Qt and the GPL

[Nelson Rush]

Yeah. I was sincerely trying to help though. ;-)

Licensing is a touchy issue, because you're requiring people to sign an
agreement that binds their actions. Certainly Trolltech could have done
anything they wanted, even stayed with a proprietary license. But it says
something about their character and persistance that they've seen it
through. I've emailed them with a thank you for making things right.

It's a misconception that only open source/free software advocates should
critize licenses. Anyone has the right to give their opinion on any license
and let the author/company know about it. The fact that users of proprietary
software don't do this makes me suspicious that they are not actually
reading the licenses they've agreed to. Certainly if a majority of Windows
(tm) users had a problem with a portion of the EULA (such as the recently
(well not so recent) removed right to a refund) Microsoft would take action
and change it. Instead, these users continue to agree to anything Microsoft
puts in the license and use the software.

Such apathy disgusts me. I do not long for the day that open source/free
software advocates no longer open their mouths.

I do know the guy that worked with Trolltech, then turned against them. I've
worked with him personally on the QuakeForge project, Joseph Carter. The
reason he became upset with them is that he had worked out a reasonable and
acceptable license which Trolltech had agreed to, then Trolltech turned
around and fooled with it further. When it came out, it wasn't the same
license he had given them.

I'm glad they actually used my idea. It surely is the perfect combination
because now they can turn a profit, and satisfy all of their end user's
needs. And now they've gained a lot of support, even I am going to play a
bit with qt now. Though, I'm still a big advocate of Gnome/GTK+. ;-)

I'm going to buy a HelixCode CD, gotta love that monkey!

-----Original Message-----
From: David Johnson [mailto:david at usermode.org]
Sent: Monday, September 04, 2000 7:58 PM
To: Nelson Rush; License-Discuss
Subject: RE: Qt and the GPL


On Mon, 04 Sep 2000, Nelson Rush wrote:
> I mentioned the idea of triple licensing (or dual licensing) qt in this
way
> in June to Trolltech. They told me where I could stick it then and it
looks
> like they've reconsidered it now.

You also have to consider the history of Trolltech. Everytime they have
taken one step forward, huge sectors of the community have jumped
them enmass and bitched that they didn't take a big enough step. Letting
people use the library with no cost for OSS wasn't good enough (and it
wasn't). Changing to a OSS license wasn't good enough. Considering a
GPL-compatible v2 of the QPL wasn't good enough. Even the guy who wrote
most of the QPL turned on them and became their biggest critic. They
could have kept their product 100% proprietary and received only a tiny
fraction of the grief.

If they got a bit snippy on you, just remember that they've had
thousands of people be snippy to them first.

> He said, "Well, we're a company and we've got to
> make money." So, of course I thought why not just GPL & proprietary
license,
> ala id Software and Quake 1. He said it would be impossible. I didn't
> understand why.

The reason it would have been impossible is that it would cause a huge
number of Qt based applications, including major portions of KDE, be
become illegal. With a GPL/Proprietary dual-license one has to either
write a GPL application or pay for a license. This would leave all of
the BSD, MIT, Artistic and even LGPL authors out in the cold.

But the triple licensing is a stroke of genius the more I think about
it. Qt is Free for Free Software, Open Source for Open Source Software
and proprietary for proprietary software. You can't get much more
equitable than that. If you were the one who planted this idea in their
heads, congratulations!

 --
David Johnson
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