Linked by Thom Holwerda on Wed 14th Jan 2009 09:54 UTC, submitted by Almar
After Nokia purchsed Trolltech last year, doubts arose about how Nokia would handle the dual licensing model of Qt, the advanced cross-platform toolkit which lies at the base of the KDE Free software desktop. As it turns out, these doubts were unfounded, as Nokia today announced it's going to add the LGPL to Qt's licensing model, starting with Qt 4.5.
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Member since:2005-08-18
Any GPL code which you include in your work must remain GPL, as that is a condition of the license under which you may use the GPL code.
So I am in fact not free to do whatever I want, such as license it under a BSD license. It's not about if there's any harm done or not, if it's fair or whatever. At the end of the day, I am not free to do "whatever I want". And that's by design but people should not say that it allows me to do whatever I want when it in fact does not.
Member since:2006-02-10
[q]Any GPL code which you include in your work must remain GPL, as that is a condition of the license under which you may use the GPL code.
So I am in fact not free to do whatever I want
No, you can not kill 1000 Palestinians and go to heaven. You can either kill 1000 Palestianians or go to heaven. You choice.
Member since:2007-02-17
"Any GPL code which you include in your work must remain GPL, as that is a condition of the license under which you may use the GPL code.
So I am in fact not free to do whatever I want, such as license it under a BSD license. "
Well, no ... because it is not your work to begin with.
If you want to do whatever you want with some source code (such as license it under a BSD license) ... make sure that you wrote it in the first place. If it is someone else's code ... it is that someone else who can do whatever they want with it, not you (unless they permit you).
It's not about if there's any harm done or not, if it's fair or whatever. At the end of the day, I am not free to do "whatever I want". And that's by design but people should not say that it allows me to do whatever I want when it in fact does not.
It isn't about whatever you want ... it is about whatever the authors of the code want. They are the copyright holders. They created the work. You are a recipient of their efforts, and whatever you are permitted to do with their source code is by their good graces.
What they want is that you (or anybody else) should not take their effort and work and charge other people money for it for you to keep as profit (which, BTW, is the precise injustice that copyright law is designed to prevent). What they want is that everybody should get their source code under the same deal as you got it.
Edited 2009-01-15 06:10 UTC
Member since:
2007-02-17
Really? I can do what I like with code under the GPL? i don't have to make derived source code available? This is surely news to me! "
"Derived", in a copyright law sense, means "a later work which includes parts of an earlier copyrighted work".
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Derivative_work
Any GPL code which you include in your work must remain GPL, as that is a condition of the license under which you may use the GPL code.
Since the GPL code you used is already public, where is the harm in your obligation to republish it as it appears in your derived work?
Please note, in the context of this thread, even this obligation is now removed for Qt. The LGPL license allows another program (i.e. another work) to include Qt functionality by linking to Qt libraries, without invoking the copy-left requirement to keep the source code open.
Edited 2009-01-14 12:04 UTC