the provide, license verbs

[No Spam]

All, esp. Rick:

It depends on what you mean by distribute.

If distribute here means offer or give to the public (i.e. anyone who is not "you") then QPL 6c doesn't make any sense, since by definition then the item is available to the general public.

If distribute here means offer to give to a subset of the public (or perhaps your own subsidiaries or divisions, see Trolltech's FAQ on the GPL), then this would violate OSD #5, although perhaps Trolltech means to include proprietary software that links to their stuff in this group. Even so, then invoking clause 6c, the limited distributor would have to give Trolltech an executable at least, and then by clause 6a and 6b, the distributor would have to give Trolltech the source and a license to use it.

I would have favored the QPL over the GPL in my thoughts about relicensing macstl, since it seems simpler and slightly stronger, except for:

1. It is a company-specific license and rewiring it for Pixelglow Software would necessarily mean resubmission to OSI.

2. The network effect of GPL, there's simply more GPL stuff out there, despite my (minor) worries about its suitability for a dual-licensing scheme.

Cheers,
Glen Low, Pixelglow Software
www.pixelglow.com
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