn't GPL it isn't free, which is not true. RMS would have you believe that anyone who isn't for the GPL is against every form of freedom. I can't decide who RMS reminds me more of, Lenin or McCarthy.
4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically TERMINATE your rights under this License.
So RMS is not "inventing special rules after the fact just to bash KDE", as the KDE authors wrote.
That rule has been around as long as the GPL
has existed. The KDE authors would do better to
read the GPL rather than flaming RMS.
Claus
Derivitive works must be licensed under the GPL. Ok, check for the KDE code, but GPL code can't then be linked with non-free libraries (ie Qt, until now). Then comes the next problem, 4:
This raises an interesting question: What about GPL programmes that can only compiled with non-free compilers?
Distributing the binaries does not seem to be a problem, however what about distributing the source code that can only be built with a proprietary compiler?
The question is what actually makes up the "derieved work" as defined by the URL? The things you distribute or the whole source code? Well, the GPL says:
You could surely argue that Qt is a major component of a Qt-enabled operating system...
Claus
The one thing I know is if RMS was any different of a man then he is, Linux among all other OpenSourced OS's would not be the same. He wrote emacs and gcc .. Who here uses gcc?? Need I say more ????
It's located under ...
http://www.ubersoft.net/ and it's name is 'Can't Win for losing' in case you come in later and the scripts have moved the URL.
Just FYI. Greetings
Most they developed, some they didnt and they placed it under a license that made it undistributable.
Now, lets look at this from a practical point of view. I develop some code that I place under the GPL. Joe-K-I'm-a-programmer-not-a-lawyer sees my code, and figures that it's cool! He takes the code (under the GPL) and inserts it into his own KDE (also under the GPL) code. Perfectly fine, he thinks, because he doesnt understand that KDE *ISNT* under the GPL, it's under some form of imaginary GPL-with-implicit-permission-to-link-to-Qt. The license has some form of metaphysical part in KDE's mind that the license doesnt spell out in text. But how the hell is the 'programmer' who can say that linking GPL code to other GPL code going to figure out that he's not actually doing that, and that he's in violation because there is an implicit clause in one of the licenses?
The license says what it says. The GPL forbids linking to non GPL compatible libraries. If that is not what is wanted you *have* to chose a different license or the product is not distributable.
The flamefest at the technical level between RMS and JWZ was enough to provide heat, light and power for the whole of a small town. And this was over a piece of software that was pure GPL.
It is often said that the payback from Open/Free software development is in terms of kudos to the author and boost to the ego.
In this case it would seem that ego is at the forefront of the discussion as much as quibbles about licences or software quality.
http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=userinfo&nick=Rich ard+M.+Stallman
;)
;)
That the fake-rms was using rms@stallman.org was my first tip-off, since I thought RMS had a gnu.org email address.
Naughty dastardly trolls.
-- www.bteg.com | bleh.n3.net | hac47.dhs.org
KDE and Qt jointly worked to remove even the last licensing problems had with the KDE project by putting Qt 2.2 under the GPL. RMS managed to dis that, again.
The KDE people have every right to be pissed, now. But their answer is one of the most mature reactions I have seen from an Open Source project. They even went through the pain to compile a detailed list of licenses and authors of their whole project for reference.
Thank you, KDE, for your grown up and professional respose to criticsm from a person who contributed an important meme to our community, but now behaves like a spoiled child.
© Copyright 2000 Kristian Köhntopp
Neither FreeBSD or XFree86 would exist without gcc.
Without the GNU C compiler, the 4.4BSD project wouldn't have survived. Even though BSD was open source, it had depended on commercial support for there to have been any implementations. But all the former BSD venders (Sun, DEC, etc) abandoned BSD. Sun had betrayed BSD and went with AT&T SVR4. And AT&T was sueing the hell out of BSD. The University of California pulled their support.
They could never have implemented 4.4BSD on anything unless they had a compiler. And a compilers code specifically for a particular operating system and hardware. That means that there needed to be a compiler that could produce code specific to 4.4BSD and for the architecture.
And that of course didn't exist, because they were inventing a new OS in the first place. Before GCC, every operating system vender had to write a specific C compiler for their platform themselves from scratch. And that's as enormous a project as the operating itself. But GCC was open source, and it had the revolutionary ability of supporting any number of architectures and operating systems. Somebody just needed to make it support the 386 instruction set. And then individual operating system projects just needed to add in support for their system calls and binary format.
GCC was the first and only open source compiler, and it took a considerable time to develop. The 386BSD project wouldn't have been attempted without gcc. gcc was already very stable and widely used when UNIX on the PC was still a dream.
There is no such thing as "more code than Emacs"...
/me ducks
--
Peter
thanks for clarifying the legal issue.
As to the personal preference issue: he has a personal preference for Gnome... so what? having or expressing personal preferences does not make one petty, and there's no evidence whatsoever that his legal-pettiness reflects any other personal preferences. What makes Stallman so weird is that he'd sue his mother whether he liked her or not. He wouldn't let his preference for Gnome change his behavior over licensing.
GNU GNOME would be redundant. The G in GNOME is GNU. Thus Gnu Network Object Model Environment. And given that Miguel is on the FSF board of directors, It could easily be said that it was his cronies that decided to write GNOME. It was, is and always will be an official GNU project. In fact very large parts of the code are copyright of FSF.
Lay off the crack...
Did anyone read the RMS article? I think it's a far cry from the ranting and raving everyone seems to think it is. It was well thought out, well organized, and a rather tame comment on the current state of KDE licensing issues from a man that knows far more about the subject than anyone else I know. He doesn't say KDE sucks, he doesn't say everyone should use GNOME, and he doesn't say KDE's future is doomed. He simply stated what he believes are the final loopholes in the a licensing scheme that has an admittedly shaky history (the KDE/QT/QPL/GPL thing). He lays out what few things still need to be done and forecasts a bright future for KDE when we can finally call KDE free in every sense of the word. He even goes so far as to declare the QT emulation project (can't remember it's name right now) as unneeded. That statement says volumes about his motives and views on this whole subject...
:-)
I think it's even worse in the defense industry than in the software industry. Go to a trade show and you have to tote around an inch thick dictionary of acronyms just to be conversant. BTW IANAL AFAIK.
Do not teach Confucius to write Characters
Today's Sesame Street was brought to you by the number e.
GPL, as many other licenses, is automatically revoked if its terms are infringed. This might mean that legally licence-holders need to grant again the license ( 'forgiveness', in RMS talk ).
Or maybe not. Any lawyer around?
Looking for the silver lining, at least he invited any licence holder to grant its 'forgiveness'. And KDE people invited to the same thing ( with very different words ). And there is finally a detailed assessment of the 'legal status' of each KDE component.
So maybe things are not locked anymore and can move on.
Ciao
----
FB
QT has been released under GPL -- something RMS has been stumping for for years. He could have posted an editorial entitle "Hooray for Troll Trech!"; he could have congratulated the parties that be; he could have politely stated his admiration for the skills of all involved in the the KDE project; he could, in a word, have been a gracious winner. But apparently that's not RMS's style. Instead he launches immediately into the picking of nits of such mind-boggling irrelevance it quite takes one's breath away.
There used to be a word for people who were always looking for fights to pick. Bully. RMS seems unwilling to surrender a pulpit from which he loves to hear himself speak.
I'm neither a KDE nor a Gnome partisan; merely an observer who is glad the tired old tirades against KDE for what amount to issues irrelevant to the technology involved can now finally be given a rest (that is, if RMS will let them).
There is no diffenrence between retroactively attacking King Leopold for his business practices in the Congo and retroactively attacking Hitler for his rehabilitation of the German economy.
Per the strictures of Godwin's Law you have just forfeited the argument.
Lee Kai Wen -- Taiwan, ROC
I laughed so hard I was afraid I was just going to lose it, right at that line. BWAHAHAHAHA.
First off, Bell Labs was one of a handful of facilities in the United States totally set up for pure research. Like XEROX Palo Alto Research Center, Bell Labs did research that went somewhere. For years, Bell Labs scientists generated an average of a patent a day. It was Bell Labs that brought high-fidelity playback into being, with its research into people preferences by using a pipe-organ swell box to go from full-frequency response to the tin-box sound popular with radios at the time. Indeed, like that sound study, much of the Bell Labs research didn't relate directly to telephones, although it was amazing how "unrelated research" did come back to help the telecommunications giant to provide better phone service.
Bell Labs didn't have a CLUE how to turn a profit through the post-divestiture 80s, and into the 90s as well. I couldn't be hired as an employee because I didn't have a PhD, but that didn't stop them from hiring me as a consultant to get some sanity into projects.
Look, the FCC had more to do with the Unix troubles than anything else. Or perhaps you haven't done your homework? Reading some of the Orders regarding Unix were, well, interesting. Here was the FCC, long before Computer I, talking about an operating system that was developed by a regulated monopoly working outside its boundery, and what was a Commission to do?
As for taking the hint, you have never seen RMS at his worst, have you? It's one reason I'm happy he doesn't come to a certain convention any more.
Hey, X11 was free from the beginning. Do check your facts eh?
"You know you want me baby!" - Crow T Robot
But the FSF is fighting fire with fire. Read RMS' editorial for christs sake. The KDE-response is clearly exhaggerated. Here's perhaps the most inflamatory part of the RMS' editorial (and in no way inflamatory if you just THINK..):
;), instead of going into war against something you clearly don't understand. I don't believe he meant this as a demanding letter, just a hint that it's time to reconcile and forgive the past.
"Also, where code was copied from other GPL-covered programs, their copyright holders need to be asked for forgiveness. To lead the way, the FSF hereby grants this forgiveness for all code that is copyright FSF. More precisely, those who as of September 4, 2000 have used some FSF code in violation of the GPL solely by linking it with Qt, and thus have forfeited the right to use that code under the GPL, will once again have full GPL permissions to use that code upon switching to a GPL-covered version of Qt. I appeal to all the other copyright holders of affected code to grant similar forgiveness and thus help resolve the situation quickly."
Yes, the *copyright* holders needs to be asken for forgiveness, because the KDE-developers have linked their code to other code under an incompatible license *without* their consent (and distributed this effort). What's unreasonable about this? It's a breach of the GPL. Of course, there's always some people who refuse to ask for forgiveness. Now THAT's childish and petty IMHO. Of course the KDE-people are in the clear *now*, but they're being asked to ask for forgiveness so all the bad feelings can end.
I think RMS was pretty calm about this. In no way as zealotly as some of the posts here on Slashdot. Next time, try to read the stories Slashbots (yes I am one too, I don't see "Slashbot" as being a negative thing
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
KDE is an obvious competitor to "his" product GNOME, and he wants to squash it. Having heard so many times that free software is all about the software, and not about politics, it is disappointing to see its highest figures engaged in this sort of behaviour.
Two weeks ago, I made the decision to learn to develop for KDE before I learnt about GNOME. Now I don't think I'll even bother looking at GNOME. I don't want any part of that sort of idiocy.
And after so many people posted saying "at least now the KDE-GNOME split can be based on merit instead of licences". Hah.
Ed.
q='echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"';s=\';b=\\;echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"
My point is that monkeys will fly out of my nose before the FSF starts apologizing about their licensing discrepencies to the Joe user.
This is yet another reason why I think the non-commercial licenses that carry absolutely zippo legal recourse when their terms are violated, besides some crazy smelly bastard standing on his soapbox waiving his finger in your face, are the most rediculous facets of technology in the past decade.
I will not waste my precious cycles worrying over such minutia.
Well, yes, both sides are reasonable in this. Unfortunately, the write-up CmdrTaco chose was a bit... offensive-sounding? And thus we have all these posts mindlessly flaming RMS/KDE/GNOME/Taco's grandmother getting modded up. All involved in the actual issue seem to have handled this very well, and I think even RMS' "go GNOME" quote is appropriate.
I'm just glad these licensing issues have been resolved.
Oh, I do think the occasional debate over a license's application or advantages/disadvantages is a good thing. Although it would be nice if people would actually read the GNU writings on licenses instead of assuming that RMS thinks that anything that's not the GPL is evil.
-RickHunter
The following is more informative than the official response, in my opinion. Despite being a KDE fan, I always held RMS in the highest respect and esteem, miles above anyone else in the free software community. This latest stunt of his has forced me to moderate said respect and esteem downwards. The authors of the statement below point out the perhaps hypocritical nature of some of RMS's comments in his editorial.h tml
=================================
http://devel-home.kde.org/~granroth/personally.
On Stallman on Qt, the GPL, KDE and
GNOME
Many of us woke up this morning and read Richard Stallman's editorial on Linux Today with a
growing sense of incredulity. At first, some of us thought it was a joke -- it didn't make any logical sense, after all. But after it sunk in that Stallman was doing yet another snowjob on KDE, a lot of our incredulity turned to anger. If you want the official KDE position on his editorial, go here. But if you want to know how a few KDE developers feel, read on.
Stallman has been a longtime detractor of the KDE Project. So much so, that his Free Software
Foundation helped start a project whose only purpose was to be an "anti-KDE" -- GNOME. The
GNOME developers themselves have gotten past all that and have created something that stands
on its own merits. Stallman, though, seems to still be stuck in the past with his "KDE is bad, use GNOME to punish them" mantra.
Basically, Stallman saw that with Qt under the GPL, all of his licensing problems went away. Ergo, there was nothing for him to fall back on anymore. So he comes up with this notion that we have to beg forgiveness of our copyright holders or we will be in violation of the GPL forever.
Beg forgiveness? What kind of bullshit is this?
It's definitely two-faced, that's for sure. Why? Because in all of the scores of emails over several years, he never once said a single word about this. Never. Not even recently when Trolltech approached him to give his "blessing" on the Qt license change.
In fact, the first time this has ever come up was when he saw that KDE isn't quite so evil anymore.
So he creates a 'lex KDE' - a special rule that only applies to KDE.
Don't get us wrong; we could understand and accept that Stallman would still push GNOME over
KDE -- it is under the GNU umbrella after all. That's fine. What isn't fine is inventing special rules after the fact just to bash KDE. This is hardly fair play.
Just KDE, you ask? Yes! In all previous cases of potential GPL violations over the years (and
there have been a lot), a license change was accepted as a cure. No mention of "forgiveness" has ever been uttered. We even accepted it, for example, on copyright violations done by GNOME.
When they removed KDE copyright notices from code they copied from us (khtmlw), a simple
email discussion was enough to fix the problem. At no time did we demand that they beg our
forgiveness for their violation -- it's just not something that rational adults do.
So what we are left with is a childish, spiteful act by somebody who clearly can't stand to see us
survive. Enough's enough -- we have bent over backwards to ensure that all license issues are
resolved once and for. We will not enter into his game anymore.
signed by:
Waldo Bastian
Daniel Duley (Mosfet)
Matthias Elter
Matthias Ettrich
Kurt Granroth
Simon Hausmann
Rik Hemsley
Sirtaj S. Kang (Taj)
Lars Knoll
Richard Moore
Sven Radej
Cristian Tibirna
Robert Williams
Did you ever get the Lynx mob to give you their code so you could use it in your very-non-free project?
Still sore that FreeBSD doesn't have the marketshare of Linux, I see.
--
Peter
That's a possibility. I guess I see the situation from a different point of view. To me it looks like RMS is just saying that the past is a non-issue here. I think it's just our perception of the comment that he's doing it out of spite. I really think this was done with all of the best intentions, if not the best choice of words.
treke
Oh my. Is that what's important to an OS, the spotlight?
FreeBSD still has inferior hardware support, applications support, etc.
Yes, FreeBSD is inferior to the leader in those categories, Windows 98. Such is life.
Ah yes, speaking of Windows, I believe your quote that the previous poster responded to was:
without RMS or another hard liner who stuck to his guns and just plain simply refused to give an inch we'd not have all the wonderful choices we have today, we'd all be running Windows 95
While I'm not sure if you still want to argue this, I think we can all agree with your new claim:
The FSF has had a very significant impact on computing in general, [...]
Which is, I think, quite more reasonable.
and to dismiss it all by naming two projects which would be basically nowhere without the FSF, and a third which is used by almost nobody, is pretty, well, stupid.
Mmmkay, so FreeBSD and X11 would be nowhere without the FSF. Well, speculation being what it is, it could also be everywhere depending on which what-if scenario you consider. OK, and lcc is used by almost nobody. Now really, iCEBaLM, even if I was the only person who knew about it, it could still be a high-quality compiler, right? It's too bad you've never seen the lcc book, it's quite nifty. Check it out. And hey, be kind to your fellow Slashdotters, eh?
What law is it that gives you an obligation to enforce a license using the legal system? And there were legitimate breaches of the GPL (the KDE article admits a few instances of such). However, AFAIK no FSF software was involved, so RMS and the FSF couldn't do very much about it, except complain.
In fact, in all the cases so far where someone has used GPL code in violation of the license have been solved outside the court system. Examples are the Next Objective C compiler (based on gcc) and ncftp (used readline), both of which were released under the GPL (though NcFTP seems to be Artistic License now, and no longer uses readline).
I think what you're missing are such very stark things as:
RMS: Misusing a GPL-covered program permanently forfeits the right to distribute the code at all...Also, where code was copied from other GPL-covered programs, their copyright holders need to be asked for forgiveness.
MISUSING a program PERMANENTLY FORFEITS the RIGHT... ASK FOR FORGIVENESS!
As others are saying in these comments, other projects seem to have gotten off easy with their violations. A license change and all was well. Now, Troll Tech and KDE have bent over BACKWARD through compromise with a commercial product to finally give in and reach GPL licensing, AND ITS STILL NOT GOOD ENOUGH.
Unlike other projects and entities violating the GPL, this group has PERMANENTLY FORFEITED their RIGHTS until they ask for FORGIVENESS from EACH and EVERY copyright holder whose rights they have trod upon.
I'm sorry... but this really seems to be singling out the KDE people, and I think that, in this case, whether FORGIVE is being used in a legal sense or no, there are definite moralistic/political intentions behind it. Remember, FSF is not just about Open Source. It's a moral/political movement, and thus all pronouncements from it will echo that nature.
It curtails my freedom to use open source code in commercial code.
The only freedom the GPL curtails is your freedom to restrict the freedom of your users.
reading *everyone* who distributed KDE -- RedHat, Caldera, etc., and yes, even Debian
debian never distributed kde.
-- http://electronicintifada.net --
Hmmm, you mean, Troll Tech has done more than could ever be expected by being gracious enough to fix KDE's problem for them. KDE themselves, if you ever read the kde-licensing have been anything but interested in fixing their licensing problem; they consistently refuse to admit the problems.
Very true!
The issue was raised and resolved.
Any more banter on the subject will just lead to confusion among the end users.
If, suppose you were an IT person proposing a switch to linux desktops in an organization and you are demonstrating the KDE desktop to your pointy-haired boss.
You get close to getting it approved, until he remembers reading an article in WinFUD Magazine - Something about a licensing problem.
PHB's fud meter goes into the red zone.
Now imagine trying to explain the intricasies of the GPL to him... Good luck with that.
Cheers,
Jim in Tokyo
-- My Weblog.
Can people stop debating how many angels can dance on the head of a pin long and get back to coding?
The FSF wanted to find violations. So did the Gnome teem and several others.
they couldn't come up with any code they owned which was in violation so maybe they don't own any of the code ?
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
No. KDE was technically illegal to *distribute* because of the licensing issue (and, depending on which interpretation of the system component exception clause in the GPL you subscribe to, only illegal to distribute with an operating system containing Qt). You'd be perfectly within your rights to compile it.
Of course, the interesting consequence would be that since all major distributions except Debian have violated the GPL on KDE and forfeited their right to use KDE under GPL terms, Debian is the only distribution who can actually, in theory, legally distribute KDE, until such a time that the KDE authors regrant the rights to those distributions.
Obviously some idiot moderator thinks "Troll" == "doesn't agree with me", and is abusing the moderation system.
That, unfortunately, is a common thing on Slashdot. Disagreeing with the "GPV is freedom" orthodoxy on here is a good way to get moderated into the basement.
I've become a regular meta-moderator, just to counteract those who indulge in it...
--
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
I think I speak for everyone except the license zealots when I say:
SHUT UP AND CODE!
From the department... Is that like the agency? /.
The MIBS are living at
.... scary
"as plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee" - Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz. (One man's humorous is another mans flamebait)
have given as much or more code to the community
Who gives a shit about the amount of code? The value of a piece of software is not linearly proportional to its size. gcc is easily the single most valuable piece of free software, because it allows so much other free software to be created. I mean, Apache is nice, but it's not like it's a C compiler or anything.
without turning people off or away from OSS
The people who get turned off by RMS are those who listen to how he says his message, not what the message is. Can you really not see past the abrasiveness? Can you only like what someone says if they say it nicely?
I draw analogy to rock music, for instance. There are bands whose antics (like trashing hotel rooms, etc) I object to, yet I still buy their CDs. I like their music, but I don't like them. Most of my non-geek friends think I'm a hypocrite, but it's really nothing more than being able to separate people from their products. Also a bit like defending one's right to speak, whilst disagreeing with their speech.
To those people who think they can make friends by making free software friendly to the masses: you may make more friends, but you'll make better friends if you stick to your morals and never sway an inch from what you believe in.
People act like RMS is the leader of OSS. He isn't; noone is and noone should be. He is just the most (by far) vocal, while being one of the least productive in terms of completed/successful projects from the people that do stand out.
RMS is the self-appointed leader of the free software movement. He is because he has the drive, ambition, and guts to do it, particularly at the time when he made the initial decision. He is also a particularly good one, because nothing will corrupt him and he will always tell you where to go when you need to be told; people who are honest in their actions and words are a rare thing these days.
He's also highly productive, you should check to see what he's actually written and helped to write before writing sweeping statements. Besides, people "that stand out" is a relative term, it depends on which circles you hang out it.
To create the GNU project, the most critical GNU tools, and the FSF is no mean feat, perhaps you may complain about RMS when you have acheived all that he has. Perhaps if you do, you will be as abrasive as he, from having to deal with all the twits who don't get it. (Yes, I know he was always like that. Just trying to make the point that he can be however he likes; he's earned it. You should like him for what he's done, his personality shouldn't come into it.)
ObGripe: When will people learn that it's not about how many people you recruit, or how popular free software is? It doesn't matter if 90% of the population hates free software, because it's free, those who do believe in it may continue to use it, and may continue to improve it. There is no "win" or "lose" with free software, by its nature it's already won. It doesn't need to be popular. Those who like it can use it and nothing can stop that. You just can't say that about non-free software.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur.
That's assuming that competition is the sole or even primary reason for Microsoft releasing new versions. I thought they did it to generate new sales.
We'd *still* be running Windows 95, albeit with a fine GNU toolkit, if we had only RMS and his syncophants to depend on. If there was as much effort put into Hurd development as there is into making the whole world say "GNU/Linux", maybe they'd have produced an OS by now.
Look, it's a great thing that Qt is going GPL. Once that's out, the whole licensing issue with KDE will finally be over, resolved, kaput, done for, and however else you want to put it.
But it's a shame that Troll was forced into this. Let's face it; Troll wouldn't be GPL'ing Qt if it weren't for the KDE licensing issues. And those issues would never have existed if the KDE developers would have just swallowed their pride, admitted they made a small error in their licensing, and included one measly Section 10 Exception (which the GPL explicitly allows developers to do). Implicit permission is not enough; it won't stand up in a court if the need arises (and given our current litigous society it's suicide not to take that into condiseration). That exception wouldn't have taken up more than a paragraph, and could have been added to KDE with little more than a shell script. They would have had to contact developers, yes, but assuming they keep decent records (and they must, considering how long the project has survived at that size) that wouldn't be difficult (and no developer would have denied permission to add the clause; it makes no sense to do that).
But no, the KDE guys had to prove how macho they were by refusing to give in, and so Troll had to change Qt's license when the licensing issues were never their fault to begin with. And they're still trying to prove it with this last tirade. I know this article will probably be modded down as flamebait for saying that, but I'm just calling it like I see it.
Geez; KDE developers may call Gnome developers arrogant, and in all fairness they are. But it's nothing more than the pot calling the kettle black; if this doesn't prove that the other side isn't just as bad then I don't know what would.
----------
Sorry, Bruce, but I have to disagree here. The KDE project has been the target of so many unjustified attacks from RMS and his gang of zealots that allowing yet another one to go unanswered would be compounding the injustice.
TrollTech gave RMS exactly what he wanted. Yet another massive chunk of code - already free by every measure, including RMS's, got infected by the GPV specifically to satisfy RMS - and all he can do is bitch.
What a class act Stallman is. NOT!
--
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
Looks like you didn't check very thoroughly:
However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary
form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.
Also, libqt is different in that it is distributed with it's source, and until recently was distributed under a license which conflicted with the terms of the GPL in a way that you're probably not equipped to comprehend, given that you failed to spot the above.
Debian: GNU/Linux done the Linux way
here was a bit of foreshadowed warning in that those GNU tools, and indeed the whole of Linux, were under Richard Stallman's GNU General Public Liscence, and thus subject to his whim and the whim of the Free Software Foundation, but this was ignored as RMS was a freedom fighter, and it was well known he would never take Linux away.
Umm, remember that software under the GPL almost always includes the phrase ("Licesnsed under the terms of the GPL, version 2"). He can't chnage the GPL to read "You must donate 10 dollars to the FSF whenever you distribute this program" and have it affect any code that he doesn't hold the copyright for.
If you don't like the GPL, don't use it. But nobody can take your copyright away from you. AT&T owned the copyright for UNIX, RMS doesn't own the copyright the linux kernel.
- Aidan (damn FUD)
It isnt really one person. The FSF have several lawyers and legal academics who have been over the GPL time and time again. RMS wrote it. They read it and corrected it. Together I'd say there is no greater authority on the GPL.
And, personally having been following the debates surrounding the GPL since the early 90's, I can only say that RMS has made very very few mistakes where the interpretation of the GPL is involved.
People are, of course, free to go start their own revolution. But I trust RMS will do his best to ensure that anyone who wants will retain the freedom to do that, a freedom that those who do not understand or take for granted would sell out to take a programming shortcut.
Well, I am on neither side of the debate and have no axe to grind; but I'd just say that I don't see anything *that* bad/unreasonable in RMS's article. I would summarise it as so: " The QT license has changed, this is great. Blah blah, explanation of why Gnome was created. However, looking at it very closely, that is not *quite* enough to make all of KDE under the GPL, which is the point of all this argument. The GPL sez that linking GPL'd code into something that is not GPL'd requires specific explicit permission from the original author, which is not always there. Technically speaking then, before KDE is 101% squeaky clean, we need to be sure that each of those developers has given such permission (or "forgiven" KDE for the violation). Let me start the ball rolling by giving such permission/foreiveness for everything I ever did. By the way, once KDE is GPL that does not mean Gnome should whither and die as it is no longer needed. Gnome is viable in it's own right - good for it. " Now, sure, it's nick-picking but isn't this whole debate pointless if you aren't going to nit pick? If people were happy to be vague about licenses then the problem wouldn't exist! But since the licenses are what make free sw free, then I don't think it is unreasonable for people like RMS to err on the side of pedantry. Atleast the GPL doesn't tell you not to run your OS on a nuclear device like certain other OS's ;-)
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
But they aren't any more, are they? One would think that RMS might at least show the slimmest bit of gratitude for Troll Tech's capitulation to his demands. Keep in mind that both KDE and Qt were doing quite well with Qt under the QPL, thank you very much. Troll Tech did what it did as a favor to the community. I'm glad they did, because as I said, I generally respect RMS and his positions (though not really this time.) I'm disturbed by RMS's lack of gratitude, though.
And fuck, he's asking the KDE developers to do this, not Troll Tech, as you say all along.
Uh, I understand this completely. If I didn't make it clear, then mea culpa. From my perspective, there is no difference. There is no difference between retroactively attacking Troll Tech for having the unmitigated gall to develop a non-GPL library and retroactively attacking the KDE team for using a non-GPL library. Either scenario involves pissing all over somebody else's hard work because they did it in a manner that you didn't like. To which I can only say "tough titties"; RMS may be (mostly) admirable but he is not God.
And if I say "Go Expos!" when the Yankees visit them, is this petty, childish chest-beating that exhibits ingratude to a nearly unbelievable degree?
Strawman. KDE and GNOME are on the same team (that is, the team of open source desktop environments.) The GPLing of Qt only solidifies this obvious truth. Your analogy is more appropriate when comparing KDE/GNOME to Microsoft Windows. The fact remains that RMS bitched for years about Qt's licensing. Qt is now under his license. RMS continues to bitch. What does that tell you?
I'm almost inclined to believe IHBT by this point, but something tells me I haven't...
No, you haven't been trolled. My username is intended to severely punish knee-jerk moderators in meta-moderation (usernames and signatures aren't displayed in M2.) What you have done is failed to properly close out a bold tag.
--
--
The New World Order is upon us, and it's about damned time.
KDE shouldn't be insulted, I think RMS really cares for KDE as well as for the gnomes, and besides, there is good reason to be paranoid about IP laws these days, isn't it? :-)
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
If Microsoft would like to use something else but the NT kernel, they can *today* take any of the BSD's for example and do exacly what you describe.
And don't tell me that Linux is overall superior to the BSD's, because Linux is not.
Regards, Tommy - FreeBSD enthusiast
Only a little. I'm not a lawyer. I don't have great experience with legal issues. But I do know one thing: nowhere in law is endless whining and posturing given as an action to take when a license is violated. You think they've violated your license, are doing something illegal, and they disagree and refuse to do what you want them to? Then sue them or shut up. Law is something which is resolved in court, not by endless, endless boring and absurd rhetoric.
Stallman, you just make being a Linux developer such an exciting prospect! Create something worthwhile! Earn the respect and even admiration of your peers! Get slammed by conceited assholes over and over and over again! Be publicly slandered for every titchy little mistake!
Yeah right. Way to make the "Linux Community" feel like a welcome place to bring your skills.
"This is about how various different people have contributed to KDE, and now the inner KDE organization/Troll Tech has decided to change their license. Without consulting the people who WROTE SOME OF THE FUCKING CODE!!"
You've missed the boat completely on this one - since QT was/is covered by the QPL, any code submitted by 3rd parties is subject to relicensing (for the commercial QT).
Also QT is still under the QPL - it is triple licensed under the QPL, GPL and the expensive commercial license.
-- "Rest assured your credit are Not currently in a boost." -- cat Mail/inbox | dadadodo -c 1 -
So, what was he on about? Clearly, he must be referring to people that violated the GPL by distributing GPLed code against its terms, which would mean people that distributed GPL+Qt binaries.
Who falls into that category?
- Everyone except KDE who distributed KDE (and other GPL+Qt) binaries.
- KDE (and other GPL+Qt authors) in the few cases where they have imported pure GPL code into their code base
What needs to be done to fix this?Well in the first case, KDE's "That's Absurd" statement seems to constitute a statement of prior permission --- Problem Solved
That only leaves us with a few lines of pure GPL code which were included in Qt-linked programs without asking the author for their permission. This can be fixed by asking those authors for permission/forgiveness, which seems entirely reasonable to me, given that the code was used in violation of the license. I'm sure that all the authors in question would be perfectly willing to grant such a request.
In conclusion. RMS is simply asking for the few authors who's copyright was violated, to be asked if they hold a grudge. Is that so wrong?
One aspect of this that amuses me is that Debian doesn't need anyone's permission to distribute any of this, since we were in compliance (or made best efforts to be so) all along.
Debian: GNU/Linux done the Linux way
The X11 License
This is a simple, permissive non-copyleft free software license, compatible with the GNU GPL.
And yet, it isn't. This is a cop-out, IMHO because RMS saw that if he pushed the issue, more people would realize that X11 is more free than the GPL. The GPL specifically prohibits any other restrictions. The X11 license has other restrictions, which it doesn't surrender without specific permission from the copyright holder.
There are only 3 categories GPL-compatible, but non-GPL software: public domain, strict GPL subsets, and software with a specific GPL-surrender (a clause that says "you can also just forget any other terms and distribute it under the GPL"). Anything else contains terms which are incompatible with the GPL.
RMS has never said anything along the lines of "non-GPL is not free",
Maybe not straight out, but he sure seems to imply it often enough. Stunts like demoting the LGPL to "lesser" status certainly don't argue against this perception.
--------
It didn't really take RMS. BSD had a complete OS way before GNU came around. What are the major additions to OSS by GNU? GCC which was effectively saved by Cygnus, Emacs which has splintered again and again (have you wondered why?) and a number of small utilities that were basically given to FSF rather than came from it.
/. groupies would be worshipping the demon now, not the Penguin. (BTW, I use Linux, not BSD; I just have my history straight).
Don't take me wrong; I respect GNU and I use FSF programs all the time. However, they are not the only source of OSS (no pun intended) or even the biggest one. BSD, X, Linus Torvalds, Larry Wall, the Apache Group, and others I am probably forgetting have given as much or more code to the community and, more importantly, have rallied people around them, without turning people off or away from OSS. And from those I mentioned by name, only Linus' code is GPL'ed. The BSD, X and Artistic licenses have been, historically, as successful (if not more so) as the GPL.
People act like RMS is the leader of OSS. He isn't; noone is and noone should be. He is just the most (by far) vocal, while being one of the least productive in terms of completed/successful projects from the people that do stand out.
PS: Now, some will argue that it was because of the GPL that Linux succeeded where FreeBSD failed, i.e. challenging MS on x86. Bull; for those that weren't around back then, let me remind you of the little AT&T lawsuit against the BSDs. If FreeBSD could have taken advantage of the commoditization of x86 hardware and widespread acceptance/importance of the Internet that coincided around 91-92, the
The world at large (though maybe not Sun or MS)
likes those pissing matches. They are a sign
that noone has total control. Why do you think
big corporations like IBM are trying to
contribute to Linux? That's right, because it
will not be controlled by someone else.
The fact that people argue about licensing
shows that the community has checks and balances
and that fanatical RMS/ESR/your favorite loony
followers will all balance each other out.
Checks and balances is a powerful attraction
for a business.
Side note: debate is not same as flame war.
The RMS vs. KDE smells like a flame war in
disguise, but both sides were quite constructive
despite the tone - RMS forgave past license
violations and KDE provided a method for license
issues resolution via e-mail.
He he, this is probably a good question. I fear it's not a politically correct one, but the aswer should be interesting. Generally speaking, how many of the free software advocates are just oportunists ?
People aren't all that enthused to join the other side while that other side is still poking at them over and over.
Oh, and by the way, check that 'carpetbagger' comment, then my .sig. I'm a she, not a he. :)
-Jo Hunter
If we do not change our direction we are likely to end up where we are headed.
I'll start out with the usual "I'm definitely not a lawyer, but I play one on TV"...
Having dealt with copyright issues in the past, I can say this much: while poorly worded, RMS's notion that the KDE developers must write to the original copyright holders of any code that they "reused" is valid. Not that I'm saying that what they did was morally wrong (or even legally), but reuse of copyrighted materials is a touchy subject (despite licensing). I see it akin to using a quote or photo from a book in the library and then publishing the quote without proper credit or permission. Yes, the book is "freely available" and yes, the words and pictures within are as well, but the book is still subject to the copyrights of the publisher and/or author. Say someone pointed out that they knew that you used the quote/photo from the book and that proper permission was not obtained prior to you publishing your work. Even if you obtain permission, unless explicitely stated, the permission is NOT retroactive and won't cover anything that you've already distributed (it may even require a second printing) and the copyright holder is still entitled to royalties or damages based no whatever you've already vended.
Ok, that being said, let's take a look at this issue. Who knows if the copyright holders of the original software whose code the KDE team "reused" are upset about this? Who knows if they don't even want KDE to contain even so much as one line of their code? NOBODY...at least not until someone asks. While I'm not positive that this is what RMS is trying to say, I believe that's what he's really getting at. The KDE team needs to realise that clarifying licensing issues involves more than just changing words...it also involves making sure that any past transgressions are corrected to the best of their ability. If this means rewriting the offending code or asking the original authors of said code for their "stamp of approval" on their past, present, and future use of their code, then I don't see why they don't just do it? If they're serious about wanting to play in the GPL court, then why not put forth a bit more effort towards doing this correctly and a bit less effort towards making all of their "responces" so public.
I'm worried that folks are going to start ignoring his message in full - including all the good, worthy stuff about how Freedom Is Good - and that he may inadvertently destroy the movement for something he wants to promote.
If you seriously think that I seriously think that RMS would throw something like FSF donations in the GPL... ...I can't come up with any way to describe how ridiculous that contention is, because you apparently know it to be stupid as well as I seeing as tho you replied about it :)
-Jo Hunter
If we do not change our direction we are likely to end up where we are headed.
GPL'd code can't be "unGPL'd". One can always take the last version to be released under the GPL and continue your own development based on that version. That's the whole point of the GPL.
No, the whole point of the GPV is to infect the entire world of software with Stallman's utopian views. The BSD license is sufficient to achieve the goal you state: it, too, guarantees that you can always take the last version released under it and continue your own development based on it.
--
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
As a laywer without the described credentials, I'll second werdna. This does not take specialized knowledge in copyright law to see Stallman's behavior as petty and hypertechnical.
For that matter, it doesn't even require legal training--note the description of how KDE has been singled out as needing forgiveness, whereas past alleged violations have not seen such treatment.
hawk, esq., not giving legal advice
Doesn't this hurt Free Software advocacy if supporters of Free Software (or Open Source, yes they're different) try to promote their ideas to programmers and private companies, but then also ridicule a group of people who have complied with such advocates wishes?
What kind of message does this send about the advantages of creating, assisting, or moving to free software?
I would think this is a terrible way of advocating your ideas when someone you've lobbied to change does change, then you ridicule them for it.
Was the point that RMS wanted them to change their software? Or was it that they didn't change when he asked the first time and now he is upset about it?
As for the FCC, I'll admit, I didn't remember anything 'bout that. Like I said in a correction (which you might not have seen), forgive me for historical innaccuracies. I think I'll go bap myself with a rolled-up newspaper for that one.
Bell Labs was cool and independently would have been harmless. But they weren't independent.
-Jo Hunter
If we do not change our direction we are likely to end up where we are headed.
"He's forgiving any violations that may have occured. There may not have been any violations commited, but if they were committed they've been forgiven."
Hey that's pretty generous of him - forgiving people for 'violations' they may have (but actually have not) committed. KDE does not and did not use any FSF copyrighted code, so the 'forgiveness' is meaningless.
I forgive you for anally raping my mother. There may not have been any violations commited, but if they were committed they've been forgiven. Thank you.
-- "Rest assured your credit are Not currently in a boost." -- cat Mail/inbox | dadadodo -c 1 -
And that's why a lot of people are going to be wrong; just as wrong as the KDE bunch and, for that matter, Eric Raymond.
But some things are black-and-white, Chris.
As Captain Sheridan said, "No compromise with the Shadow -- not on my watch!" (Sorry, quoting from memory there.)
RMS is bloody well right here; it's too bad so many see that as just a "minor detail" to be glossed over and forgotten.
Christian R. Conrad
My ISP is the Saunalahti company, of Finland.
Christian R. Conrad
mail me at iki.fi ; same user ID as here
Thus it is an altogether more difficult kind of
...my own understanding, and the understanding of many others before this brouhaha emerged...
document to interpret in terms of what it forces upon you. The idea that you can retroactively forfeit your rights under a license looks to me to be completely absurd.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say here - "the GPL is hard to understand because it forces you to forfeit your rights"? What rights would those be, exactly?
The `viral' nature of the GPL arises because you are expected to slap the GPL license on work other than your own.
I see nowhere in the GPL that requires you to apply it to work other than your own. In fact, it's impossible to apply it to work other than your own - only the copyright holder can do that. What you're probably thinking is, "But wait! If I use GPL'd code in my own code, the copyright holder of the GPL'd code is thereby forcing me to release my work under the GPL!" If you really see the GPL in that way, here's a tip - don't use any GPL'd code in your own programs. There, problem solved. No-one's forcing you to use the source to free software.
Speak for yourself, please. I'm sure those "many others" can speak up if they feel the need to without you putting words in their mouths.
That the original coder would still be in violation, and so would now not be allowed to use, modify or distribute that program.
Also, anyone that ever distributed the old version of the program was in violation of the sensitive code's license, and so would still be in violation, as would anyone that modified the program after the sensitive lines were added.
Who does that leave? Well, appart from people that never saw the program, not many.
Debian: GNU/Linux done the Linux way
Terms and Conditions for Copying, Distributing and Modifying, 2.a:
Derivitive works must be licensed under the GPL. Ok, check for the KDE code, but GPL code can't then be linked with non-free libraries (ie Qt, until now). Then comes the next problem, 4: So this is where RMS' "forgiveness" thing comes in. He is explicitly regranting KDE the license to use anything copyrighted by the Free Software Foundation. If he hadn't done that, then the integrity of the GPL would have been questioned. Granted, he could have used a different word, but that's still no excuse for the KDE people to get up in arms over word choice.What both KDE and GNOME want to do is write code, unincumbered by any legal issues. The problem is these pesky legal issues can become very important at times. RMS, while maybe being a little extreme, understands this better than any of us. The most important thing is that now, KDE and GNOME are on equal footing, with their underlying widget libraries equal. Now it truly is about who has the best code, not who has the best licence.
Well, a similar thing could be done with the *BSDs, if they ever became a competitive threat, esp. on the platform that Microsoft has the biggest hold on - namely, the desktop. (And even more easily, because they wouldn't have to worry about any GPL wranglings - they could take the code whole, and call it their own, since the BSD license's advertising clause was dropped.)
Don't delude yourself. The situation the poster before you described is unlikely, but he's saying that if nobody cares about enforcing the GPL, then it means nothing, and anyone, including Microsoft, can do pretty much anything they like.
_____
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
> The people who get turned off by RMS are those
> who listen to how he says his message, not what
> the message is.
That is not eneterly true, RMS's message is i.m.h.o aloot of the problems in the OSS comunity comes from RMS and his descrition of free. I admit that it sounds great, but I personally think that his free is as free as when Henry Ford said you can have it in any color as long as it's black. RMS has a definition of free as it's free as long as freedom is GPL.
I know a loot of pepole that get turn away from RMS and FSF just becase that don't share that idea of freedom. I like to thing as freedom that everyone could do what they like to do. I also think that credit due where credit goes are great.
(Sorry but english isn't native to me...)
but how much do YOU know about all the legal stuff involved in mixing licenses?
Zero. I'm not a lawyer, just a programmer.
"Go gnomes" , with little petty comments like that, and others, why would I trust his interpretation. It is obvious this jerk has an attitude problem just a bit less gigantic than his ego.
I'm really sick of all this license nitpicking. Yes, the license is important, but I'm sorry, if we wanted to discuss law we would have gone to law school.
- sigs are for wimps.
KDE is already playing the game by responding. Kind of funny to see them squirm though.
--
--
He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable.
you know it's a sad day when someone speaks thier opinion, and since it's the opposite of all the left wing RMS clones it gets moderated as flamebait.
Long live the 1st amendment.
I think alot of people who disagree with or dislike RMS are deliberately mis-understanding his go-gnome team cheer.
Richard realises that with GPL'd QT and a Free KDE that GNOME has a rival on its own terms and will have to work harder than before as it has lost the moral high ground.
Further to that its also obvious that GNOME is an FSF project and the official GNU team so he *should* be shouting go GNOME.
There are so many weak minds on slashdot who are always ready to accept a sell out or water down software and other freedoms for an easier life.
There also those who think that adversarial discussion has no place in OSS - they are wrong sometime real competition with no holds barred stretches both the arguments and the technology and minds of the community - it theoretically works for democracy so why shouldn't it work for an open community - it is far more likely to be successful than committees and yes-men who get know where or always comprimise.
Perl & C Hacker
Okay, let's see whether there is any substance in this disagreement.
1. As I have understood there is no FSF-copyrighted code in KDE code tree and there has never been. So RMS has granted his forgiveness to some hypothetical non-KDE Qt-applications that use FSF-copyrighted code.
2. In the previous story there is a comment from someone who claims to be rms here saying KDE is still illegal and should not be used. Now I have no idea about its authenticity, but it seems to have ticked off some.
3. There is a disagreement about the allegation of RMS that violating of GPL would terminate authors license for the GPL code forever. This is the referenced text from GPL, section 4:
Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.
However, here is a text from GPL, section 6:
Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein.
So if KDE hackers would give the entire CVS tree with new GPLd Qt to someone who has had nothing to do with KDE, he would have a fully legal codebase. If he then gives it back, Section 4 would suggest that KDE hackers would get automatically a new license hence having a fully legal codebase too.
4. I at least have never seen RMS or anyone enforce this interpretation of GPL before. If it is taken as a principle by everyone, how many free software projects would then be in "shady" legal position. For example (and I am not quite sure about the absolute facts about this case) some GNOME hackers took the HTML-widget code from KDE, removed the copyrights, and used it as a basis for their gtkhtml-code. They did put the copyright notes back, but it still seems a GPL-violation to me. If KHTML coders have not formally forgiven and relicensed the code, wouldn't this make GNOME "illegal" too?
Besides how RMS can possibly think that someone who put a GPL header in a source file AND included the QT include files in their KDE program didn't intend their program to be used with QT is beyond me
You, dear sir, are so full of shit, I'll bet money that your eyes are brown. No one has (or has to have) signed copyright of anything they license under the GPL to the FSF. Where'd you get this loony idea?
_____
Sam: "That was needlessly cryptic."
Max: "I'd be peeing my pants if I wore any!"
Let's just say the person doesn't keep up on Qt news. 2.1 is the shipping version (no, it does not use the kernel version numbering system).
Meaningless devisive and unendling flamewars are not. Why can't slashdot show a little restraint and try to rise just a little bit above the level of toilet stall door graphitti? This "article" is complete gibberish and belongs nowhere on a website that proclaims itself to be a news source. Please either spin off the "Slashdot Rumour Mill and Flamewar" site, or show that you know a little bit about journalistic integrity.
got drum'n'bass?
http://mp3.com/vitriolix
Fine, so I should've said "GNU/free" - I thought it was obvious what I meant, considering I was talking about everything from RMS's point of view, including his definition of the word "free." Of course, that depends on what the meaning of "is" is.
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try."
I say coke, you say pepsi. Why can't we both just lay back and relax, as we sip our cola and groove to the cosmic tunes.
It's kind of funny how this all fits within historical perspective. When MSFT was the primary agressor on the desktop, we were united on a common front. Now that they're pretty much irrevelent in the Free Software / OSS world, we've divided into warring factions.
Can't we all just get a long? Or a 16-bit int at least? sheesh.
make world, not war
The fight is *mostly* over, but KDE has some leftover stuff to clean up.
RMS has a point about getting "forgiveness" or permission from the authors of third-party GPL code that made it into KDE. If the QPL and GPL did conflict, then the KDE developers did breach the GPL of that third-party code, and since one's rights under the GPL end when one breaches its terms, the KDE developers who introduced the third-party code no longer have a right to touch that code, period. Troll Tech licensing Qt 2.2 under the GPL can't undo the breach that already took place. The only way for those KDE developers to get their GPL rights back on that third-party code is to get permission from the copyright holders of the third-party code.
RMS was undiplomatic, but he was unfortunately correct.
Given that copyright is based on commercial value, and copyright litigation awards damages based on an estimate of direct financial loss, every free software license is on unsteady legal ground. If it ever went to court, I think they would be legally found to be in the public domain.
Why waste all that effort, instead of just dumping everything into the public domain, like in the good old days?
--------
Didn't Open Source software used to be about techinal merit? Or has all this BS always been around. Trolltech is good. QT is good. KDE is good. Gnome is good. Enlightenment is good. (Your favorite whatever) is probably good also. As far as I am concerned any individuals and/or companies that release their code to be used by others are doing a good service to all of us and we should praise them(Even if the code is crap). QT/KDE are trying to give away their work so we can use it and stupid people tell them that they are evil because of pure BS(liscensing). Everyone needs to sit back and look at the software that is running on their computer and just be happy, if you don't like something then fix it.
They certainly have every right to be pissed off. Stallman has a chip on his shoulder and is looking for any way -- however unfair -- to trash the KDE project.
RMS has lost alot of credibility in my eyes. It's a shame someone who has done so much good could be so righteous to the point that it actually hurts the 'community' effort.
Dick Stallman is the one who needs to beg forgiveness.
RMS seems like he wants to have an empire that he rules. His attitude is clear from his editorial and subtle words/phrases he uses.
First of all, he makes it look he along with his cronies decided to develop Gnome, then he insists on calling it GNU Gnome - everything is not GNU !
Its NOT GNU Linux and its NOT GNU Gnome !
I think RMS feels like if they call anything GNU, then he by default gets credit for it - thats why he insists on putting that label on all software he can.
Also, his tirade against KDE sounds so petty, it sounds like a 14 year old is complaining. Really,
what more can the KDE guys do to win our trust and full support !?
So, go KDE-ers !
Oh, bollocks. If you've seen some of the crap about the Gnome Consortium, etc., coming out of the KDE camp, you'd realise that it was actually very mild. F'chrissakes, Gnome is the FSF's official graphical interface; why shouldn't he encourage them, since many of them started to work on Gnome in response to the KDE licensing problems?
Guys... this "forgiveness" has NOTHING, I say again NOTHING to do with "sinners" or "moral transgressions" or "childish KDE bashing" or any of the other accusations levelled against RMS
It's all about legal precident - and that's ALL it's about. RMS has to clearly state for legal purposes that he "forgives" the past KDE transgressions so that when a real, serious GPL violation by a purposeful violator is examined in a court of law, that the violator cannot use the KDE proceedings against the GPL.
RMS is 100% focussed on protecting the legal validity of the GPL. He doesn't care about the KDE vs GNOME flamewar. It's not even on his radar.
Sheesh! Get over yourselves already!
He sounds like one. Specially when he tells the KDE developers to "ask for forgiveness".
This guy is in a serious and disastrous power trip, he need to land and come back to reality.
- sigs are for wimps.
Kimp was never distributed. As such it was never in violation of the GPL or the wishes of the Gimp developers.
The GPL allows you unlimited rights to curupt GPLed code as long as the results stay internal.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Give me a break, without Linux do you really think FreeBSD would have garnered the spotlight? I doubt it. FreeBSD still has inferior hardware support, applications support, etc. While it does have one of the best TCP stacks known to man and is very technically advanced, without GNU tools it wouldn't have near as much of the functionality. lcc, rofl, I haven't even heard of it before today, BeOS and MacOS X use modified gcc's for their compilers!
The FSF has had a very significant impact on computing in general, and to dismiss it all by naming two projects which would be basically nowhere without the FSF, and a third which is used by almost nobody, is pretty, well, stupid.
-- iCEBaLM
No, without competition they'd just make you pay for upgrades and service packs to the same product.
-- iCEBaLM
XXX is licensed under the BSD-style license below. This license is retroactively applicable to previous versions which were released under the GNU General Public License. My goal in releasing free software is to contribute to the free flow of code between projects. I have come to realize that I should use a license with the same goal, rather than one designed to create encumbrances, uncertainty and hostility.
I originally chose the GPL because I wanted to reserve my code for other free projects. But at this point, I'd rather see it wind up it Windows than have it make life difficult for free developers who want to make use of it. I don't claim to be a significant part of the free software world, but I want my corner of it to work the way I want it to.
-----------
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Let me put it this way - the number of lawyers registered in the state of California alone is greater than the number of lawyers in the whole of Japan, although the population of the U.S. is only double that of Japan.
A few weeks ago I read something on slashdot that really hit me strongly. I quote it badly, but how I quote it shows what hit me...
"The world is moving not to where governments own everything but corporations own everything. So that even when you purchase a product from a company they can still tell you how to use it."
Now a few good jokes...
"Bill Gates wants your money, Steve Jobs wants your soul..."
"He [Ellison] isn't your saviour, He just wants my job!" --Bill Gates
Why do I mention this? Doesn't RMS seem like this same kind of person also?
Others have noted that the code in question isn't copywrited by RMS. Others have noted that RMS is setting up a dual standard, where KDE is the first to benifit from his sudden insight that if your once a violator your always a violator (now doesn't that sound strangley like an emotionally petty and punitive responce rather than a legal responce?)
I ask the community straightly. Cut through the crap, is RMS stating legal advice for KDE or is he dictating how his code (or in this case code written under the liscence he wrote for his code) should be used?
Linus is well and good to never let people sign over the copyright to himself, but does the FSF require people to hand the copywright (which is the exact same copywright) ownership to themselves?
The GPL is about a community, not a person. Its not about freedom, its about benifiting from sharing (which one of the benifits is increased freedom). And sharing seems to be becoming more and more foreign a concept to RMS. Has his ring finnaly corrupted him?
So? That changes nothing as regards other peoples code and the fact that you get a situation where the GPL on KDE isnt the GPL but a GPL with 'implicit permission' which makes it unmixable with other GPL code, despite the fact that the licenses dont diff except on some imaginary level.
It's that sort of fuzzy logic that got KDE into trouble in the first place. Like it or not the licensing of open source software is a big issue, and it will only become more important as open source software becomes more prevalent.
Right now we are still under the radar of the IP lawyers, but it won't be long before the GPL gets its day in court. RMS is simply trying to do all he can to make sure that the GPL wins when it gets to the big dance.
The GPL is probably RMS's greatest hack. It is quite literally a hack of epic proportions, and so you can't hardly blame the guy for wanting to protect it. Just because you think that the subject is boring and nitpicky does not mean that RMS isn't spot on. IP law is like coding GUIs in assembler on a machine that changes its instruction set every 4 months. It makes little sense, and is full of seeming contradictions and picky nits. Unfortunately, when it comes to the law, the nits matter.
He isn't asking KDE developers to beg him : he's unconditionally stated that all the FSF-owned stuff is OK to use - i.e. he's given the 'forgiveness' without KDE even asking.
By requesting that KDE ask for similar statements from all the other contributors he's ensuring that this flame war is dead, with a stake through the heart : noone can come back and accuse them later of misusing some GPL'd code.
I'd be more than willing to set up an archive for good posts like this, problem being that I don't have time to browse /. all day anymore. If people were to submit them to me though, I'd be more than happy to archive them.
----
Dave
MicrosoftME®? No, Microsoft YOU, buddy! - my boss
- Dave
Don't you just love the "sue for stepping on my toes" mentality? How about growing up and realizing that [A] rational discussion has solved more problems than the courts ever will, and [B] not everybody in the world is as suit-happy as you are.
I agree. I think this whole KDE/GNOME flamewar does not contribute anything to evolve X11 desktops for the Unix community and only succeeds in dividing two excellent and innovative groups of developers. I'm sick of hearing this crap, if you want to use GPLed stuff, do so, if you want to use commercial stuff, do so. Just relax people.
Goddag yxskaft.
That's exacly what I wrote. Read before you comment. :-)
Regards, Tommy - FreeBSD enthusiast.
But does it "work"? I suppose that depends on what your definition of "work" is. If you mean the ability to merely draw people in droves, then yeah, it "works". If, on the other hand, you mean does it create much in the way of meaningful discussion, I don't think so.
In my opinion, slashdot doesn't do nearly enough to challenge the opinions of slashdot's readers; if anything, it seems to fuel this sort of "fact" by consensus approach of the majority of slashdot. If an opinion is stated and reiterated by enough people, it suddenly becomes part of slashdot party line. This skewing starts with the so-called articles. The links themselves are generally poorly written and of a certain mind frame. Then the initial commentary generally is poor, innaccurate, and biased. Once the "article" is in place, the comments start rolling in. Though anyone can submit, the majority of slashdot readers are of a certain mind frame on slashdot's popular issues. So we have a system where the same view point is uttered 25 times for everytime there is a differing one. Then we have a moderation system, which seems to be more of a popularity contest than anything else. If your view point is popular and relatively intellectual sounding, you get modded up. What's more, the system is setup such that only the comments in the first few minutes get attention, those which are written carefully and over a reasonable period of time tend to be left in the dust.
So where does this leave hard hitting alternative view points? At the bottom, where no one can see them. Between the moderation system and the sheer volume of "popular" stuff, it is rare to see honest to god discussion. If it is truth that slashdot seeks, it seems to me that you need a system where all sides of an issue have an opportunity to present their best arguments equally; slashdot is anything but. Slashdot may be entertaining and popular, but please don't confuse that as a replacement for good journalism.
It is hardly GNU GNU Network Object Model Environment, as "GNU GNOME" would imply.
It's already long enough - "Gnu's Not Unix Network Object Model Environment". If RMS's evil "extra GNU" is allowed to continue, then what will happen?! THIS:
Gnu's Not Unix Gnu's Not Unix Network Object Model Environment
But scariest of all is the fact that GNU doesn't stop... at all! That name will just keep growing and growing! GNU, as widly reported, "harbors a stack overflow bug that can cause the English language to crash". Perhaps GNOME trying to expand part of its name's continuous loop explains it's high memory usage and instability.
People, you must understand this. GPL'ed software is evil. It hosts an evil stack overflow bug in its name. RMS knows this. He wants to build society's dependance on his "GNU/[insert name here]" software, then bring it crushing down!
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
(Some sence of humour required ;)
I am a commercial software developer. At the same time I do appreciate the idea of open source. Being able to share cool stuff with others is educative and desirable.
But I am not so sure if GPL is what I want. It curtails my freedom to use open source code in commercial code. I prefer a BSD style of license where eveyone is open to contribute an reuse stuff out of free choice
Stallman's aim was never to create software that was really free for everyone to use, but rather to build an empire.
OK, so what?
In the worst case, what would that mean?
An empire of free products? Requiring others to help? Many, many, many others?
What's the worst case in this situation - if you're right?
Since Stallman has complete and total control over the FSF, this really means that it's been signed over to him personally.
I believe you've been debunked on this on Infoworld before, but again, assuming you're right - so what? What's the worst case?
Long ago, he stated that he wanted GNU to "remove operating systems from the realm of competition."
And that has to do with GUI's how? You left out the connecting parts.
Abandon the GPL, which makes software non-free, and adopt truly free licenses which do not restrict the creation of derivative works.
Like the BSD model? Which Microsoft was then able to take the code and place in their monopoly product, making it yet harder for competition to emerge?
Brett: your GPL hysteria _really_ needs to get checked.
If you write the software, you get to pick the damn licence. Simple as that. Why is someone making a choice - that you disagree with - THAT distasteful to you?
Or at least come up with some BETTER proof of a conspiracy? Mmmmmkay?
Addison
Cool down folks. Don't let the free software movement become a personality cult.
GPL is a software license and a philosophy. KDE is distributed under its license, and abides by its philosophy. QT is now also going to be distributed under the same license and philosophy. No problem here.
If RMS chooses to give his personal endorsement to Gnome, so be it. If he feels some personal resentment toward KDE and Trolltech for past frustrations, so be it. It appears he is human. And it is beside the point.
The main point is that the licenses of KDE and Gnome are now ethically equivalent. Each of us has our preference - and the choice is now a technical one, not an ethical one.
Stallman's contribution to free software is immense, but the strength of it lies in the GPL, *not* in his personal endorsements, hair styles, political views, enthusiasm for Balkan folk dancing or anything else about him.
It seems (from afar) that you Americans are too easily influenced by personality cults in your philosophy and politics. Why not take it easy on the personalities of the major players and make your own minds up about the issues?
The licenses of KDE and Gnome are now equivalent. Hereafter, the choice between them is technical and personal. The "Crusade" is over, and the ethical battle has been won. Free software is the winner. Now stop seeking endorsement from on high and make up your own minds!
---- Ends are ape-chosen; only the means are man's.
That seems to me more like someone rooting for his "home" team. Living in Massachusetts, I root for the Red Sox. Does that mean I'm against the Yankees continued existance? No! It just means I'd rather see the team from where I live win. RMS probably feels that GNOME is closer to being his "home team" and so he'd rather that they "win" the desktop "war." Personally, I'd rather they both continue, so that they can work off of each other - anything KDE does better gets copied into GNOME, and anything GNOME does better gets copied into KDE.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
RMS' motivation is to defend important principles and beyond that to see them used intelligently. I contribute to the Linux Documentation Project. Recently RMS came onto the discussion list to talk about the shape of Copyright for LDP documents and what we should do with the non-free documents that are submitted. There was a lot of disagreement but it was all very thought-provoking and really moved things forward. Throughout the discussion RMS was clear, sharp and insightful. One of the reasons he is such a purist is that he knows there will be drift and someone has to stand up for the core principles. But more than that he devoutly believes that all software should be free for everyone. I don't see any reason to pillory him for that.
It's a shame that while folks like those on the KDE team are busy elevating Linux to a level where it is actually viable as a mainstream desktop OS, arrogant, self righteous people like GNU/Richard GNU/Stallman are trying to keep them down.
It's people like him that have simultaneously raised awareness of free software projects like Linux while making the entire "movement" seem like it is simply a bunch of irrational fanatics who have infinite axes to grind.
RMS should just go GNU/away and let *today's* developers have the accolades they deserve instead of acting childish just because he's not getting all of the GNU/recognition he thinks he deserves right now.
(Disclaimer: Yes, I'm a relative outsider looking in but it doesn't take a genius to see non-productive back-biting when it stares you right in the face.)
That's just the thing, the GPL does limit what a GPL'ed program can use.
There is solid reasoning behind this; for example, imagine some company develops a new CPU. They want a compiler for it, want to keep it proprietary and not pay for the entire development. Thus they take gcc and add their code generating backend *as a library*. Instantly bypassing the GPL. Imagine things like proprietary mp3 decoders, document format converters, etc etc etc. The GPL prevents that.
So, no, it isnt ok. That means, if you intend to link against any proprietary or non-GPL compatible libraries do _not_ use the GPL, or add a clause stating that you further allow linking against the library in question so there is no problem. There must be no doubt about the fact that you are adding this extra permission because while you may have this extra permission, no other GPL code that you or anyone else may add to your code has this permission unless you ask the author of that code for it.
Note that this is not some pettiness on behalf of RMS, but the result of a fairly keen knowledge of the legal situation. Unfortunatly, "legal" is not always "logical".
If I take a piece of GPL-ed code and incorporate it into one of my programs, the result is a derived work of the GPL-ed code. If I release my code under an incompatible license, I am in violating the GPL, and are not allowed to distribute the program. This does not necessarily change if I remove the GPL-ed piece of code - it can be argued (and many lawyers would gladly argue) that what I have is not an original work (for which I would have full copyright), but a derived work of the original program (which violated the GPL) and hence of the GPL-ed code segment.
And of course it can be argued that the same is true if I then replace this segment with another one, regardless of the license of the new piece of code.
The KDE situation is more convoluted, because KDE presumably always has been released under "GPL with implicit QT link permission". However, this combined license also is (according to the FSF's interpretation of the GPL) incompatible with the pure GPL, and hence in violation of the GPL. Ergo, KDE violates the GPL, and relinking it with a new library will not make it compliant.
Note that I do not necessarily like this situation. However, unless we shoot all the lawyers, we need to cope not only with hacker nitpicking about code, but also with laywer nitpicking about licenses.
Stephan
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Free, schmee! Stallman's aim was never to create software that was really free for everyone to use, but rather to build an empire. Stallman sits atop the FSF's hoard of software and opposes KDE because it threatens that empire by offering an alternative.
It's time for the open source community to recognize that this is what Stallman is up to. Abandon the GPL, which makes software non-free, and adopt truly free licenses which do not restrict the creation of derivative works. Saint Ig-GNU-cius is no saint at all, and this shows it.
--Brett Glass
Everyone is so quick to call stallman a looney because he is standing up for freedom. He is TRYING to protect all of our freedoms by being consistent in his views.
Stallman doesn't stand for freedom, he stands for pure open-source software, preferably under his license. You have every right to use only open-source software, but my right to write and release closed source software and charge however much I want for it is just as important.
Purity is not freedom.
Can't anybody do anything without violating either a) The DMCA
b) The GPL
c) IP Laws
Sheesh. I'm going back to law school.
:wq
Face it Stallman, you're just a sellout for GNU and Gnome. (what did you call it? "GNU Desktop"? Oh please.)
Go get em, KDE! I want to see him pull his GNU/Foot out of his mouth for once.
~dlb
The best service you can do to the community is to release your code under the GPL. Ant the best service you can do to yourself is not to ask RMS what he thinks about your project.
All else aside, there is no FSF code in KDE. None. Zero. This is like my announcing that I'm offering Richard Stallman forgiveness for stealing my car.
-----------
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
In this little "war" I will always have to side with the KDE folks. 1) I've used both GNOME and KDE and it's clear that KDE is the better product. That's the bottom line, even though I did put it at the top. ;-)
2) RMS reminds me of one of those people that protests [insert your favorite target here] by splashing red paint on [target] or by driving a spike through [target] or other such actions that do nothing to promote your cause in a way that draws attention to your argument. Instead he draws attention to the war rather than to any valid argument. And that forgiveness thing... puh-leese.
3) I'm starting to view the GPL in the same light as the Communist Manifesto. Granola eattn' hippie socialists with an ax to grind against a perceived conspiracy by an establishment to undermine the people, so they start a revolution to save the people by declaring that the people own everything and since they stood up for the people they own everything too, but with a controlling interest.
Whatever...
I was hoping that this whole argument would blow away after the GPLing of the QT. This whole concept of Gnome as holy war is absurd. While I see the point that in order to protect the GPL and it all stands for/protects, certain specific points must be enforced. But this arrogant bashing of the KDE group is goind beyond the call of decency. The whole "militant" aspect of the OSS movement will do more harm than good. I love reading a thread that disparges every distro but Debian, and any desktop manager except Gnome because they don't meet some geek purity test. Is Mandrake not good for Linux, just because it tries to simplify some of the harder admin task? Now that the liscencing issue is fixed, why not use KDE (personal opinions aside)? Why do so many purist have issues with Red Hat, is RPM too easy for "real" Linux users? I know the answer to all of these questions already, but if I was a newbie and was taking my first look at teh Linux community these types of flame wars would send me back to Windows in a heart beat. Linux and OSS excite me because they are about choice and innovation, and giving users many ways to scratch the same itch. I think we are on the brink of mass acceptance for Linux, and am completely excited by the advances that are about the reach realization in the next few months (a finally debugged XFree86 4.xx, a finished Mozilla, new Gnome-Helix, Eazel, KDE 2, the 2.4 kernel, Koffice, open source Star Office, the list goes on). The community should be coming together now, wasn't this the whole point? It's is discouraging to see the whole "cult of personality" thing take such a foothold, and the whole community taking sides.
To fail is human, to blue screen MS!
It has been my experience that, in the real world, turning the other cheek when confronted by a bully will get it smacked. If you don't fight back, you get labeled as an easy mark. You're right in saying that declining to fight does not diminish you. Neither does standing up for yourself.
Hi, For the sake of completeness, a Point Of View from the other side. What RMS says, is that if you violate the GPL, you loose the rights to use the software with which you did this. This would legally mean, that anyone who has used KDE, may not use it anymore. This is a technical problem, which RMS tries to solve. OK, the problem is absurd -- but it is a valid problem! So why do I say "KDE is arrogant"? Well, first, to get you to read this post, of course ;-) But second, for this:
- Qt was non-free. KDE said: no problem.
- Qt got free. KDE said: nice, now we can solve the problem that we DIDN'T HAVE in the first place.
- Linking GPL'ed code to Qt remained a problem. KDE said: no problem.
- Qt got GPL. KDE said: nice, now we can solve the other NON-EXISTING problem.
While during this COMPLETE period of time, all that was needed from the KDE side (and NOT from the Troll Tech side), was a note from the developers of KDE, stating that you MAY link this software with QT.
Which the lazy buts never wanted to write, because they claimed that there WAS no such problem. Instead, Troll Tech had to resolve the problem. Hey, they're not responsible for this at all! All they make is a toolkit, that is being "abused" by KDE!
And now, KDE goes on by saying that there is no problem, except for a few problems of the past that never existed anyway, but have been solved nevertheless. With the same arrogance, they claim that GNOME was set up to be anti-KDE and nothing more.... Geesh, sometimes it seems that KDE is being developed in a country where the word for "Legalities" is the same as that for "toilet paper"...
Heck, so what if I lose my karma in exchange for some truth...
It's... It's...
"We can confirm that Debian does *not* ship the version with the trojan horse. Our version predates it." [CA-2002-28]
"That said, if you or somebody you know has code in KDE whose copyright we really are violating, please speak up and send an email to kde@kde.org so that we may fix the issue. In case of doubt, we have compiled three documents: one listing all modules in KDE and the license it follows[2], one listing all copyright holders in all code inside of the KDE CVS[3], and one with all copyright holders email addresses[4] [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal-0006/msg00062 .html
[2] http://developer.kde.org/documentation/licensing/l icensing.html
[3] http://developer.kde.org/documentation/licensing/c opyright-lines.html
[4] http://developer.kde.org/documentation/licensing/e mail-addresses.html."
IANAL, but I am a paralegal and I do understand this issue of copyright. What Stallman wrote was *legally* correct...forgiven is a legal term and that's how he used it. And by attaching the paragraph quoted above, KDE is responding correctly under the current legal system by asking all to contact them. In short, Stallman was right to point out this legal issue and all the rest is just emotions. He is super correct on legal things involving the GPL. And in today's legal climate, he is sooooo right to be careful of copyright issues. Remember the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, folks?
Whether he could say it better is another issue, and considering everything involved, a lesser one, IMO.
Why can't they send an email to all the addresses they have, and post a list of the ones that bounced? Why do they insist on having it be the initiative of the code's authors?
Whether or not RMS is being petty, it would be easy for them to comply with his wishes if they do have all the information they're saying they have.
Lee Kai Wen -- Taiwan, ROC
Ok, we have a very good thing now. KDE is turly GPL free. So maybe RMS could have written his article better, but let it be! We could have a f------ holy war over this. KDE accept RMS's statement. No one is perfect.
WTF are you talking about tirade? The KDE devoplers are acting like babies. There are some simple problems that were created by some KDE developers violating the GPL and RMS was pointing them out and basically saying, "forget about it, you are (LEGALLY) forgiven for any violations you made to OUR GPL'd code. And if you took others GPL'd code and incorporated it into KDE you violated the license, and you should talk to those developers so you can continue to legally distribute the code. The GPL is a LICENSE after all. Yeah that is an ugly word, but it is needed to make the GPL effective. If you don't like the GPL don't use it, if you like it, abide by it! The KDE deveoplers are crying like babies. "'Beg for forgivenes'" Where are they getting that from? Sounds like they're real bitter over the GPL and they're taking it out on RMS.
Clearly a FAQ/RTFM, but I can't seem to find it:
What exactly was the GPL's problem with Qt? AFAIK, the GPL limits what can link with it, right? c.f. using readline in non-GPLed programs.
But that isn't the case here; here a GPLed progaming is using a non-GPLed program. Surely that is ok? (assuming the non-GPL licence was ok with it. and if it wasn't ok, isn't it Qt that should be bitching?)
I'm really curious. Does anyone with a clue care to share? Even a pointer to the proper FAQ?
I mean, what other motivation does he have?
He can't seriously be concerned about the legal difficulties he mentioned. The KDE guy's response was too obvious (and too obviously right) for him to miss.
He really does come off as severely delusional, especially that part about having to start to Gnome to stop non-free software from taking root. Umm... I think non-free software took root a long time ago. I don't think there are many people using nothing but GPL software. I also don't remember a top-priority effort to replace something evil and unfree like XFree86 (gasp! people are allowed to reuse the code without being required to distribute the source, it's not free!).
But I guess spoiled children, when denied positive attention, will go for negative attention.
--------
Oh, great RMS basher, do enlighten us and tell us what YOU have done for Free Software that makes you such a valid critic. While you are about it, why don't you also enlighten us with examples of how "RMS backstabbed, grown arrogant etc".
RMS is one of the most perfectly logical people that I have had the pleasure to read. All of his writings or sayings (not stuff that corporate shills make up and get attributed to him, mind you) are completely consistant with his basic axioms. He is unyeilding on matters of principle, but I have never seen self-aggrandizing from him. (Go ahead, post a link to the contrary). Compared to some guys in the BSD camp or Tom Christensen the Perl guy, RMS is a model of restraint.
Now, when I read your stuff, all I can visualize is a carpetbagger who wants to have the freedom to dip into the GPL till and make off with what he can grab, without feeling legally constrained to give anything back. I'm sorry, but the GPL was designed to thwart guys like you. It is the most popular free software license, so it appears that many authors feel that way. I notice that, for all their protestations, the KDE team did not release their software under the X11 or artistic licenses to get RMS off their back. They could easily have done so since, according to their claims, all the code in KDE (with the exception of some in kmidi and kghostview) is new.
Hari.
but in a war between KDE and RMS, I'm going to side with RMS.
He wrote the GPL. It is a vital component of his Life Mission. I trust that the man understands all aspects of the license. KDE may not care about stringent adherence to licensing restrictions, but if they truly want to keep their software "free", then they should.
I thought the "go Gnome" quote was a little much, but I don't see it as a big deal. I didn't think his tone was particularly obnoxious, either.
My basic point is that if RMS doesn't know how to license Free Software, then who does? Telling RMS he doesn't know his own license seems pretty absurd to me.
--Lenny
Hey, is somebody archiving these gems? There should be an archive on Slashdot for these. And some of the haikus and Anonymous Emily Dickenson, and OOG the Open Source Caveman.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
The moment you base your software decisions based on the politics of it's source code and not on the usefullness of the code is the day that all code goes to hell.
Burn Hollywood Burn
And if the KDE people don't want to play the game, then letting RMS have the last word would be the most effective way to achieve that.
I don't like Gnome, I call my OS of preference "Linux", not "GNU/Linux", and I loathe Emacs, but that doesn't make RMS a bad person. On the contrary, his views are, on the whole, admirable as are his efforts.
Give him a break.
--- These are not words: wierd, genious, rediculous
I agree that the need for a legal "forgiveness" for distributing GPL'ed code linked with Qt is absurd. But is it the law that is absurd, or RMS interpretation of the law?
Probably a bit of both, I can't see any logic flaws in RMS's interpretation, but he has always been much more strict in following copyright law to the letter than just about everyone else, where other people ignore problems that would never occur in practice.
Sometimes this pays off, like when he insisted that the GNU project developed its own patent free compression program (gzip), while just about everyone else was satisfied with using compress and LZW, and trusted the vague statements from Unisys that they would never enforce their patent on software only systems.
What is wrong to do is to take this as an insult to KDE. Being paranoid about copyright law is a fundamental part of RMS's nature.
Good reading at ZdNet
Now it's been argued that his last editorial is absurd. Here's what I have to say: RMS has probably a lot more legal background than most people at KDE and on Slashdot (including me). Unless you are a lawyer specialized in Copyrights, just shut up and give him a break!
As a lawyer with the credentials you describe, I'm here to state that the previous postings, criticizing RMS remarks as hypertechnical and petty, were fair accounts. RMS response clearly sets forth more of a personal preference for Gnome than a legal argument in opposition to the use of KDE/Qt.
This was no subtle legal defense of GPL, and to the extent it was, it was more than adequately answered by the KDE author's response. It requires no subtle expertise in computer law to understand these arguments -- pettiness is as pettiness does.
It all comes down to the fact that GPLed software is not free. The only real way to make your code truly free is to release it public domain. (For once I'm not being sarcastic.)
May your soul reach heaven before the devil realizes you are dead
In the worst case, what would that mean?
Communism.
Oooo.
How?
First of all, "Communism" is 2 things (simplified)
1) A utopian theory
2) A repressive dictatorship
Now, 1) is possible. Everybody writes code to help everybody else, and damn making all the money, we don't need profits, etc.
2) Is only possible with the use of force. Which is what I assume you mean, its the usual "Communism" (With background pictures of Mao and Stalin).
How - which, notice, you didn't answer - would RMS being the "leader of an 'empire' " lead to that sort of "Communism"?
So what? That's what I want explained, not silly epithets and jingoistic labels. *What would it mean (notice the word mean)* for RMS running this "empire" ?
Communism? 1) doesn't have a leader. Witness the communistic peasants in Monty Python and the Holy Grail. 2) has to have it imposed by force.
How is RMS going to effectively force people to code for him?
Please, explain, my interest in intrigued.
Addison
Not so.
If Linux didn't come around, people would have turned their attention to Hurd and started developing it instead.
-- iCEBaLM
I have no problems with the replies to my post, even the guy who told me to fuck off and die has a right to say it. He disagrees and that's fine, but what I find very odd (ok, not odd ... more common place these days around here) is this:
... how can one post legitimately range from -1 to 5??
... I assume those who moderated it up took the time to understand my position and respected my point of view while those who moderated it down took it as a personal insult on their free software movement and as a collective slap in the face.
Moderation Totals: Flamebait=2, Insightful=2, Interesting=1, Overrated=1, Total=6
Ok, I started with my default score of 2, and while my post could have been rated a 5 with the insightful and interesting scores, it could have also fallen down to -1 with the flamebait and overrated scores. So here's my question, if this moderation shit works
My point is, it can't
Just goes to prove my point about how this "community" makes itself look like by their actions.
I'm sure this one will get moderated down as well (even though I'm checking the no score +1 box) but fuck it, I think it's important for people to see that this place is *not* for free ideas and communication, it is about towing the fanatical line and keeping in step with the rest of the zealots who you dare not disagree with.
I stand by what I originally said about this whole situation regardless if it's flamebait or insightful.
This is rediculous. Why not quit with the "KDE is better than gnome because..." And the "Gnome has a better license because..." crap and just use what works for you.
If you use Gnome, then who cares what KDE does? I think both projects are doing great, and whatever is better for me, I use.
I think it's great that QT is GPL'd, And I wish KDE best of luck with their development. But on the other hand, GNOME is a great enviornment too, and I wish them best of luck too.
Both have their good stuff and bad stuff - no program that big is going to be 100% perfect.
Let's just forget about all this garbage and let them spend more time writing code, instead of writing responses to stupid editorials.
-Brandon
none that i know of... poor choice of words i guess, but my bottom line was that RMS talks a lot of crap these days.
Shouldn't that line be, "Don't use GIF, support PNG, worship GNU"? :)
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
The word you're looking for -- for people who habitually pick fights -- is eristic. More appropriate than bully here, I should say (though I have in the past criticized rms for being rather Gatesian).
Now. I did think the KDE people went a bit over the top in their response, given that Stallman was actually rather civil in his unwarranted nitpicking. And I have no problem with Stallman saying "go gnomes" -- after all, it's his baby and there's no reason on earth he shouldn't want them to succeed in their own right. Be that as it may, Stallman's still way off base -- the issue is as settled as it can get.
/Brian
The reason why the KDE team is engulfed in this flame war is mostly due to their denial in the licensing matter.
The KDE team, having chosen a license (GPL) should abide by the terms of the license. They should accept the most common interpretation of the license. If they did not agree with the GPL (or the common interpretation thereof), THEY SHOULD NOT OF CHOSEN IT IN THE FIRST PLACE. They could of went and licensed the code KPL for all that matters.
The KDE team chose to play this game at the beginning. If they want out, they have to retroactively change the license (or add exceptions to the license) to all KDE releases.
Precedent setting incidents such as these are what lawyers like to pick on in the courtroom. When the GPL has to be inforced in court one day, we want to provide a consistant interpreation of the GPL. The GPL cannot be everything to everyone. If it is, it will be unenforcable in court.
P.S. Tried the new KDE 2.0 beta and I think it is awesome. However, it is the KDE developers actions in public that tend to turn me away. I don't know why some are in arms about the GNOME Foundation press clips, they have said nothing negative about KDE. I didn't see them Gnomers complaining when Borland decided to create Kylix using Qt. Futhermore, the whole licensing issue is a pain. Why don't they just acknowledge that there is a problem (at least in some people's mind), and add exception to all the code that links to non-GPLed Qt (KDE 1.x distributions).
:. Ultimate Control Dedicated/VM Servers
1) Cut the "Emperor of Japan" crap. It doesn't add anything to the discussion.
2) GPL'd code can't be "unGPL'd". One can always take the last version to be released under the GPL and continue your own development based on that version. That's the whole point of the GPL.
It is at times like these that all good men wish they had some moderator points.
OK, some may find that RMS is a bit zealous about licenses... but how much do YOU know about all the legal stuff involved in mixing licenses? I say he's taking the right approch: to be paranoid with the GPL. How many scream when a vendor ships a (free as in beer) modified version of Linux with its hardware? If the "OSS community" (I'm assuming it's a united organization, though I know it is not) is to stand up against GPL violations, it should first make sure that it doesn't violate the GPL itself in any way. That includes the KDE/Qt stuff.
Now it's been argued that his last editorial is absurd. Here's what I have to say: RMS has probably a lot more legal background than most people at KDE and on Slashdot (including me). Unless you are a lawyer specialized in Copyrights, just shut up and give him a break!
He's been trying to defend Free Software (for better or worse) for much longer that anyone else and he's trying to prevent bad things from happenning not in the short (1-2 years) term, but the long (10-15 years) term.
At last, remember (and this is not RMS-specific) that if it was only about KDE developpers (ie no one else complaining), Qt probably wouldn't even have been released with the QPL (much less the GPL) and that would have been real bad. I know that the KDE developpers just want to code and don't want to bother with licensing issues, but some things have to be done. Since the KDE people didn't bother clearing up the Qt licensing issue, people from the outside took care of that, with the results (wars) we know.
Opus: the Swiss army knife of audio codec
In my opinion the flaming of KDE by RMS, while I generally respect RMS, reminds me of the comments that have been made by the plaintiffs against Napster, DeCSS, etc.
While i disagree with RMS' tone and motivation, he is factually and legally supported. The KDE team broke the license of GPL code and they are legally denied the continued right to distribute it. They try to play it down in this rebuttal: "a small bit in kmidi and a few lines in kghostview. Of course they did correct their errors and RMS' attack is way off base (as he can often be) but this response from KDE is just as silly.
got drum'n'bass?
http://mp3.com/vitriolix
Imagine a world where....
In this world, it pays to be paranoid. Stallman "forgiving" code linked to Qt is a legal move to ensure in the future in court he isn't cornered and asked why he never objected to past GPL license violations...
So what if he doesn't have the social graces of a well-oiled PR machine. He's a geek after all! Look past the personality and concentrate on the importance of not losing sight of the main issues...
I never thought I would be saying this about a guy who wrote emacs, for crying out loud --maybe I did; I use vi :-)...-- but RMS needs to grow up.
:-)? why can Larry Wall command respect even by people who don't like Perl? I believe the reason is that those guys are sociable, gracious guys who can obviously both inspire people and manage a large project succesfully.
I've asked this before: why the leaders of other, more succesful OSS projects than anything FSF has thrown together have managed to pump out great code without alienating more than half of the community? Why isn't Linus despised by a good chunk of developers (even BSDers
Would you like Linus as your boss? Larry Wall as your supervisor? Brian Behendorf as your team leader? Now, would you like RMS as your co-worker?
Last I checked, it wasn't a problem linking bash against the non-GPL libc on my solaris box. Nowhere in the bash source or GPL can I see any express permission for bash to be linked against the proprietry libc.
How is libqt any different?
This license bastardization and bickering has got to stop. KDE has done a great thing for all of us, and Troll Tech has taken a huge step which deserves praise as well.
The very idea of bashing another project with no purpose other than to help Linux turns my stomach, and I think we all need to take a deep look at motivations here, and examine who is really helping Linux, and who is bringing it down.
I'm just disgusted at reading Stallman's ranting, and I have lost any respect I might have once had for that man.
________
I agree RMS actually WAS giving his blessing. But why he has to give it as if he's the God? If he had just talked in the way you've translated for him, probably no body will get pissed...
There's a difference between the compiler that you wrote in a semester in college and the the compiler which had been developed for over 4 years before 386BSD started. The former might barely work, while the latter would perform well enough for people to bother using your OS. GCC 1.17 was released in January 1988, while 386BSD 0.1 was released in 1992. Linux had been a year old, and Solaris was released that same year. If 386BSD had been released a year earlier, BSD might be where Linux is today. Without gcc then, they wouldn't even have survived.
You know, everyone loves to hate RMS.
But without him, a lot of software we
take for granted today wouldn't be around.
So, maybe sometimes RMS goes a bit off the deep
end, and goes a bit to far in his quest for
software to be totally free. Maybe he has a bad
singing voice, and maybe he's a little scary.
Without him GNU and the GPL (and it's (better
imho) younger sibling the LGPL) woudln't exist.
These things are Good Things that most people
can agree have caused some very nice software
to be free of charge and with source distributed.
So give him a break folks. No one is perfect.
- Paradox
Man of the C!!!
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
Hello,
May I respond to you post. It's been a while that I'm reading your posting in Linuxtoday and generally speaking, you seems (and I know you have) a good cense of what is right or wrong. Except when the matter concern the point of view, the dogmas of Richard M. Stallman. Maybe I'm wrong, maybe not. It doesn't matter.
What's matter is the fact that in the history of the GPL, RMS has allowed KDE to link to a "semi-proprietary" library. Now Qt 2.0 will be GPLed. Fine. Butt what can we do about Qt 1.x, has a poster said earlier? nothing. Qt 2.0 and Qt 1.x are not the same toolkit. There are different. And in the lawyers' game (you know, those guys that wear suits and can sued you on behalf of an entity, be it human or corporation) that's prior case of violation. Plain and simple.
If the GPL is tested in court, one question will arise: "Why a GPLed software has been permitted to transgress the licence? Why has nobody taken action to correct this issue?".
If we let this as it is today, the answer will be: "Because we had different view of the scope of the GPL and we have sticked with what we wan't to do, not bothering with what it was possible to do." Errrr. That's not good. The GPL has been breached and anybody can do what they want with any peace of software under that licence. I mean Anybody.
If we take action and correct the past issues, then there will be no legal back door open and we can code in peace, knowing that some people have the heart to say: "I was wrong. Can we do something to fix this? Good. Let's do it then.".
In the legal system, pride and ego sometimes (if not all the time) lead to defeat.
Maybe I'm been to simplistic here and I know you will correct me. But this is not a child's game anymore. This is a lawyer's game. And lawyers do not have pride. They have rules and regulations, licences, copyrights, something I'm merely capable of understanding.
See it's simple: "I was wrong. Can we do something to fix this? Good. Let's do it then."
Did you in your experience never admit a judgement error? If you did, why can't the KDE team do the same ? Pride, plain and simple.
Regards.
Pascal Abessolo
assert(expired(knowldege)); core dump
Seems to me the only people nitpicking about licenses are here. It's ironic that this place will probably inspire more people to be IP lawyers than programmers. I've seen exceedingly little discussion of code, but tons of finger wagging over the GPL and its usage. Quite boring, really. But then it seems more like a religion than anything else, and I'm not that into organized religions either.
The revolution will NOT be televised.
I love it!! Hopefully this is just the beginning!! Why this is so earth shattering that it is even worthy of being mentioned is the real story. After all I enjoy my current standard of living and any observant person knows no money with ever be made on GPLed software. That is, after all, why RMS is a filthy hippy right? All that pro narcotics claptrap on his personal site has me wondering if he is dealing drugs to support his failed software enterprises. Yeah yeah, call me a troll, flambait, whatever. Just me *real* opinion I'll leave the mindless baiting to the kidz and merely state the truth.
RMS started and ended his article by saying that getting a GPL license for QT would be a good idea. He recommended, in awfully polite language, that all KDE copyright holders agree to the change. He certainly didn't demand it. I saw nothing about "begging for forgiveness" in his article at all. I think the point that the anonymous KDE voice misses is that, if they are really switching to the GPL, then all of the authors have a stake in the decision, because the GPL provides for that. If only one of them didn't want the GPL, then there would be a problem. Mozilla addressed the issue by stating that they would explore the issue of switching the license, and draft a plan to deal with dissenters. Qt left that important step out, and Stallman didn't let the loose end be ignored. What's absurd about that?
I don't understand this.
You write, "They can't GPL their code if it uses someone else's code!" and RMS says, "KDE could never be part of a completely free operating system as long as it needed a non-free program to function."
Hmm... if I write a program for Windows that uses Windows API's, why can't I GPL that program, even though it used Windows APIs???
He can ignore it if he takes code with implicit permission and includes in ordinary GPL projects, but he cannot take code without implicit permission and include it in KDE, despite the licenses saying the exact same thing. In one direction it works like normal GPL in the other it doesnt.
Dont you think the average programmer finds it difficult enough to througly understand the licenses in question without the licenses containing things that arent expressedly written down?
Here lies the problem - Free Software and Open Source are two different things, similar but not identical. for details look at the fsf website. RMS is a believer in free software - according to him badly written free software is far more preferable to well written commercial software. So for him free software is not about technical merit at all, but rather about political issues like freedom. Overall while it must be admitted that RMS is being pedantic about this issue, one must also be fair to him and note that he has been (and will always be) the chief guard of the free software movement (claims by others like ESR notwithstanding). Also, note that while RMS is more than a bit crazy, even by geek standards, he is always ready to cooperate with others on the matter of free software. he is ready to talk to his worst enemies, he is ready to bear umpteen personal insults and slander (remember the "RMS is a commie" days?) to advance his agenda. So overall, while he is often a pain in the neck, please bear up with him. He is truly a GOOD man.
A crank is a little thing that makes revolutions
The copyright holder can do whatever they damn well please, they are not bound by the terms of the license. What they cannot do, however, is change the license retroactivly. I.e. under *any* software license (be it BSD, GPL or one of those Microsoft EULA's) the copyright holder is free to change the terms of the license and re-release the software (it doesnt even have to be changed). You, as the user, are free to carry on using the software within the terms of your current license. No change whatsoever.
That wasnt hard was it?
Nick
Nick
I don't see how RMS reaches the conclusion that an "unforgived" GPL violation permanently ends your ability to distribute GPLed code. The only support I could find for that in the GPL in in clause 4:
4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Program except as expressly provided under this License. Any attempt otherwise to copy, modify, sublicense or distribute the Program is void, and will automatically terminate your rights under this License. However, parties who have received copies, or rights, from you under this License will not have their licenses terminated so long as such parties remain in full compliance.
But a look at clause 6 provides a trivial way out:
6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License.
i.e. each time someone gives you a new copy of the code, you get a new license. Since your rights under the new license have not been terminated, you are OK. This is where I think the KDE developers got the idea of taking out and restoring the "tainted" code, and I agree it seems absurd and unnecessary (but, OTOH, legal maneuvers often look that way).
I would also add that after years of GPLed code linked to Qt in KDE I haven't heard of any concrete (rather than hypothetical) complaint from any copyright holder that the KDE team hasn't worked out. Why do we have to assume that they are "unforgiven"? I think it is far more reasonable to assume they are "forgiven" until a specific copyright holder of a particular piece of GPLed code used by KDE says otherwise.
I'm talking about the way he INTERACTS with the rest of the community. I've used emacs, I've even used gcc... but I never saw him write them... I do see how he communicates to and relates with the rest of the free software world, though...
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
Noone cares what emacs developers think about vi development. Noone cares what Mozilla people say about Opera. Imlib2 developer thoughts on gdk-pixbuf matter not a whit!
/. coverage? They are two, distinct desktop systems. Let them evolve. Let them work together. But I don't give a rat's ass what RMS or his grandma think about either one!
Why do these *OPINIONS* continue to warrant
If these were reasoned, objective discussions about the individual technical merits or shortcomings, that would be another (worthwhile) story.
A newspaper should be the maximum of information, and the minimum of comment. -- Richard Cobden
RMS comments on "forgivness" struck me more as a LEGAL statement than a MORAL statement. Trolltech is releasing QT/Free Edition under the GPL making it perfectly legal to link any other GPLed code to it. If FSF copyrighted code is linked to this QT then all will be well. I believe that RMS was trying to say any past linking of FSF (NOT GPLed code in general...just the stuff owned by the FSF so put down yer flamethrower 'kay?) owned code will not be pursued as long as the GPLed QT is used for this purpose in the future.
A new QT release being GPLed does NOT resolve past legal ambiguities if FSF code was linked against "old" QT. RMS' "forgiveness" removes another set of legal ambiguities. He was responding to TrollTech's actions in kind. I'll grant that his way of doing it was a little abrasive but isn't the act more important than the way he said it?
After reading some of the comments and the article posters blurb, I clicked the link expecting vitriol and flame but all I see is reasonableness and calmness on the part of the KDE developers.
All they've said is that RMS claims that before KDE can switch the license on the code, all copyright holders need to explicitly approve it ("grant forgiveness"). KDE claims that most have (since they are KDE developers) except for two modules that weren't written specifically for KDE but can be rewritten if need be to make sure all of KDE is compatible.
Heck, they even list modules and email addresses of developers so they can be contacted to make sure that they actually OK the license switch and thus noone's copyright is being violated.
All in all, reasoned and mature reactions. Kudos to KDE.
(-1 Troll)
Why couldn't RMS say "grant approval" instead of "give forgiveness"? Form my perspective, RMS's choice of words is the catalyst for the entire debate and the cause for much frustration and anger in the KDE camp.
RMS, according to some, was using the term "forgive" in a legal, and not a moral sense. This was taken by the KDE developers (and by myself the first three times I read RMS's post) in a moral sense.
If "forgive" is indeed a legal term, (I've never heard it used in a legal context) it certainly should have been replaced with something a little less inflammatory. Then, I'd say, RMS still has ground to stand on, although his tact is still quite lacking.
If RMS did indeed mean that KDE has some sort of moral obligation to anything in this issue of strict legalities, then RMS is simply a prick, riding of the coattails of his mostly successful tirade of anal-retentiveness.
Either way, It's my opinion that RMS needs to issue a formal apology to the KDE team and clarify his article, without putting his own bias toward GNOME behind it. KDE is trying to help out the community here.
Radical proponent for justice and freedom or not, he should still be tactful and unbiased for matters like this one.
Check here:t -220.html"> http://www.trolltech.com/company/announce/qt-220.h tml</A>
<A HREF="http://www.trolltech.com/company/announce/q
It adds the GPLed GUI designer, unicode support, XML parsing, mswin2000 looknfeel theme....
<br>
<b> ALL under GPL</b>
okay?
Moritz
Brett, I remember you from the Infoworld Forums posting this kind of Anti-GPL Anti-Linux stuff. But hey, if that is your opinion of them, fire away.
:)
I think that companies and developers should be able to choose whatever licensing or lack of that they want to use. Be it a BSD, GPl, Freeware, Shareware, whatever they should be able to choose it.
Yes Addison, he hasn't shown any real proof of conspiracy. Brett is just on yet another rant and rave, and needs to switch to Decaff and avoid the red meat.
Where does the License say that??
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Had these 'licence issues' never came up, these people could have just as well just continued working with Win32.
Whether you want to acknowledge it or not, LICENCING DOES MATTER. People in the real world need to consider who owns the interfaces and libraries that they are using. The issue of cost is also real. Not everyone is free to just ignore such things like some anonymous kid that can get away with having drawer-fulls of pirated software disks.
The BSD license doesn't say anything of the kind. It doesn't have to. The law says that. If I license something to you under an agreement that does not say I can change it retroactively, I can't change it retroactively.
Thus, the BSD license guarantees both that I can't force you to stop using the code, and that I can't stop you from redistributing the code.
--
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
but read on ... another look inside into his warped mind.
http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=1999-06 -22-005-05-NW-LF
RMS (mostly) and The KDE team displayed an ego problem. What is really needed is for everyone to get back on track and focus on our own goals for their projects and do not worry about what anyone else says.
First of all, he makes it look he along with his cronies decided to develop Gnome, then he insists on calling it GNU Gnome - everything is not GNU !
Its NOT GNU Linux and its NOT GNU Gnome !
Gnome is very much a GNU project - obviously you are just trolling. Check the list of GNU software, and also check the copyright of the GNU source code (listed on top of every file).
GNOME = GNU Network Object Model Environment. Sorry to nitpick.
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
need to make this public? Why couldn't he privately contact the KDE/QT teams and say "Look, there may be a couple of minor problems with regards to GPL licensing. Here are some possible solutions." Then the KDE/QT teams could have publicly stated "We are replacing code to make the product 100% GPL compliant." and no one would know RMS was even involved. This would have been the professional thing to do if his main concern was indeed GPL compliance.
Section 2b and 3. For a more through discussion of this refer to archives of debian-legal, gnu.misc.discuss or any other medium carrying this form of discussion. James Ramseys recent editorials on freshmeat.net sums it up pretty well, and deals with some common misconceptions.
Amen to that.
True, a lot of people object to this, and it's a reasonable objection. To accept it it requires that you understand and agree with RMS and the FSF that the goal is that software should be entirely free (speech), including anything and everything it depends on, since a piece of software isnt 'really' free if you have to pay for something it has to have (the only exception is OS components like libc and kernels, but for that exception to be valid the GPL code may not be distributed together with the component eligeble for the exception).
In some cases like (QPL) Qt it just causes annoying legal problems since the thing you arent allowed to link to is already free (speech). But the legal problem is the same wether it's free or the software is proprietary and costs money, since you dont really get differing degrees of violations as long as you conflict with the GPL. Thus it requires extra permission, which can be implicit, but in that case causes an immense amount of problem when you throw 'real' GPL code into the mix.
Your understanding is correct.
That was your first error. Your second error was to assume that there was a license conflict in the first place. Since glibc is covered by LGPL and not GPL, there is no conflict with the old BSD license.
Your third error is to assume there is a need for an apology in case of a conflict. There isn't. There is (at most) a need for a legal forgiveness, to counteract section four of the GPL. An apology will have no legal significance.
One of the hardest, but mots important, things a parent has to learn to do is let go as their child gets older. As kids grow up, they need space to figure out who they are, what they can dom and become there own person. RMS clearly can't deal with letting go of the OpenSource world, so he has fabricated a new SILLY idea to try to hold on. That leads to breakign a child's spirit, or having him/her sever connections with the parent. RMS - which would you prefer?
KDE and GNOME are on the same team (that is, the team of open source desktop environments.)
Gnome has been in the team of Freedom since the start; heaven, it started because KDE was *not* on this team. KDE has clearly shown through their actions that they have not entered this team. So when RMS says "Go Gnome!", he's saying "Go Freedom!"
Your use of the term "open source" gives you away, anyway, as somebody who values authority over freedom. The Kingdom of God does not tolerate authority, as Christ himself reveals:
"The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those who exercise authority over them are called `benefactors'.
But not so among you; on the contrary, he who is greatest among you, let him be as the younger, and he who governs as he who serves", Luke 24:25-26.
OK, lemme get this straight here. You have placed the FSF and GNOME literally "on the side of the Angels," which puts KDE into another camp altogether. The one with the horns, the tail and the pitchfork.
Fsck, man! I've never even heard Mac loyalists come up with such an apocalyptic scenario!
You need to take a good look at what you just wrote, dude. Fighting jihads amongst ourselves is only going to play into the hands of Redmond. Lemme do my Sinead O'Connor impersonation and remind everyone to "fight the real enemy."
--.\\<-H--
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
KDE has responded and did the right thing. I think response was a bit too polite, though. RMS editorial is not just outright silly. It is utterly hypocritical to say the least. RMS shoot himself in a foot. Period.
You must be new to this country. How's life in Cuba been?
Intellectual property law is a cornerstone of the western legal system. The developers of KDE hold the copyright on their code. They can license it to as many different parties under as many different terms as they see fit. In this case they have licensed it under the GPL. By doing so they are not transferrring their copyright to anyone and they are not forfeiting their copyright. As the copyright holders they do not license the code to themselves. They license it to others who want to use the code under that license. These users are the ones who are bound by the GPL, not the copyright holders whose right to use that code isn't derived from the GPL but from their copyright. Releasing code under the GPL does NOT place it in the public domain. Linus Torvalds holds copyright on the portions of the linux kernel which he wrote. Don't believe me? Check the source code yourself. As the copyright holder he can do anything he damned well pleases with his code, including release binary code without the source. Why? Because he is not bound by the terms of the GPL. He is not a licensee of the kernel code, but the licensor. Of course he is not the only person who holds copyright over portions of the kernel, so please don't try to misconstrue what I've written as meaning Linus can put out complete binary only kernels. He can put out binary images of the portions he holds the copyright on only, which would be pretty useless all by themselves.
This isn't mother Russia. A person's IP rights aren't tossed out the window the moment they release something under the GPL.
If I'm wrong about this, why weren't the KDE developers sued by the FSF for violating the GPL? They weren't sued because they aren't bound by the GPL, the case would have been laughed out of court. The only people they could sue would be you and I for linking to the QT libraries in violation of the GPL which WE ARE subject to. Seeing as how the FSF is not the licensor of the KDE code, that too would be laughed out of court. So in the end all Stallman could do was pout and moan about a situation he didn't like but which he had not control over.
Poor Richard...
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
You sound like you believe you were the only one who actually read RMS' article, and everyone else is the bunch of illiterate jerks. It is just as silly as the original article.
That said, it's not worth arguing about, and protracting the flamewar further will serve no useful purpose (and before this I've always agreed entirely with RMS). If you want to interpret the GPL strictly, then for the sake of actually getting something done you could consider it that a copyright holder might decide to go to KDE and say "excuse me, you can't distribute our software"; in that case I'd hope that some sort of amicable agreement could be arrived at. However, in the absence of any copyright holders actually complaining about it, we should just get on with our lives.
Seriously, /. is "shiny things for geeks". I think the story approval process is:
/. worth reading, and the community that creates the discussion. The articles are just decoys that happen to call the right kind of people here.
1) read submission, if not immediately compelled to follow the link, toss it out
2) follow link, if link is obviously not as described by submission on first glance, toss it out
3) post submission to front page, don't stop to check trivial details like facts or spelling
4) read the linked article
Journalistic integrity doesn't even come into it. It is not only amateur, but lazy. If it sounds really cool (to someone who has top-level posting privileges), it goes up. It's that simple, and, yes, that stupid.
It sorta works, too. Since it's interesting, and there's a discussion forum, all the relevant facts get posted and modded up by the readers. Really, the articles aren't what we're here for. Each article is just the topic of the hour. It's the discussion that makes
--------
I don't understand where the majority of you people are coming from. Especially the alleged lawyers who have posted.
The fact that these programs at one time or another broke the license agreements for some GPL programs/libs means exactly what RMS said: They're STILL in violation! Until they are officially absolved of this "crime" they are legally liable. RMS officially (and publicly) absolved them of wrongdoing as it pertains to FSF copyrighted code.
By your logic, I should be allowed to steal anything I want from you and as long as I give it back at some point then I haven't done anything wrong and you have no recourse against me.
The KDE/Qt crowd seems to be saying "we don't need your stinking copyright laws" and I can't wait till one of them gets bitten by a lawsuit which could have easily been avoided with a "oops, we fukt up. We're fixed now, izzat ok with you? Thanks man. Want a free beer?"
Nope, it's the BSD license.
RMS would have you believe the GPL apparently forbids the following:
1. Using a GPLed library to build a program under any other license.
2. Apparently, now using a proprietary license to build a GPLed program is also forbidden.
So much for "free" software...
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First off, I have looked at the (laundry) list of licenses and at who wrote the code, so what's your basis for saying that my comment is utter bullshit? What I had to say had nothing to do with whether or not the GPL is valid, preferable, or anything else. What I was trying (and did) say was that copyright is copyright. Could it hurt anything other than pride to ask the original copyright holders (if other than FSF) if they cared?
Obviously, you have your own opinions about the GPL which prevents you from seeing the points in my message. Once again, what I said was that RMS's editorial was very poorly worded in that the term "forgiveness" should have been striken and "permission" should be substituted (or something to that effect). After all, we're talking copyright assignments here, NOT (and I repeat NOT) whether or not the GPL is pinko-commie or whatever you personally believe.
Oh, just realised that you're posting as AC, so I guess I can forget about any reasonable discussion on this subject.
I agree.
While I've been a Linux user since 1993 and I admire the GNU project and the whole Free Software Foundation greatly, I have to admit that recently, it almost seems as if RMS's cheese has slipped off of the proverbial cracker. His writings have raved, rambled, and often teetered on the edge of complete incoherence.
This case is particularly outlandish; for a long time he has attacked the talented folks at TrollTech for their QT licensing
Does anybody know when the last time RMS had a vacation was? Maybe he needs one.
[*] ZealotGuard: This is not to insinuate that GTK+ or GNOME are not good pieces of software. I'm praising QT, not "bashing" anything else
--
--
The New World Order is upon us, and it's about damned time.
to know that after all we've been through, we still have something to fight about.
Pompous, arrogent, self-centered... None of that matters. He and his kind are the voices that keep us looking and thinking and checking ourselves to make sure we are at least close to the path.
---
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
I have a copy of the source of glibc-2.0.105 sitting on my hard drive. In inet/rexec.c (amongst other files) what do I see but a file under the BSD licence including the advertising clause. Clearly I have no rights to this code since it cannot be distributed under the GPL.
Thankfully, in 2.1, the advertising clause has been removed. But nonetheless, I expect a full apology from the FSF for breaking the terms of the original BSD licence and forgiveness from the Regents of the University of California so that I can be assured that I may use glibc2 without let or hinderance.
I await my apology.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Poor KDE. They probably feel like they are being yanked around by the ol' GPL leash. No matter what they do -- Free QT Foundation, QPL, GPLed Qt -- they get beat up upon over licensing. My sympathies: as a largely European effort, they probably do not comprehend the litigatious environment of the US.
But I can also guess at why RMS is being such a pain. Open Source has superceded Free Software as the current buzzword, and has gained far more acceptance and success than RMS ever could. Pragmatism has triumphed over ideology, and he cannot be too happy about that. The FSF is getting increasingly irrelevant. Whatever his own technical and public achievements of the past, RMS is largely obsolete. He is still fighting the good fight, though, and is trying to recapture publicity. He can get attention by annoying a lot of people, generating controversy, and otherwise being a pain in the neck. He will continue to do so as long as folks pay attention and respond.
I believe we call such a person a troll.
There is a danger in branding one person the "final and sole authority" in any revolution. And make no mistake, Free Software is a revolution.
Yes, RMS wrote the license. But if he remains the only authority on the interpretation of that license, then what does any other participant have? Basically, they have what RMS lets them have, and nothing more.
If Richard Stallman is not willing to let other people participate in his revolution -- as equals, not as subordinates -- then they'll go off and start their own. That's precisely what the XEmacs people did, and that's precisely what the KDE people did... and that's what Eric Raymond did. And that's what a lot of people are doing. They're going their own way because the Old Guard won't give an inch.
Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
Okay, this is all a little out of control here. Does anyone actually read the articles? I followed both links then went and read the comments people have posted. I would have sworn that everyone else had read a couple of different stories. The comments people have given these two articles make it seem as though RMS and the KDE teams were flaming each other relentlessly. Instead the articles are very mild, and for the most part just restating facts
What is my take on the situation? I think it is spawned by a few posters who have never heard legal jargon. The term 'Forgive' is not used in a moralistic sense, but in a specific legal sense.
Get over it, RMS gave a nice little article which actually seemed to cheer on KDE for going GPL compatible. He listed a few minor issues that needed to be touched up on and went so far as to note that he, as the copyright holder for FSF code, was taking the first step in clearing the last of the hurdles of making KDE completely GPL compatible.
SO where exactly is the problem, is it that Richard Stallman cheers for Gnome? What the heck would you expect? Enough flames okay? The holy war is over, it was a tie.
I think that while all this license stuff seems like pointless quibbling, the existance of these license's is what helps keep this software free. The license purists prove an extremely valuable function by ensuring that one of the predominent OSS licenses out there remains meaningfull, and not eroded away by small, overlookable violations, which, as a whole, may be minor, but in aggragate can severly impact the license. It ain't a pretty process, but its important.
While I respect the KDE project and think that it is great that QT has gone GPL, I do think that they could have done more to address these license problems that have always plagued them. Most of the statements from KDE has seemed to dismiss any notion of a problem. While they and many others believe in this position, there is a significant portion that do not. Alittle bit of effort to address the concerned parties, rather than statements stating that there is no problem, or that it only affects a few programs, would have gone a long way. Its wasn't though...lets all hope this fight is over, the parties involved can kiss and make up...and that we might see some KDE2 binaries available for Debian soon.
"Attack"? What kind of crack are you smoking?
He said that, despite he believes that, despite the fact that there could conceivably be a legal cause against people for breaking the GPL in the past, he's not going to pursue that path ever, and urges everbody to do likewise. How is "You're now guaranteed I'm not going to ever sue you for this" an attack?
Everyone is so quick to call stallman a looney because he is standing up for freedom. He is TRYING to protect all of our freedoms by being consistent in his views. We do not have the liberty to decide when its "ok" to break the GPL and when it is "not ok". It is never ok, that holds true even for other free software developers. Everyone would be up in arms if it was microsoft who wrote an "open source" GUI with proprietary widgets. What stallman said was perfectly reasonable given the circumstances. There have been a number of instances where a KDE app developer took GPL protected code and modified it to work with KDE/QT. Anyone remember KIMP (THE QT GIMP REPLACEMENT). It is PERFECTLY reasonable for stallman to ask developers (gimp developers for example) to forgive past violations by kde developers who broke the GPL (*example KIMP). *sigh*
-- You can be a geeklord too
If I could change one thing about this "community" it would be to make everyone sit back, take a deep breath, and think about how the world at large will perceive their actions and words BEFORE they do anything. It would save us all a lot of grief, and the whole Linux movement would be better off for it. But it won't happen, and the loudmouths will keep acting like fools in public; some people never learn that the stove is hot, even after they've burned themselves several times.
RMS has to give his blessing because he effectively controls the copyright for all FSF software. And he clearly states that the other copyright holders should do the same. What's the problem? The KDE people are way too touchy over this. Gawd.
That has never been in dispute. It's also not relevant when it comes to KDE because only two programs had outside code in them, if what I've read is accurate.
In the end its not about licenses but ideology. Stallman is upset that his dream of Free Unix has gotten out of his control. He doesn't like the idea of anyone using owned owned software in his precious GNU system, open source or not. So when the KDE team did that with the Qt libraries and made a successful product, he threw a fit and fell in it. Now all of a sudden Qt has been released under the GPL, something that should be a wet dream come true for him. But does he say "Thats great, and kudo's to Troll Tech!" No, he continues to attack people who were never his enemies, making himself look like a horse's ass in the process.
IQ wise the man is a genius, EQ wise he's Forrest Gump.
Lee
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
One thing which I can never quite get about Linux is the GPL stand on mandatory open-source. It seems to think that EVERYONE loves it. Guess what? Not everyone does. It doesn't pay the bills. Believe it or not but most of the people purchasing all those SuSE cd's are newbie pimple faced 15 year olds on dialups. Don't believe me? Go look at the SuSE FAQ. So when we all have our own broad-band connection Freenix cd sales will plummet. But the GPL advocates seem to love it when Oracle ports closed-source software over to Linux. Big deal if KDE is(was) linking their source against proprietary widgets? Go write your own widgets that can take the KDE source. Its open-source so it shouldn't be too hard. Trolltech isn't exactly making money allowing people to download their full product for FREE from their site. Think about it, they have to put up a system, pay someone to administer it, bandwidth costs money, and room to keep it in. It reminds me of the situation with Solaris 2.7 and Tadpole RDI. Tadpole isn't putting their Solaris 2.7 patches on their FTP, instead they have chosen to sell them. Good for them! It's capitolism at its best! Food for my family or free software.....
Then may I be surrounded by evil men.
Well Richard, you were not nice to KDE people, but I will forgive you ;-)
Bye,
Stefan
RMS is only trying to catch all the loose ends. It all boils down to this (below snipped from RMS editorial):
The QPL is incompatible with the GPL, which means that Qt and GPL-covered modules cannot legally be combined, unless the developers of one module or the other grant an exception to permit it.
-snip-
in some cases code was copied into KDE from existing GPL-covered modules whose copyright holders had not given special permission. (Only the copyright holders can give extra permission to do things that the GPL does not permit.) That is a real violation of the GPL.
-snip-
Qt 2.2 provides the basis to solve this secondary problem, but a certain amount of cleaning up will be needed to fix it thoroughly.
-snip-
Soon KDE should be properly based on a GPL-covered version of Qt, and the Free Software Movement will be able to think of KDE/Qt as a contribution and not as a problem.
//end quote
There, a GPL violation.. he should know what he's talking about, right?
Once upon a time, there was an operating system named Unix. A fine operating system by the standards of several there - not merely in technical value, but in fun value. For across the nation and indeed the world, many hackers were given leave to play with this Operating System, and have great fun with it. There was a bit of foreshadowed warning in that it was owned ultimately by AT&T's Bell Labs, but this was not noticed as they were docile.
Once upon a time, there was a man named Richard M. Stallman. He was not a famous man (not to the world at large, at least), nor was he a man of any combination of unique qualities. He was another hacker, another UNIX lover, another programmer enjoying the relative freedom in early Unix.
And then AT&T Bell Labs returned, took over Unix and claimed it all for their own, destroying the freedom that grew from this system and making many hackers unhappy.
So RMS went forth and formed the Free Software Foundation and started, with several friends, the GNU Operating System project. And much progress was made on it, and it was Good.
Now...
Once upon a time, there was an operating system named Linux. Started by a Helsinki hacker with a school project to finish, it became embraced by several hackers toying with what was slowly becoming the complete GNU OS. With the combination of the GNU OS tools (free for use by all except those who would try to take them permanently), the Linux Operating System began to take the world by fire. There was a bit of foreshadowed warning in that those GNU tools, and indeed the whole of Linux, were under Richard Stallman's GNU General Public Liscence, and thus subject to his whim and the whim of the Free Software Foundation, but this was ignored as RMS was a freedom fighter, and it was well known he would never take Linux away.
Or was it?
When Bell Labs was looked at, many disadvanatages were evident. Bell Labs is corporate-owned; it survives by putting profit first, and AT&T had a reputation for doing Bad Things with the consumer.
When we look at RMS, many disadvantages are evident. RMS is only human; he has backstabbed, grown arrogant (see Emacs vs. Xemacs), and the cynical would say that he has become convinced that the only way Freedom can be defended is if he alone does it.
Library GPL to "Lesser" GPL. "Don't use the BSD Liscence". Emacs vs. XEmacs. "GNU/Linux". "The X Consortium has betrayed us". "xxx is not compatible with the GPL, so it is bad". "Boycott Amazon".
"KDE is still in violation".
Are we, possibly, at all going to take the hint?
-Jo Hunter
If we do not change our direction we are likely to end up where we are headed.
Fact is, that KDE violated the license (they say "only a little bit" and the "whole thing was absurd.") If FSF totally ignored that, that would set a precedent which would jeopardize the entire license. So, after KDE throws in the towel, Stallman says it's ok. THIS IS THE SAME AS FOR ANY OTHER COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL: the copyright holder can grant a license, even retroactively, but if the copyright holder doesn't do that, the copyright itself is jeopardized.
Under our current legal system, that is to say, Stallman did what he had to do.
to +5, hilarious. I would, but i used up my mod points yesterday.
All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
RMS isn't a particullay rational character. He has some good ideas, but ofeten he needxs to be taken with a grain of salt.
I go along with RMS as an idealist and if he says something irrational, I try laugh it off. For instance the nonsence/doublespeak of "Linux" vs. "GNU/Linux."
When KDE decided to use QT it alienated a lot of open source developers, including RMS. In fact, it's pretty clear to me that RMS doesn't really like the KDE project. This dislike prompted the formation of GNOME, which attracted the more open source devout of us.
So no QT has been GPLed and all is forgiven right? Well, not exactly. This has been a long standing adversarial situation, and the bad blood isn't going away anytime soon.
Yes. RMS is being irrational, and he's getting on your case. He doesn't like you. He's going to give you a hard time for a while.
You call a response with detailed facts instead of vapor FUD squirming?
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
but if it were not for RMS's radicalism, there would be no FSF and GNU Project
Yes indeed. Fewer idiotic recursive acronyms. More licenses used that don't require you to redistribute source. No FSF-propaganda induced hostility against the Great Satan of commercial software. No raving lunatic who claims to represent us.
I would miss him horribly. He surely made the world a better place.
--------
Who cares? Its under GPL now(not that it matters), so why all this bickering? I'd rather stuff about KDE 2.0 or Gnome 1.4. Actual software rather than foundation announcements or licensing flamewars.
Turn the other cheek. Decline to fight. It does not diminish you.
Bruce Perens.
If you'd like to continue hacking on TiMidity, feel free. I'm hereby extending the TiMidity license agreement: you can now select the most convenient license for your needs from (1) the GNU GPL, (2) the GNU LGPL, or (3) the Perl Artistic License.
Great gift, huh?
Qt 2.0 is also less than 6 months old. How long was it between the initial promise of a free Qt license and the final QPL? How long were GPLed KDE programs linked to proprietary Qt 1.x libraries, under the excuse that TrollTech would 'real soon now' release a free Qt license?
In spite of all that, RMS has forgiven all past GPL violations by KDE that infringed on FSF copyrighted code. That seems pretty generous to me, I don't know how KDE can complain about it.
Anyway, what do I know. I'm just another frenzied /. poster trying to be heard over the thunder of the herd on the move. ;^)
"The only good windmill is a tilted windmill."
They shouldn't respond to such highly publicised attacks by a highly public figure? Why exactly should they sit down and take that kind of shit? I don't get it. Our stand for freedom includes the right to free speech and that includes the right to defend against baseless attacks.
That being said, I'm glad you acknowledge the licensing wars are over. Thanks.
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
Check this interview where he interrupts the guy talking to him, real professional. This doesn't help his credibility.
http://tlug.linux.or.jp/rms.html
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Well, the DEA has busted up my regular dealer's supply line, so I've been forced to go on some of this three-dollar stuff from the jeek (see Snow Crash) down the street. It's been a rough go, but things should be back to normal soon.
As far as how it's an attack, let's see. RMS has been bitching and whining for years about Qt and its licensing. Troll Tech gives in and releases Qt under the GPL. RMS's response is, among other things, that the developers should "ask for foregiveness." He then ends the editorial with "go, gnomes!" Now, is this an attack in the sense that breaking somebody's nose or slashing their tires is an attack? Probably not. But is it petty, childish chest-banging that exhibits ingratitude to a nearly unbelievable degree? Definitely.
Again, don't get me wrong; I appreciate very much all that RMS has done for the open source community. But he's wrong on this one. If you're not willing to admit that, you're not being objective. Troll Tech has done exactly what he asked them to do, and instead of being gracious about it, he resorted to more insults and innuendo. This is neither admirable nor worthy of imitation. It is the type of behavior that should be avoided, at all costs, lest the entire community be portrayed as a rowdy band of sophomoric juveniles that cannot stand to have things any way other than Their Way.
Just my opinion.
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The New World Order is upon us, and it's about damned time.
You didn't specify a melody, so I tried the theme from Gilligan's Island, but it didn't work very well.
-Pete
But now I honestly think that RMS does more harm than good. By right of seniority, he certainly holds a prominent position within the hierarchy of the free software world, but his still strident and often extremist positions do little to advance the cause and buttress his credibility.
His latest editorial shows that he is not above using his political power to advance a personal cause. The GNOME vs KDE acrimony ended a while back, but RMS refuses to give up. It's too bad that a man who was the general in our battle to be recognized as a legitimate force in the computing world is now reduced to being perceived by many as a bitter, misguided cynic who has stooped to promoting a schism between the very people he should be bringing together.
RMS simply isn't the voice of Linux anymore.
-h-
Licencing n. Combo 'B' in a Japanese karaoke bar/restaurant.
-Pete
That certainly makes things easier. But that's not always the best goal...
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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Really, the developer(s) of software are best fit to decide whether harm has been committed against them by violating the terms of a license. In many cases I think people have released software under the GPL, but made an exception (implicit or explicit) for KDE. The author(s) of software are free to decide when to waive some of the terms of the license in any given case. Remember, the license serves the developer, not the other way around.
In cases where GPL'd code was used without permission, and the author(s) of that code are pissed off, yes I think an apology is appropriate.
Also I really think both RMS and the KDE folk are acting like adults here. Though I don't agree with RMS's software politics, I do think he's a living legend and anyone who uses and enjoys free software (including Linux) has a lot to thank him for. RMS-bashing is not cool.
But they had freedom of choice before they bought the proprietary software. They could have gone with your software. The only time they would lose this freedom is when a monopolist can compel usage of only their offerings in perpetuity. Thankfully that is against the law in at least the United States.
1. Integrity of Free Software. While this stuff is debatable in its specifics, it is definitely something to always keep in mind. The GPL virally and completely insures that our code doesn't get trapped into proprietary hands by commercial parties. Some of the Open Source licenses also do this to greater or lesser degrees. It should be obvious what the goal is here, and it should be of paramount importance.
2. RMS's role in the Open Source Movement. Please don't be so judgemental of RMS's words and actions. I don't agree with everything he says and does, like many people. But the Open Source movement is a revolution. Revolutions need extremists. We haven't won yet. When we win, we can replace the extremists with pragmatists and await the next revolution that will wash over us someday. Until then, extremists are a neccesary element to keep things going in the right direction.
11*43+456^2
You twist logic to your convenience. Let's review your own words:
Because for those years, Qt was either not free, or GPL incompatible, and a major free software project was based on it. Duh.
So the new, current situation is irrelevant to the evaluation of my statement there. Because it was explicitly addressed to a situation previous to the current one. So you have obviously shown that you have no interest in having a rational discussion with me-- you resort to dirty tricks like this strawman argument to try to make me look bad. Of course, I'm not an idiot like you were gambling I were, and I know precisely how to answer those attacks-- by exposing them.
Your immoral tactics give lie to your claims.
One would think that RMS might at least show the slimmest bit of gratitude for Troll Tech's capitulation to his demands.
Point out which part of RMS's editorial is addressed to Troll. Point out where he makes any demands of the Trolls.
Saying "he demanded for years that Qt be GPLed" doesn't cut it-- from your reference to Troll Tech's "capitulation" (note the deliberately inflammatory, martial vocabulary you use here), you are talking about the current situation. Yet you drag in the past to its evaluation. One begins to see that you don't have many tricks up your sleeve-- you use the same fallacious, demagogical method throughout.
There is no difference between retroactively attacking Troll Tech for having the unmitigated gall to develop a non-GPL library and retroactively attacking the KDE team for using a non-GPL library. Either scenario involves pissing all over somebody else's hard work because they did it in a manner that you didn't like.
"There is no diffenrence between retroactively attacking King Leopold for his business practices in the Congo and retroactively attacking Hitler for his rehabilitation of the German economy. Either scenario involves pissing all over somebody else's hard work because they did it in an manner that you didn't like."
Ok, so you have another trick. State the obviously wrong with great conviction. Dude, I insist, IHBT.
RMS may be (mostly) admirable but he is not God.
But he is clearly doing His work here on Earth; he is taking us a step closer to His Kingdom.
KDE and GNOME are on the same team (that is, the team of open source desktop environments.)
Gnome has been in the team of Freedom since the start; heaven, it started because KDE was *not* on this team. KDE has clearly shown through their actions that they have not entered this team. So when RMS says "Go Gnome!", he's saying "Go Freedom!"
Your use of the term "open source" gives you away, anyway, as somebody who values authority over freedom. The Kingdom of God does not tolerate authority, as Christ himself reveals: "The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those who exercise authority over them are called `benefactors'. But not so among you; on the contrary, he who is greatest among you, let him be as the younger, and he who governs as he who serves", Luke 24:25-26.
No, you haven't been trolled. My username is intended to severely punish knee-jerk moderators in meta-moderation (usernames and signatures aren't displayed in M2.)
There are some a priori analytic issues, hinted at ever so slightly, that prevent me, in this particular thread, from being considered as a object of a trolling, believe me.
Would that be as absurd as the Supreme Court telling then-President James Madison that he didn't understand the US Constitution when he WROTE the part he was accused of not understanding? Madison even wrote the Federalist Papers with Alexander Hamilton and John Jay. But still, he didn't fully understand the new form of government they had created.
I bring up this point to illustrate the fact that once something is written and sent out to the masses, particularly in the case of a legally-binding document, the writer of the document is no longer the be-all and end-all expert on it. To assume that RMS is infallable is itself folly.
without RMS or another hard liner who stuck to his guns and just plain simply refused to give an inch we'd not have all the wonderful choices we have today, we'd all be running Windows 95
(hrm)FreeBSD(cough)XFree86(blurgh)lcc(hrrump)
(I could go on, but I think that last one was a lung)
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All this complaining about usage of GPL code in what... two low key KDE applications... kghostview and kmidi. With all due respects to the kghostview author, it is not very robust either. If those two programs got deleted off the code tree, I don't think I would be greatly inconvenienced. For what little that the KDE people took off others GPL code, I think they easily provided back ten fold to the pool of GPL code. Witness the awesome new HTML viewer in KDE2. The only other browser at par with it is Mozilla. And even the Mozilla people had to bend over backwards to accomodate the GPL (do you see a pattern here?)