I don't think the user would violate the license as long as the user doesn't distribute the binary.
The user probably *would* violate the license by distributing the binary, so it's perfectly logical that the mplayer developers point out that the user may not do that then.
Wilful copyright violation for commercial gain can result in statutory damages of up to $100,000.- per infringement. Statutory means that the plaintiff only needs to prove wilful infringement and not the actual damage.
> TrollTech is also vulnerable to takeover by
> companies hostile to Free software and good
> corporate lawyers who can blow holes in the
> laughable FreeQt agreements.
Being bought out by Sun is a scary prospect indeed.
"Accepting the district court's finding that the Lotus developers made some expressive choices in choosing and arranging the Lotus command terms, we nonetheless hold that that expression is not copyrightable because it is part of Lotus 1-2-3's "method of operation." We do not think that "methods of operation" are limited to abstractions; rather, they are the means by which a user operates something. If specific words are essential to operating something, then they are part of a "method of operation" and, as such, are unprotectable."
> This is the only point that gave the nod to Gnome.
Appearantly, but when you look at the realities of the market place you will notice that commercial software developers gladly pay this license fee in order to use a better toolkit.
That's were it starts to smell a bit fishy. When given the choice, commercial software developers prefer to use Qt and here comes Bruce who says, I know better, commercial software developers should use GTK because it is better for them. Dunno about you, but I always become highly suspicious when other people start telling me what is supposed to be in my interest.
> I really don't get it. UserLinux seems targeted towards a very specific goal that KDE cannot meet because of the Qt widget set. That's that, right?
Not quite, when UserLinux was announced it talked about community based, cost-sharing, free software and an aim for the enterprise. This attracted many KDE developers because KDE offers a very good set of software to reach such goal. Appearantly that wasn't quite the plan that Bruce had in mind, because he then "ruled" that GNOME was to be used, with some reference to unnamed sponsors. This surprised the interested KDE developers somewhat. They published a paper in which they outlined why a KDE-based approach would be a better solution in the hope to start a discussion on the merits, but Bruce didn't seem very interested in hearing arguments.
So in short, it's not the fact that Bruce choose GNOME, it's the fact that he was not very honest about his motives when he started with UserLinux that has upset quite a few people.
If he would have told people from the start that he was hired by some companies to start a GNOME based distribution not many people would have bothered making a case for KDE.
Let's start with royalties, according to webster a royalty is:
"a payment to an author or composer for each copy of a work sold or to an inventor for each item sold under a patent"
Does Qt require royalty payments? No.
However, if you make a commercial closed source product (and do not wish to use the GPL) you will need to buy a one-time commercial Qt license for the developers that work on your product.
You can read more about commercial Qt licensing here.
So next time you hear someone talk about Qt royalties you now know that that person either doesn't know what he is talking about or he is
trying to sell you a bridge.
> KDE seems haunted by bad luck - everyone with a name (contrary to the polled masses, maybe) picks Gnome over them.
That has nothing to do with bad luck. It just means that Ximian and people such as Jeff Waugh do a good job in painting a picture.
E.g. Nat Friedman of Ximian told the public at the recent Linux Desktop Conference that the City of Largo had switched to Ximian, somewhat to the surprise of the
people at Largo With little tricks like that they try to pretend that GNOME is much more popular than it in fact is.
You do not need to pay royalties. This has been pointed out to Bruce already but Bruce seems to continue to deliberately confuse a one-time license fee with royalties.
Another small hint that Bruce might not be completely forthcoming about his real interests wrt. UserLinux. Ask Bruce about the companies that sponsor his plan.
Given the amount of commercial software available based on Qt it seems that businesses rather spend $1300 on Qt than use GTK. So that makes Qt-based KDE the more business friendly option.
Bruce Linux would be a better name to reflect clearly that this effort has little to do with Users or Community and everything to do with Bruce being able to cash in on his name.
Ask Bruce about the companies that have promised him money to fuel this GNOME vs KDE flamewar.
> I just hope this isn't yet another example of > great technology dying because the commercial > software industry has a tendency to preserve > the status quo in lieu of pushing the > envelope.
Ask Bruce which companies have promised him money for this decision and you will know.
If the license is so bad for business apps then GTK must be a really bad piece of software, because a lot of closed source commercial business apps have stil chosen to use Qt despite this bad license. There are virtually no commercial closed source GTK applications.
It seems more likely though that Nat convinced Bruce to use Gnome from the beginning and that everything else is just a facade to hide this backroom deal. "I even published a book on Qt" sounds to me like "I'm not homophobic, I have a friend that is gay!"
Oh, and there are of course also Bruce's famous fortune 500 companies that are going to sponsor all this, yet don't want to be named. I wonder if these Spineless 500 companies are the same that bought licenses from SCO
I think it's time to set a few examples and sue a few of these companies for the $150K per infringement statutory damage that goes along with wilful copyright violation for commercial gain.
They might have problems reading licenses, but I'm sure that will get the message across.
Would also put an end to the doubts about the enforcability of the GPL that some ppl seem to suffer from.
DCOP uses ICE which is distributed as part of XFree86 but ICE is unrelated to the X protocol. ICE also underlies the session management protocol.
ICE does not require a running X server.
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I don't think the user would violate the license as long as the user doesn't distribute the binary. The user probably *would* violate the license by distributing the binary, so it's perfectly logical that the mplayer developers point out that the user may not do that then.
Wilful copyright violation for commercial gain can result in statutory damages of up to $100,000.- per infringement. Statutory means that the plaintiff only needs to prove wilful infringement and not the actual damage.
Although the "Buy American" campaign seems to be a great success in Iraq (thanks Dick!), I don't think it will go down too well in Old Europe.
> TrollTech is also vulnerable to takeover by > companies hostile to Free software and good > corporate lawyers who can blow holes in the > laughable FreeQt agreements. Being bought out by Sun is a scary prospect indeed.
We cloned him from George Bush sr.! The fact that they both have the same name proves that they are clones."
The expression of the idea here is dictated by external factors for it to work --> not protected by copyright
See http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/6805/articles/int-prop /lotus/lotus-borland-appeal-Mar95.html
Appeals Court decision Lotus vs Borland:
"Accepting the district court's finding that the Lotus developers made some expressive choices in choosing and arranging the Lotus command terms, we nonetheless hold that that expression is not copyrightable because it is part of Lotus 1-2-3's "method of operation." We do not think that "methods of operation" are limited to abstractions; rather, they are the means by which a user operates something. If specific words are essential to operating something, then they are part of a "method of operation" and, as such, are unprotectable."
Appearantly, but when you look at the realities of the market place you will notice that commercial software developers gladly pay this license fee in order to use a better toolkit.
That's were it starts to smell a bit fishy. When given the choice, commercial software developers prefer to use Qt and here comes Bruce who says, I know better, commercial software developers should use GTK because it is better for them. Dunno about you, but I always become highly suspicious when other people start telling me what is supposed to be in my interest.
Not quite, when UserLinux was announced it talked about community based, cost-sharing, free software and an aim for the enterprise. This attracted many KDE developers because KDE offers a very good set of software to reach such goal. Appearantly that wasn't quite the plan that Bruce had in mind, because he then "ruled" that GNOME was to be used, with some reference to unnamed sponsors. This surprised the interested KDE developers somewhat. They published a paper in which they outlined why a KDE-based approach would be a better solution in the hope to start a discussion on the merits, but Bruce didn't seem very interested in hearing arguments.
So in short, it's not the fact that Bruce choose GNOME, it's the fact that he was not very honest about his motives when he started with UserLinux that has upset quite a few people.
If he would have told people from the start that he was hired by some companies to start a GNOME based distribution not many people would have bothered making a case for KDE.
"a payment to an author or composer for each copy of a work sold or to an inventor for each item sold under a patent"
Does Qt require royalty payments? No.
However, if you make a commercial closed source product (and do not wish to use the GPL) you will need to buy a one-time commercial Qt license for the developers that work on your product.
You can read more about commercial Qt licensing here.
So next time you hear someone talk about Qt royalties you now know that that person either doesn't know what he is talking about or he is trying to sell you a bridge.
That has nothing to do with bad luck. It just means that Ximian and people such as Jeff Waugh do a good job in painting a picture.
E.g. Nat Friedman of Ximian told the public at the recent Linux Desktop Conference that the City of Largo had switched to Ximian, somewhat to the surprise of the people at Largo With little tricks like that they try to pretend that GNOME is much more popular than it in fact is.
Nat has a link to a book on his blog that explains such marketing tactics.
You do not need to pay royalties. This has been pointed out to Bruce already but Bruce seems to continue to deliberately confuse a one-time license fee with royalties.
Another small hint that Bruce might not be completely forthcoming about his real interests wrt. UserLinux. Ask Bruce about the companies that sponsor his plan.
In fact ISV's who program for windows are already happily paying for Qt.
> Which option is more business friendly?
Given the amount of commercial software available based on Qt it seems that businesses rather spend $1300 on Qt than use GTK. So that makes Qt-based KDE the more business friendly option.
Bruce Linux would be a better name to reflect clearly that this effort has little to do with Users or Community and everything to do with Bruce being able to cash in on his name.
Ask Bruce about the companies that have promised him money to fuel this GNOME vs KDE flamewar.
> I just hope this isn't yet another example of
> great technology dying because the commercial
> software industry has a tendency to preserve
> the status quo in lieu of pushing the
> envelope.
Ask Bruce which companies have promised him money for this decision and you will know.
If the license is so bad for business apps then GTK must be a really bad piece of software, because a lot of closed source commercial business apps have stil chosen to use Qt despite this bad license. There are virtually no commercial closed source GTK applications.
It seems more likely though that Nat convinced Bruce to use Gnome from the beginning and that everything else is just a facade to hide this backroom deal. "I even published a book on Qt" sounds to me like "I'm not homophobic, I have a friend that is gay!"
Oh, and there are of course also Bruce's famous fortune 500 companies that are going to sponsor all this, yet don't want to be named. I wonder if these Spineless 500 companies are the same that bought licenses from SCO
> with more people than computers?
Hey, it's called "Personal Computer" with a reason! :-) :-) :-)
Ah, it's Solaris x86 week at Sun again. Does anyone now in which weeks they sell this Linux stuff?
A very good point if it wasn't for the fact that JDS relies heavily on the proprietary YaST-tool that is based on Qt.
I wonder if there will ever be a second version of this Java-Desktop-without-java-that-is-actually-just-Su SE now that SuSE has been bought by Novell.
I think it's time to set a few examples and sue a few of these companies for the $150K per infringement statutory damage that goes along with wilful copyright violation for commercial gain.
They might have problems reading licenses, but I'm sure that will get the message across.
Would also put an end to the doubts about the enforcability of the GPL that some ppl seem to suffer from.
KDE libraries are LGPL'ed.
DCOP uses ICE which is distributed as part of XFree86 but ICE is unrelated to the X protocol. ICE also underlies the session management protocol. ICE does not require a running X server.
Something like http://www.freedesktop.org/Standards/menu-spec maybe?