#linux sucks, universally. There is no #linux channel I have been to on any network that does not suck. Such is the case for all channels named for operating platforms I imagine. (think #windowsnt, #windows95, #os/2, #unix, etc)
Debian provides non-free software on its servers as a service. It does not and will not distribute this non-free software. Other people may or may not choose to distribute it themselves but the CD images we build do not at all feature non-free software.
We're likely to be voting very soon about removing the non-free software from our primary servers and placing it on a machine with a different hostname. If this happens it will still be available to everyone as it is now, but hopefully it will help stop silly comments like "Debian distributes non-free software" from popping up all over the place.
Oh, we can include Qt now as part of the system sure... However we couldn't distribute KDE ALSO as part of the system. Kinda annoying, that. I've no intention of giving up getting both Qt and KDE into main just yet, however. Qt 2.0 can go into main anytime now. KDE needs more work. When I'm done with the work in question (may take a few months before EVERYTHING is done), if one cannot get a KDE built for Qt 2.x, I'll try to convince Troll Tech to QPL the latest 1.x version for us. =>
Re:I thought the problem was GPL compatibility?
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qt 2.0 released
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Don't I wish! You have any idea how much headache I would be spared if this were the case!? Eesh! No, the system library thing only applies if you're not distributing the thing with the library in question. Debian distributing KDE and Qt together in main makes that clause not apply. Even then it's a badly worded clause and I don't like it much. I've pleaded with RMS to rewrite it for the sake of clarity and sanity in the GPL v3. Hope he listened.
Consider it this way... Anyone who can get a binary of a GPL program has to be able to get the source. If nobody other than those in-house can get the binaries, nobody except those in-house need to be given access to the source.
I think the provision in the QPL preventing this is quite deliberate. It didn't occour to me at the time that Troll Tech would have wanted it this way for a reason, but I probably wouldn't have been too quick to change it if I had realized---especially given that you still can do in-house software with Qt freely, but if Troll Tech asks for the source you have the provide it. If your code is that secret that you aren't willing to give it out, it's essentially proprietary IMO and Troll Tech doesn't want you using Qt to write anything proprietary without paying for it. The license I'm working on for KDE will be more GPL-like on this matter and will allow you to develop in-house software without distributing it. Of course you'll still be bound by the QPL's requirement that you publish source if Troll Tech asks for it.
Re:So does this change the debian situation?
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It will happen. If I have to contact just about all of them myself, they will be consulted. Particularly those whose code was simply borrowed and used for KDE.
Depends. Anyone who has made significant contribution to KDE should be heard on the subject certainly. The person who fixed a typo can't exactly claim Copyright since they don't actually have any claim to original work as part of the whole. Those part of the KDE project aren't so much the worry as those outside the project whose code was used. Arguably anyone who contributed to KDE directly has pretty much given their consent for the code to be used with Qt simply because they did so knowing that's what would be done with their code. Those who didn't directly contribute to KDE need to be consulted more specifically however. And any of them who come back and say they don't want their code in KDE... Well, if that happens, KDE will have to remove their code and rewrite their own in its place. This could be a minor nuisance or a real PITA depending on what happens. Won't know till people start getting asked and giving their answers will we?
Re:So does this change the debian situation?
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qt 2.0 released
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Hiya JHM..
Unfortunately no, at the time I couldn't come up with a way to make the thing GPL compatible and still protect KDE from malicious action that a number of people were threatening. Right now I want to work on the KDE license since there is still a real legal issue left to hash out. I'm trying to address this with a new license since the KDE team is about as happy with the GPL at this point as Troll Tech is, for much the same reasons. They'll undoubtedly be happier with the license I'm working on when it's finished. If it works out well and we can't blow any large holes in it, perhaps Troll Tech may be able to be convinced to adopt the license. I'm not going to push for that now though, it's their call. Qt is now free and I'm personally satisfied with that. GPL compatibility would be nice, but I want to be sure that the license is going to be successful first. I also want the legal issue to be settled and have been settled awhile first.
To be quite honest, if Troll Tech starts considering a new license which is GPL compatible, I will advise against it if I'm still getting mail like I have been over the past six months. Hostile, not infreqnetly threatening, usually riddled with poor spelling and grammar, and just plain obnoxious hate mail. And this for working damned hard to take a piece of non-free software and give it a free license. More than once I've been accused of compromising the ideals of free software because I couldn't live without something that worked like windoze...
For the record, I don't even use or like KDE. I am just happy with my console and screen. X is a waste of resources and a desktop environment more so. So then why am I doing it? Because free software is important to me. And because I'm sick of the ritual flamefests on the subjects to the lists.
Re:Why QPL will never be GPL
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First, I openly admit I am a free software fanatic (not necessarily a GPL fanatic..) I went into the QPL thing as this and everybody involved knew that my priority was free software. However, I STILL got tons of hate mail personally for my work. And what's worse, I'm still getting it today. When you say they got hate mail, you are not at all kidding. I got a small taste of what they have gotten and will likely continue to get.
It's a shame too because it's possible that at some point in the future, the GPL would make an excellent license for Qt. I'm not going to lose hope in the Qt license becoming GPL compatible at some point, however I'm pretty certain they won't put Qt under the GPL itself. Perhaps in time Troll Tech may consider the license I've been working on and plan to present to kde-licensing and debian-legal RSN for opinions and other hashings.. I'm going to make the license not specific to KDE at all because I really believe other people are likely to find the licence more suitable to them than the GPL for a number of projects. Protection of the software is going to be a focus of the license (much like the GPL), however I think the results will be more "social". It will be compatible with the current QPL and pretty much any DFSG/OSD compliant license for that matter. This is a design goal.
hmmm, perhaps I should quit typing about the damned thing and finish writing it? =D
Minor nit... Commercial apps can be made freely. Proprietary ones cannot. You're equating the two simply because people usually want you to equate them so you don't expect source for the app you just paid for. Don't do that, you'll be giving them what they want. =>
Re:Debian and KDE, the current situation (IIRC)
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qt 2.0 released
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The XFree License allows you to GPL the X server. I'm not kidding, you just add the GPL to the top of a list of other copyright notices and call it good because the license allows you to do so. This satisfies the GPL. Sick, isn't it? =D I've come to the decision that Copyright law is perverse.
Re:Debian and KDE, the current situation (IIRC)
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qt 2.0 released
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You miss a very subtle point.. GTK is LGPL, not GPL. LGPL is not "anti-social" the way the GPL is. GPL fans please don't take that as offensive, it's not meant to be. I just can't think of a better way to describe what in a number of cases is a very useful feature, but in others is most decidedly a misfeature.
Re:Debian and KDE, the current situation (IIRC)
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qt 2.0 released
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It's not something they really want to spend their time on.. They'd rather code. And yes some of them still don't see the problem. Many of them do however at least realize that something can be done and therefore should be. So people like me end up being crazy enough to offer to help.
Re:Debian and KDE, the current situation (IIRC)
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qt 2.0 released
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I have worked with them on this before, but have not been working at it with them actively lately. Mostly it's my fault---I was supposed to get back with people after I had a draft license and I still don't have one. I'll probably work on it tomorrow. I think they'll like the license I've got in my head, but I've got to put it in writing first. =p
Qt v2 license is now libre software
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What is cited above was the original Qt v1.x "Free edition" license. Qt v2.0 uses the QPL, a real honest to gods free software license. Trust me on this one, I knew what I was doing. The QPL can be found at http://www.troll.no/qpl and has been determined to be free software by Debian, OSI, and Richard Stallman. If you believe that we're all wrong you're not required to use it naturally.
However while the QPL is in fact a free license, it is not compatible with the GPL used by KDE. Of course, it's not the first free license to have this problem---the BSD license isn't compatible with the GPL either. I tried to make the QPL compatible with the GPL, but the methods I was able to offer them for this compatibility would have left them open to things such as immediate forks made just to spite them. Before the final license was published, I was was convinced their fears were not in the least unfounded. Fortunately the fires have cooled a bit now and hopefully in the future they won't have anything to fear from a GPL compatible Qt if not directly a GPL'd Qt. Time will tell.
In the meantime, there are two options which I see available to actually solve the compatibility issue:
Extra permission in addition to the GPL - A clause can be added to the license of KDE by its Copyright holders. Note for borrowed code from other programs not written by KDE, someone will have to contact the appropriate Copyright holders and make arrangements with them to use the portions of code required with this exception. As this is likely to be required still, my offer to assist with this stands.
KDE under a different license - The KDE team has expressed some complaints about the GPL as a license. It's not very short and simple and I swear if I gave three people a paragraph from the GPL, I'd get at least four interpretations back (granted, at least two of them are likely to not make much sense, but that's a seperate issue..) To address their concerns, a new license can be written. In fact I'm working on such a license when I've got the patience for it (the heat's getting to me of late) and will post a draft of the license to the debian-legal mailing list as soon as I have something worth posting. This still means that people whose code is being used by KDE must still be consulted for permission to use their code either under this license or under GPL+permission for Qt as above.
If you are looking for the best way to grant permission to a GPL program, feel free to email me.
He's a suit who makes money off of selling commercial distributions as better than the free ones. He's written two articles involving Debian and both of them contained blatant lies as well as the typical FUD we all expect from ZDnet. This is obviously just more typical Leibovitch faire... The snotty attitude and disinformation about all of the non-commercial Linux supporting organizations out there is likely to continue. You can expect more trash to be spread about Debian, SPI, OSI, and probably the FSF and others as well. Evan Leibovitch is a parasite who freely admits he's not a technical person (and therefore IMO not qualified to write about technical matters), and whose sole interest in Linux is his own profits.
Lots of people say we don't need commercial support, and I totally disagree with them. We certainly need all the support we can get no matter where it comes from. On the other hand, we don't need Evan Leibovitch or his kind or their snotty attitude and general contempt for all things which do not line their pockets.
SPI and OSI had come to an agreement as to how to handle Open Source. It didn't get officially announced prior to this mess which ends up boiling down to a paperwork issue. How do I know all of this? Well, I asked! =D
Re:why this won't always work
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Digital VCRs
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*ponders commercials with ((( In Stereo where available ))) for 3 seconds*
You said it Bruce! I suddenly have this urge to find some cash and buy myself a TNT2. I sincerely hope the people at 3DFX and Creative Labs are both listening.
Of course it's much easier to get a copy of the film recorded to other media this way and you'd be able to build yourself a nice DVD copy months before anyone else has one. Of course you have to be crazy enough to by DVDR, but if you're gonna pull this off you might as well pull it off nicely.
it may be childish, but they have every right to do so. Bush has lost my vote because what he is trying to do is prevent people from being able to put up a site to rally against him. That amounts as an attempt to censor people. It won't work, not on the Internet, but the fact that he tried makes him an absolutely horrible candidate as far as I am concerned. And of course, we know Gore invented the internet right? Yeah. I'm looking for a 3rd candidate.
Slashdot Mirror
#linux sucks, universally. There is no #linux channel I have been to on any network that does not suck. Such is the case for all channels named for operating platforms I imagine. (think #windowsnt, #windows95, #os/2, #unix, etc)
We're likely to be voting very soon about removing the non-free software from our primary servers and placing it on a machine with a different hostname. If this happens it will still be available to everyone as it is now, but hopefully it will help stop silly comments like "Debian distributes non-free software" from popping up all over the place.
"AOL" stands for what? America OnLine. Guess what? You can't trademark and acronym.
Oh, we can include Qt now as part of the system sure... However we couldn't distribute KDE ALSO as part of the system. Kinda annoying, that. I've no intention of giving up getting both Qt and KDE into main just yet, however. Qt 2.0 can go into main anytime now. KDE needs more work. When I'm done with the work in question (may take a few months before EVERYTHING is done), if one cannot get a KDE built for Qt 2.x, I'll try to convince Troll Tech to QPL the latest 1.x version for us. =>
Don't I wish! You have any idea how much headache I would be spared if this were the case!? Eesh! No, the system library thing only applies if you're not distributing the thing with the library in question. Debian distributing KDE and Qt together in main makes that clause not apply. Even then it's a badly worded clause and I don't like it much. I've pleaded with RMS to rewrite it for the sake of clarity and sanity in the GPL v3. Hope he listened.
I think the provision in the QPL preventing this is quite deliberate. It didn't occour to me at the time that Troll Tech would have wanted it this way for a reason, but I probably wouldn't have been too quick to change it if I had realized---especially given that you still can do in-house software with Qt freely, but if Troll Tech asks for the source you have the provide it. If your code is that secret that you aren't willing to give it out, it's essentially proprietary IMO and Troll Tech doesn't want you using Qt to write anything proprietary without paying for it. The license I'm working on for KDE will be more GPL-like on this matter and will allow you to develop in-house software without distributing it. Of course you'll still be bound by the QPL's requirement that you publish source if Troll Tech asks for it.
It will happen. If I have to contact just about all of them myself, they will be consulted. Particularly those whose code was simply borrowed and used for KDE.
Depends. Anyone who has made significant contribution to KDE should be heard on the subject certainly. The person who fixed a typo can't exactly claim Copyright since they don't actually have any claim to original work as part of the whole. Those part of the KDE project aren't so much the worry as those outside the project whose code was used. Arguably anyone who contributed to KDE directly has pretty much given their consent for the code to be used with Qt simply because they did so knowing that's what would be done with their code. Those who didn't directly contribute to KDE need to be consulted more specifically however. And any of them who come back and say they don't want their code in KDE... Well, if that happens, KDE will have to remove their code and rewrite their own in its place. This could be a minor nuisance or a real PITA depending on what happens. Won't know till people start getting asked and giving their answers will we?
Unfortunately no, at the time I couldn't come up with a way to make the thing GPL compatible and still protect KDE from malicious action that a number of people were threatening. Right now I want to work on the KDE license since there is still a real legal issue left to hash out. I'm trying to address this with a new license since the KDE team is about as happy with the GPL at this point as Troll Tech is, for much the same reasons. They'll undoubtedly be happier with the license I'm working on when it's finished. If it works out well and we can't blow any large holes in it, perhaps Troll Tech may be able to be convinced to adopt the license. I'm not going to push for that now though, it's their call. Qt is now free and I'm personally satisfied with that. GPL compatibility would be nice, but I want to be sure that the license is going to be successful first. I also want the legal issue to be settled and have been settled awhile first.
To be quite honest, if Troll Tech starts considering a new license which is GPL compatible, I will advise against it if I'm still getting mail like I have been over the past six months. Hostile, not infreqnetly threatening, usually riddled with poor spelling and grammar, and just plain obnoxious hate mail. And this for working damned hard to take a piece of non-free software and give it a free license. More than once I've been accused of compromising the ideals of free software because I couldn't live without something that worked like windoze...
For the record, I don't even use or like KDE. I am just happy with my console and screen. X is a waste of resources and a desktop environment more so. So then why am I doing it? Because free software is important to me. And because I'm sick of the ritual flamefests on the subjects to the lists.
It's a shame too because it's possible that at some point in the future, the GPL would make an excellent license for Qt. I'm not going to lose hope in the Qt license becoming GPL compatible at some point, however I'm pretty certain they won't put Qt under the GPL itself. Perhaps in time Troll Tech may consider the license I've been working on and plan to present to kde-licensing and debian-legal RSN for opinions and other hashings.. I'm going to make the license not specific to KDE at all because I really believe other people are likely to find the licence more suitable to them than the GPL for a number of projects. Protection of the software is going to be a focus of the license (much like the GPL), however I think the results will be more "social". It will be compatible with the current QPL and pretty much any DFSG/OSD compliant license for that matter. This is a design goal.
hmmm, perhaps I should quit typing about the damned thing and finish writing it? =D
Minor nit... Commercial apps can be made freely. Proprietary ones cannot. You're equating the two simply because people usually want you to equate them so you don't expect source for the app you just paid for. Don't do that, you'll be giving them what they want. =>
The XFree License allows you to GPL the X server. I'm not kidding, you just add the GPL to the top of a list of other copyright notices and call it good because the license allows you to do so. This satisfies the GPL. Sick, isn't it? =D I've come to the decision that Copyright law is perverse.
You miss a very subtle point.. GTK is LGPL, not GPL. LGPL is not "anti-social" the way the GPL is. GPL fans please don't take that as offensive, it's not meant to be. I just can't think of a better way to describe what in a number of cases is a very useful feature, but in others is most decidedly a misfeature.
It's not something they really want to spend their time on.. They'd rather code. And yes some of them still don't see the problem. Many of them do however at least realize that something can be done and therefore should be. So people like me end up being crazy enough to offer to help.
I have worked with them on this before, but have not been working at it with them actively lately. Mostly it's my fault---I was supposed to get back with people after I had a draft license and I still don't have one. I'll probably work on it tomorrow. I think they'll like the license I've got in my head, but I've got to put it in writing first. =p
However while the QPL is in fact a free license, it is not compatible with the GPL used by KDE. Of course, it's not the first free license to have this problem---the BSD license isn't compatible with the GPL either. I tried to make the QPL compatible with the GPL, but the methods I was able to offer them for this compatibility would have left them open to things such as immediate forks made just to spite them. Before the final license was published, I was was convinced their fears were not in the least unfounded. Fortunately the fires have cooled a bit now and hopefully in the future they won't have anything to fear from a GPL compatible Qt if not directly a GPL'd Qt. Time will tell.
In the meantime, there are two options which I see available to actually solve the compatibility issue:
If you are looking for the best way to grant permission to a GPL program, feel free to email me.
Lots of people say we don't need commercial support, and I totally disagree with them. We certainly need all the support we can get no matter where it comes from. On the other hand, we don't need Evan Leibovitch or his kind or their snotty attitude and general contempt for all things which do not line their pockets.
SPI and OSI had come to an agreement as to how to handle Open Source. It didn't get officially announced prior to this mess which ends up boiling down to a paperwork issue. How do I know all of this? Well, I asked! =D
*ponders commercials with ((( In Stereo where available ))) for 3 seconds*
3dfx doesn't support Linux. If they supported Linux, I'd have the source to their driver.
We want SOURCE!
Of course it's much easier to get a copy of the film recorded to other media this way and you'd be able to build yourself a nice DVD copy months before anyone else has one. Of course you have to be crazy enough to by DVDR, but if you're gonna pull this off you might as well pull it off nicely.
it may be childish, but they have every right to do so. Bush has lost my vote because what he is trying to do is prevent people from being able to put up a site to rally against him. That amounts as an attempt to censor people. It won't work, not on the Internet, but the fact that he tried makes him an absolutely horrible candidate as far as I am concerned. And of course, we know Gore invented the internet right? Yeah. I'm looking for a 3rd candidate.
RMS would be PISSED.
Donate hardware to people who write drivers. It seems to be the biggest bang for the buck at the moment.