For a while it was a sort of cute "Tolkien wrote a trilogy, so good fantasy must come in threes" meme. Then it was Frank Herbert extending Dune through the arguably troublesome fourth and disastrous last two volumes.
Sorry, but in my opinion, God Emperor of Dune was pretty much the beginning of the real story in the DUNE saga. It divided the timeline between Muad'Dib's Imperium, and repairing the damage created by Muad'Dib's Imperium.
The whole series was about the damage that heros inevitably wreak on their society, the destruction that occurs when religion and government ride in the same cart, and what it really means to be human.
I will refrain from commenting on the damage that Herbert's son and some "writer" called Kevin J. Anderson are themselves perpetrating on the Dune Chronicles. Oh, wait...too late.
If you had read the whole article, you will notice that Miguel is satisfied that the new QT license is free, and that the QT license issue is history.
While the Qt 2.0 license, QPL, indeed is "free enough" to qualify as Open Source, it is still not free enough to be compatible with the GPL.
What this means for KDE (which is itself licensed under the GPL), is that it still cannot legally be distributed on operating systems in which Qt is not an essential component of the operating system.
Most [GNU/]Linux distributions do not require Qt, so much of KDE (even after the Qt 2.0 switchover) is not strictly legal for distribution on those distributions. On systems like OpenLinux 2.2 and possibly Mandrake, which are built using Qt, KDE is a valid option that is legal for distribution.
KDE has license problems that need to be resolved. The problems may not be insurmountable, but parts of KDE include code from GPLed sources, forcing those parts to be GPLed as well. Yet the Qt license is incompatible with the GPL.
Now, in this case, either the QPL or the GPL has got to go. If KDE's license is changed from GPL, then the parts that use GPL code need to be removed. If Qt 2.0's license is changed to GPL or a license that is compatible with it (e.g. The QPL forbids distribution of modified source or binaries), then the problem is resolved. The "free-ness" of the QPL is not at issue; it's not a problem of anything but the compatibility of the GPL with other open-source licenses. The GPL is designed to be restrictive in what restrictions are allowed on code that uses it. This is unfortunate for KDE, but it's one of the founding principles of open-source software. KDE cannot be both GPL and link to code that uses a license that is incompatible with it. It's not a semantical issue, it's a legal one, and a sticky one at that.
Redhat is a good way for people to get to know linux. After that, Debian is also an option. Note that Debian uses RPM's (thanks to Redhat) to increase its distributability.
Debian does not use RPMs, except for use with the alien program, which converts RedHat, Slack, and Stampede packages into.deb format. The Debian package format is not RPM-based. dpkg does many of the same things as RPM, but differently and with different strengths.
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Sorry, but in my opinion, God Emperor of Dune was pretty much the beginning of the real story in the DUNE saga. It divided the timeline between Muad'Dib's Imperium, and repairing the damage created by Muad'Dib's Imperium.
The whole series was about the damage that heros inevitably wreak on their society, the destruction that occurs when religion and government ride in the same cart, and what it really means to be human.
I will refrain from commenting on the damage that Herbert's son and some "writer" called Kevin J. Anderson are themselves perpetrating on the Dune Chronicles. Oh, wait...too late.
Other than that, you're pretty much dead-on. :)
While the Qt 2.0 license, QPL, indeed is "free enough" to qualify as Open Source, it is still not free enough to be compatible with the GPL.
What this means for KDE (which is itself licensed under the GPL), is that it still cannot legally be distributed on operating systems in which Qt is not an essential component of the operating system.
Most [GNU/]Linux distributions do not require Qt, so much of KDE (even after the Qt 2.0 switchover) is not strictly legal for distribution on those distributions. On systems like OpenLinux 2.2 and possibly Mandrake, which are built using Qt, KDE is a valid option that is legal for distribution.
KDE has license problems that need to be resolved. The problems may not be insurmountable, but parts of KDE include code from GPLed sources, forcing those parts to be GPLed as well. Yet the Qt license is incompatible with the GPL.
Now, in this case, either the QPL or the GPL has got to go. If KDE's license is changed from GPL, then the parts that use GPL code need to be removed. If Qt 2.0's license is changed to GPL or a license that is compatible with it (e.g. The QPL forbids distribution of modified source or binaries), then the problem is resolved. The "free-ness" of the QPL is not at issue; it's not a problem of anything but the compatibility of the GPL with other open-source licenses. The GPL is designed to be restrictive in what restrictions are allowed on code that uses it. This is unfortunate for KDE, but it's one of the founding principles of open-source software. KDE cannot be both GPL and link to code that uses a license that is incompatible with it. It's not a semantical issue, it's a legal one, and a sticky one at that.
Debian does not use RPMs, except for use with the alien program, which converts RedHat, Slack, and Stampede packages into .deb format. The Debian package format is not RPM-based. dpkg does many of the same things as RPM, but differently and with different strengths.