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Nokia Makes LGPL Version of PyQt
EtaCarinae writes "Nokia didn't succeed in convincing Riverbank to change its licensing terms on PyQt, and so decided to create their own LGPL'ed version of it. From the FAQ at the PySide site: 'Nokia's initial research into Python bindings for Qt involved speaking with Riverbank Computing, the makers of PyQt. We had several discussions with them to see if it was possible to use PyQt to achieve our goals. Unfortunately, a common agreement could not be found , so in the end we decided to proceed with PySide.'"
PyQt is open source. Or isn't the GPL considered open anymore?
Version 2 I consider borderline. Version 3 isn't. It's a legal minefield; a poison pill in exactly the same sense that Microsoft's "Shared Source," was when Eric Raymond called it that.
Stallman corrupts everything he touches. The MIT/BSD license, without restriction or bias, entirely perpetuate the type of gift culture described here. With the GPL, Stallman created a mean spirited, twisted mockery of that, and version 3 has only made it worse. The other disastrous effect that Stallman has had, is to further muddying the waters by entangling the political doctrine(s) of Trotskyite Communism with software development.
The GPL's (and FSF's) influence on the Linux user and development community is plain to see. Its' most vocal members are avaricious, paranoid, howling fanatics who are terrified beyond all reason of Microsoft, and who spend far more of their time engaging in further paranoia about the amount that other people, "give back," than they devote to their own programming efforts.
The GPL and the organisation that spawned it are an infernal scourge; a pestilence on the face of Linux and greater UNIX, and it would do the world good if we could entirely get rid of both.