Qt and the GPL

kmself at ix.netcom.com kmself at ix.netcom.com
Tue Sep 5 07:19:50 UTC 2000


On Mon, Sep 04, 2000 at 11:34:31PM -0700, David Johnson wrote:
> On Mon, 04 Sep 2000, kmself at ix.netcom.com wrote:
> 
> > > 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.
> > 
> > No.  BSD, MIT, Artistic, and LGPL are all convertible to GPL.  You'd
> > leave out those people who were using these licenses to interoperate
> > with software licensed under non-GPL terms as a single work.
> 
> Hmmm, this isn't how I understand it. One can link from a GPL
> application to a BSD library, but not from a BSD application to a GPL
> library. This is because the application is a derivative of the
> library according to the GPL, and all derivatives of GPL code have to
> be GPL as well. 

The BSD SW would convert to GPL, which is allowable if it doesn't
contain the advertising clause.

> In any case, it would also leave out the MPL and QPL users, of which
> there is a significant number of the latter.

Yes, but you didn't mention these <g>.

-- 
Karsten M. Self <kmself at ix.netcom.com>     http://www.netcom.com/~kmself
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