[ILUG] RMS: KDE in violation of GPL

[Jimmy O'Regan]

On Wed, 6 Sep 2000, Ruairi Newman wrote:

) Paul,
) 
) The applications in question are kmidi & kghostscript.  Both
) applications are GPL'd.  The libraries on which they RELY are not GPL'd
) but at worst I would consider this to create a grey area in this issue.
) 
) To be clear on the matter I have just re-read the GPL (v2), and cannot
) find any clause restricting the inclusion of GPL'd code into a second
) GPL'd application, regardless of whether or not the second application
) is linked against non-GPL'd libs.
The GPL requires that all code from which the program is derived is under
GPL compatible terms. As Trolltech admitted in the Freshmeat announcement,
the Qt headers contain macros etc, meaning a program using Qt is a derived
work of Qt - contains Qt code. And since the QPL and the GPL are
incompatible, permission is required to link the two together.
An exception is made in the GPL for system libraries, meaning software
that isn't destributed with yours.
) 
) > Even worse the KDE crowd took other people's GPL code and incorporated
) > it without permission into a non-GPL work!
) 
) No, they didn't.  All of the code in KDE is GPL'd.  QT isn't, but GPL'd
) code wasn't incorporated into QT.
See above explanation.
) 
) If I'm missing something here please let me know with a slightly more
) helpful statement than "you don't understand the GPL."
) 
) Thanks,
) 
) Ruairi
) 
) 

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