QT/GPL licensing trouble

Bitscape writes "LWN reports that Corel's gui packager, which uses both QT and lib-apt, fell under a licensing conflict which makes it illegal to distribute. While the author of lib-apt has agreed put an exception in its license for this case, is it a taste of things to come for people who use code released under the ever-expanding mess of incompatible licenses? "

Comments

Re:FreeQT

[cheeser]

I think the project your referring to is the Harmony project which is the GNU effort to make a source compatible lib. IIRC, that effort was reinstated some months ago. It sounds very exciting. It's the only UI lib I know of that doesn't have problems with UI updates outside of the event thread. A multithreaded UI could be very cool, indeed.

Suprise!

[Signal 11]

Suprise suprise... alot of people here have been dismissing RMS for being "too radical" for saying the GPL is the only truly "free" license. Now you can appreciate, in it's full ugliness, why he's been advocating the distinction between free software and open source.

There is a difference, and you just read about one of them. The GPL or a BSD-style license would not have these issues. The fact that a special exception was required says that the authors are ameniable to change (they didn't have to allow this you know), but wasn't the whole point of this movement to prevent somebody from holding that over your head in the first place?

--

Hang on, the situation has changed...?

[teraflop user]

I think the situation has changed since this debate originally arose.

The QT and GPL licenses certainly are potentially in conflict, but whether they are actually in conflict depends on current practice.

IIRC, the GPL contains a clause which allows software to be linked with non-GPL packages if those packages are routinely supplied as part of the OS. Hence you can GPL a Windows application, and you can link applications with Xfree86 which is not GPL.

Now every major Linux distribution is shipping QT and KDE, doesn't QT now fall under this same exception?

Re:Hang on, the situation has changed...?

[Communomancer]

Actually, IIRC, the clause refers not to "routinely shipped libraries" but instead to "essential system libraries"...to me, the distinction is vital.

There is absolutely nothing "essential" about QT for Linux...I can rm that tree, and my system will reboot just fine. You can't however simply remove the Windows\System directory, and expect anything to work properly.

Before this degenerates into yet another GPL vs. the world flamewar, let me take this opportunity to stand in the pulpit. Those who release their code under the GPL are doing so because, just possibly, they believe in certain ideals about the way software (especially their software!!!) should be used. We _must_ respect those ideals, or else we open the Gates of Troy wide open to those who would love to pillage the jewels that Open Source has produced.

Now we are growing at a tremendous rate, and perhaps it is time to re-evaluate the GPL's details to assure that it has strengthened, and not weakened, with age. I won't make a case for or against, but as the topic seems to spark such fire, there may definitely be some benefit to an objective analysis of the whole situation.

Nonetheless, right now the strongest thing that stands in the way of a marauding band of corporate source-code raiders and the work we've done over the past few years _is_ the GPL. We must not betray it.

If people on slashdot spent half as much time...

[FallLine]

If people on slashdot spent half as much time coding as they did worrying about what other people are doing in relation to GPL (et.al), this would be a moot point. It is one thing to extoll the virtues of true GPL; It is another thing entirely to piss and moan about what a few select individuals (companies) are doing. If you truely believe GPL creates a superior product, get them where it hurts; CREATE a better product. Period.

I'm aware I might get flamed for this, but so be it. I tire of the "me toos", RMS "rah rah" crowd, knee-jerk-reaction-crowd-to-geek/privacy-instrusio ns, etc.

Not quite..

[Kitsune Sushi]

RMS doesn't want people to stop using LGPL, period. As outlined by the link you provided, he only wants the LGPL to be used when its of strategic advantage (that is, it benefits free software more than it hurts it) to usher in the software in question into being a de facto standard across the board. the GNU C Library is a perfect example of this. Everybody has their own version of a C Library. glibc isn't anything special in this regard. LGPL it, however, and you'll have everyone using it because it's easier than brewing your own. It also ensures that more programs calling on that library will be compatible here and elsewhere without much modification.

What RMS doesn't want to see, however, is software that gives free software a definitive edge (that is, if it does something much better than existing software, or something completely different -- and naturally you'd want the OS to be GPL'ed, duh) being LGPL'ed (which is why I'm still wondering why the Berlin Consortium chose the LGPL.. the proprietary Unices -- and free ones -- currently have X. Berlin would give free Unices an edge if it were GPL'ed.. oh well), because that doesn't help free software.

Read for content, AC

[Frank Sullivan]

I never said that all software should be free (either as beer or speech), and anyone who writes code has the right to choose how they share it with others. And i praised Mozilla for a smart corporate license.

The *point*, which you obviously missed, is that the merely semi-free licenses like Qt's are at a serious disadvantage in the "marketplace of ideas" when competing with GPL or BSD licenses. Developers are more likely to work with code they can trust... they can't trust Qt. Which is why, in the end, i expect to see Qt marginalized by GTK, not for GTK's technical superiority, but because the license terms are better for Free software developers. Free speech is better than free beer.

Remember, the ONLY reason TrollTech opened up the Qt license as much as they did was because the community was abandoning KDE for Gnome, almost entirely for licensing reasons. If Qt's license hadn't changed, i think KDE would be nearly irrelevant now. As it is, i think Qt's license didn't change enough, and it only delayed the problem.

Of course, if you think i'm just another fanatical RMS clone, then you won't be able to see beyond your prejudices to the deeper point.

---
Maybe that's just the price you pay for the chains that you refuse.

Ease of special exception is the concern

[joneshenry]

What I find troubling is the ease at which a special exception was granted for Corel. I am hoping this has nothing to do with the relationships Corel has been developing with Debian, because if so this is totally wrong. The library being GPLed restricts it from being linked to almost anything, presumably for a reason. Now a special exemption is granted for just this one product that wants to link to it? This makes no sense at all. What happens down the road when twenty other special exemptions have to be granted, do we see the license extended by another length of the GPL? And this exemption is being granted only to a commercial entity.

In my opinion what the free source movement needs is the equivalent of cross-licensing, and no, GPL is not cross-licensing when it cannot freely be used in BSD licensed or X licensed code.

So a corporation like Corel can just call up Debian on the phone and instantly get an exemption while an unknown student would not be able to freely study the library code to re-use in his
projects throughout his latter career? I predict no one else on Slashdot will see how wrong this inequity is, and that is the problem.

As a example of how absurd the current situation is, there are maybe a half dozen incomplete attempts to reproduce Microsoft's Windows headers. No one seems to see the big picture that what is needed are one set of headers that are good enough so that serious projects would consider not having to shell out the licenses to buy Microsoft's development tools. No, entities such as Cygnus want to keep the code under whatever license is restrictive enough (GPL) so that if lightning strikes they can make a fortune by selective commercial licensing, so therefore we have perpetual beta products.

Re:Ease of special exception is the concern

[rcw-work]

What happens down the road when twenty other special exemptions have to be granted, do we see the license extended by another length of the GPL?

The copyright holder can license the code in any way he/she wishes. In this case it appears Jason Gunthorpe considers being able to link to Qt a feature instead of a bug.

And this exemption is being granted only to a commercial entity.

No, the exemption was made so that anyone could link libapt-2.5 against Qt. It was not Corel-specific, that would be silly, if that was the case Debian itself wouldn't be able to use Corel's installer. (this is why DFSG rules #5, #6, and #8 exist).

So a corporation like Corel can just call up Debian on the phone and instantly get an exemption while an unknown student would not be able to freely study the library code to re-use in his projects throughout his latter career?

I don't get it. The exemption applies to everyone, including J. Random Student. Plus, even before the exemption, the library was GPL'd, so the student would have ample provisions to study and re-use it in his projects. He would just have to GPL them. In fact, he would still have to do that.

BTW, you don't just "call up Debian on the phone". You call up (or email) a developer. We're volunteers, we don't have a receptionist, let alone an office. And if there's any license changes to be done, it'll typically be done in writing, clearly documented in the package (/usr/doc/packagename/copyright) in a fresh new release.

LWN admits error (Daniel M. Duley)

[Anonymous Coward]

I just got an email from Elizabeth O. Coolbaugh at LWN about this article, which has several falsehoods (you really can't link BSD or other licenses to GPL code, and it totally disregards the LGPL), and she said it is a misleading article and will be corrected. She also said it was "Obviously put together too quickly" ;) This is the reason Gnome for example uses almost entirely LGPL instead of GPL. The article took a rare exception to this. Using the GPL instead of LGPL for a library expressly means you want to deny linking to any non-GPL code (including BSD).
Daniel M. Duley
mosfet@jorsm.com Sorry, I don't have an account and Slashdot hasn't sent me a password yet ;-)

Risking my Karma

[DonkPunch]

This line from the article made me a little tense:

Please think seriously before you create a unique license for your software product. Please use the GPL or the BSD style license if you can.

I don't want to overreact. I understand that the author is simply trying to encourage the use of established Open Source licenses. In fact, it has been my personal experience that many developers who fear the GPL don't entirely understand it ("The GPL causes me to sign over my copyright to the FSF. I can't modify my own program and sell it closed-source to someone later.")

But I want to make a simple point -- the developer has an absolute right to determine the license under which his/her product is released. If Joe Programmer releases the most killer Linux app ever, but his license agreement requires you to hop on one foot to the mailbox and mail him a check once a month, then you either start hopping or you don't use the program. You can send Joe nasty emails, you can publicly flame him on slashdot, but none of that changes Joe's right to use his General Hopping License. If you can't handle the GHL, Joe's product is useless to you.