So you would actually sue someone who just did you a favour ? Knowing well that your argument about modifiable source , while legally correct, is completely bogus from the moral point of view. Is this about technical excelency or is this about "changing the world" ?
Oh come on !! They have created quite usable solution which Linux was lacking and released it for free ( as in freedom ) and you are elevating unintentional license violation to the level of software piracy? And that last remark about moral issues ? Gee... It is political for you guys isn't ?
Yes. But then why so many commercial products come as a completely static link ? They simply cannot afford to point their customers to 10 different sites and having them chasing bunch of right version of libraries that this particular app needs.
BTW... QPL as exists now for the current code will always be here. As to the future ? What keeps authors of GTK to change license and start charging for their stuff? They can do that, GPL will only protect current code base but that can also be aplied to QPL. I don't see much difference here...
That's what I said. GPL is the problem here. You have to understand that GPL is not another word for freedom even in Open Source community. Very large part of it rejects it as too restrictive and additionally promoting some social agenda which does not really belong in technical field. KDE made mistake (honest one, I am sure) of choosing GPL as their license. End of story.
But can you really blame them or, even worse,sue them ? Legal issues aside, there is a something called common decency which I think it very much applies here.
After all, what they are doing is pretty much the same what FSF and others have been doing for the last decade or so. KDE is now very big ( or rather visible) part of just about every Linux distor. Somehow this problem should be resolved but I don't think this should include bashing KDE team.
Yes. So what ? If you are bend on it you can use hammer to cut down a tree. Of course OO is not emulated in C. The difference is that you have to do what C++ compiler does for you automatically. If you value your time it matters a lot.
So the real problem is GPL. KDE people should have known better and release it under some other license (Artistic, BSD type...) Now it is too late... Just one voice of opposition from somebody who contributed code to KDE is enough to disallow it. Which means if they want to do it they will have to rewrite this part of code. What a mess ! And GPL talks about sharing code...
For commercial project this price range is nothing. What really matters are technical issues and if one toolkit can save couple months of development, price ( within reason) doesn't matter.
One of the reasons Qt was choosen was its technical valours. QT is very nice and docs are superb. GTK suffers from many problems main being that C is not object oriented software and emulating OO results in rather ugly mess. Another issue is lack of good documentation. In my opinion technical excellence is all that matters here, after all, this is our profession. Legal issues , while sometimes exciting, are not something that technical community is strong at. Let's do what we do best.
Legal issues aside, I think it is a Good Think that there is pretty much only one "true" KDE available from their www site. This is more general problem with Linux that scares many commercial companies from providing software for it. There is no standard, or rather, there are too many standards. Beside kernel, one can hardly be sure of anything when installing Linux. Some distros come with one version of jpeg others with another, if you go get newer one, old software breaks. This all can be solved when one knows how to do it but this sounds like pure hell for support departments of commercial software world.
But that is freedom ? It is not like somebody someday will delete all BSD code from everywhere in the world BUT their own server and then proudly release one and only , ultimate package for the world to buy. BSD is about freedom. If somebody thinks they are better server by not releasing code to the public, fine, it is their right to do so. If what OpenSource community states it's true they will not benefit much from it. But freedom means freedom. GPL changed meaning of that world to suite their own agenda. GPL is like socialism, great concept but completely unworkable in real world ( in other words, GPL will be total pain until every and each piece of software is released under GPL.) KDE is a perfect example of this.
What the fuck is that "spirit of free software" ? If I write something and let anybody use it as they please, is that free enough or should I make sure that beside writing free software, I advance some sort of new social brotherhood or some other crap ?
Sometimes I think KDE made a great mistake choosing GPL as their license. This kind of problems is exactly why XFree folks stay away from GPL. Go for BSD license and nobody will ever bitch about your code not being "free" enough or violating this or that. Real freedom.
I am just bitching a bit about GPL (which in my opinion is simply way to ristrictive to be called free.)
They state in GPL "Our decision will be guided by the two goals of preserving the free status of all derivatives of our free software and of promoting the sharing and reuse of software generally."
Reuse of software ? It is exactly opposite of that. They forbid that, unless one agrees with their specific meaning of freedom. How does it help in promoting "reuse of software." It seem that BSD type license is about reuse, cause one can do anything with it but GPL ? Anyone ever answered that simple question ?
Tell me, do you really care that much about license that you would stop using good software just because license is not what others say should be ? And , remember, we are not talking about "no bencharking, no copying" type of software license. KDE is free. Anyone will admit ar least that. How the hell we end up with free software violating GPL in the first place. How something being completely free ( the way RMS envisioned ) can violate his own license ? Maybe problem is on GPL end ? I understand that KDE people are responsible for choosing GPL as their license but maybe we should examine GPL for what it is and see if it is freedom we were looking for ? How come majority of Open Source projects are not GPLed. Mostly FSF own tools and Linux are just about only significant piece of software under GPL license. RMS may be good programmer who gave us some nice tools but it has nothing to do with his social stance. Gcc is great but not because it is GPLed, but because there are bunch of very dedicated programmers working on it. Same with KDE. Enough for now.
Suing KDE will kill every last bit of credibility that FSF have. KDE people made mistake releasing it under GPL. That's a lesson for anybody thinking about starting something similar. Do what Apache, Perl, TCL, BSD, XFree and countless others did.. stay away from GPL and its idealistic warfare.
Sure it does. Look how "empowered" KDE developers are now. They thought it GPL was freedom and now limitations keep poping up. One hell of a free license we have here dude...
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I am sure it would take longer to obtain permission for using GPL style library.
At least where I work it would.
So you would actually sue someone who just did you a favour ? Knowing well that your argument about modifiable source , while legally correct, is completely bogus from the moral point of view.
Is this about technical excelency or is this about "changing the world" ?
Oh come on !! ...
They have created quite usable solution which Linux was lacking and released it for free ( as in freedom ) and you are elevating unintentional license violation to the level of software piracy?
And that last remark about moral issues ? Gee
It is political for you guys isn't ?
So what the hell KDE is supposed to do ? Just fold it all up and go home beacuse they got cought in some nasty license issues?
From my point of view what they are doing is just as valuable and "free" ( whatever that means) as Debian stuff ( social contract or not )
Cut them some slack.
Yes. But then why so many commercial products come as a completely static link ?
They simply cannot afford to point their customers to 10 different sites and having them chasing bunch of right version of libraries that this particular app needs.
Man, you keep following me ...
... QPL as exists now for the current code will always be here.
:-)
BTW
As to the future ? What keeps authors of GTK to change license and start charging for their stuff?
They can do that, GPL will only protect current code base but that can also be aplied to QPL.
I don't see much difference here...
That's what I said. GPL is the problem here.
You have to understand that GPL is not another word for freedom even in Open Source community.
Very large part of it rejects it as too restrictive and additionally promoting some social agenda which does not really belong in technical field.
KDE made mistake (honest one, I am sure) of choosing GPL as their license. End of story.
But can you really blame them or, even worse,sue them ? Legal issues aside, there is a something called common decency which I think it very much applies here.
After all, what they are doing is pretty much the same what FSF and others have been doing for the last decade or so. KDE is now very big ( or rather visible) part of just about every Linux distor. Somehow this problem should be resolved but I don't think this should include bashing KDE team.
Yes. So what ? If you are bend on it you can use hammer to cut down a tree.
Of course OO is not emulated in C. The difference is that you have to do what C++ compiler does for you automatically. If you value your time it matters a lot.
So the real problem is GPL. KDE people should have known better and release it under some other license (Artistic, BSD type ...) ... Just one voice of opposition from somebody who contributed code to KDE is enough to disallow it. Which means if they want to do it they will have to rewrite this part of code. What a mess ! And GPL talks about sharing code ...
Now it is too late
This is fricking joke. I mean, this sounds even worse of what goes on in commercial world. ...
Free software is not so free, after all
So that's why recently I couldn't find binary packages of DDD compiled with real Motif. ...
Now it matters not since I can compile it myself
You know what ? This sounds like even bigger mess than we have in commercial world. How the hell free software community ended up there ?
For commercial project this price range is nothing. What really matters are technical issues and if one toolkit can save couple months of development, price ( within reason) doesn't matter.
One of the reasons Qt was choosen was its technical valours. QT is very nice and docs are superb. GTK suffers from many problems main being that C is not object oriented software and emulating OO results in rather ugly mess.
Another issue is lack of good documentation.
In my opinion technical excellence is all that matters here, after all, this is our profession.
Legal issues , while sometimes exciting, are not something that technical community is strong at.
Let's do what we do best.
Legal issues aside, I think it is a Good Think that there is pretty much only one "true" KDE available from their www site. This is more general problem with Linux that scares many commercial companies from providing software for it. There is no standard, or rather, there are too many standards. Beside kernel, one can hardly be sure of anything when installing Linux. Some distros come with one version of jpeg others with another, if you go get newer one, old software breaks. This all can be solved when one knows how to do it but this sounds like pure hell for support departments of commercial software world.
Oh man, I don't mean to bitch but your site could do without that "musical background".
But that is freedom ? It is not like somebody someday will delete all BSD code from everywhere in the world BUT their own server and then proudly release one and only , ultimate package for the world to buy.
BSD is about freedom. If somebody thinks they are better server by not releasing code to the public, fine, it is their right to do so. If what OpenSource community states it's true they will not benefit much from it.
But freedom means freedom. GPL changed meaning of that world to suite their own agenda. GPL is like socialism, great concept but completely unworkable in real world ( in other words, GPL will be total pain until every and each piece of software is released under GPL.)
KDE is a perfect example of this.
What the fuck is that "spirit of free software" ?
If I write something and let anybody use it as they please, is that free enough or should I make sure that beside writing free software, I advance some sort of new social brotherhood or some other crap ?
Sometimes I think KDE made a great mistake choosing GPL as their license. This kind of problems is exactly why XFree folks stay away from GPL. Go for BSD license and nobody will ever bitch about your code not being "free" enough or violating this or that. Real freedom.
I am just bitching a bit about GPL (which in my opinion is simply way to ristrictive to be called free.)
They state in GPL "Our decision will be guided by the two goals of preserving the free status of all derivatives of our free software and of promoting the sharing and reuse of software generally."
Reuse of software ? It is exactly opposite of that.
They forbid that, unless one agrees with their specific meaning of freedom. How does it help in promoting "reuse of software." It seem that BSD type license is about reuse, cause one can do anything with it but GPL ?
Anyone ever answered that simple question ?
Tell me, do you really care that much about license that you would stop using good software just because license is not what others say should be ?
And , remember, we are not talking about "no bencharking, no copying" type of software license.
KDE is free. Anyone will admit ar least that.
How the hell we end up with free software violating GPL in the first place. How something being completely free ( the way RMS envisioned ) can violate his own license ?
Maybe problem is on GPL end ?
I understand that KDE people are responsible for choosing GPL as their license but maybe we should examine GPL for what it is and see if it is freedom we were looking for ?
How come majority of Open Source projects are not GPLed. Mostly FSF own tools and Linux are just about only significant piece of software under GPL license.
RMS may be good programmer who gave us some nice tools but it has nothing to do with his social stance. Gcc is great but not because it is GPLed, but because there are bunch of very dedicated programmers working on it.
Same with KDE.
Enough for now.
"Does Troll Tech really believe developers will blindly follow just because they write code?"
Good code. Yes.That's reason good enough for me.
I am not here to change social makeup of the world.
I enjoy writing code at work and at home.
Suing KDE will kill every last bit of credibility that FSF have. .. stay away from GPL and its idealistic warfare.
KDE people made mistake releasing it under GPL.
That's a lesson for anybody thinking about starting something similar.
Do what Apache, Perl, TCL, BSD, XFree and countless others did
Sure it does. Look how "empowered" KDE developers are now. They thought it GPL was freedom and now limitations keep poping up. ...
One hell of a free license we have here dude
I run KDE and hardly ever use swap either.
The trick, my friend, is to buy more memory. It is cheap and easily accesible. Try it.