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SUSE co-founder returns to Novell
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Comments (59)
39 earlier comments in the full thread.
>without knowing that authors like me would consider this a violation of the spirit of the license they use
It means nothing of the sort. The GPL is a single license adapted by thousands of developers, many of whom have their own quaint interpretations. It would be silly for Novell to presume that every developer of GPL'd software would like their deal. It would be equally silly for them to care.
It means nothing of the sort. The GPL is a single license adapted by thousands of developers, many of whom have their own quaint interpretations. It would be silly for Novell to presume that every developer of GPL'd software would like their deal. It would be equally silly for them to care.
Its moot, there is nothing in GPL2 to prevent microvell from doing it, plain and simple.
I would pose this to you about intent. If it the intent hadnt been there in spirit, why then was it announced that GPL3 would include language to specifically exclude such a deal in the future by the man who wrote the GPL2 inside of a day of the deal being announced.
I think that pretty much indicates intent.
Actually the microvell agreement did do one thing for me. Prior to the deal I was in the camp of anti-GPL3 and of the opinion it would be still born for lack of implementation. Now however I see the GPL3 as a good thing as long as it stops the muck dragging lawyers from finding their precious loopholes so that they can increase their grasp on the allmighty dollar. And face it, no one can claim that the deal is anything other than a legal loophole. (*&*$#&^*(&^ Laywers.
I would pose this to you about intent. If it the intent hadnt been there in spirit, why then was it announced that GPL3 would include language to specifically exclude such a deal in the future by the man who wrote the GPL2 inside of a day of the deal being announced.
I think that pretty much indicates intent.
Actually the microvell agreement did do one thing for me. Prior to the deal I was in the camp of anti-GPL3 and of the opinion it would be still born for lack of implementation. Now however I see the GPL3 as a good thing as long as it stops the muck dragging lawyers from finding their precious loopholes so that they can increase their grasp on the allmighty dollar. And face it, no one can claim that the deal is anything other than a legal loophole. (*&*$#&^*(&^ Laywers.
>I think that pretty much indicates intent.
It certainly indicates intent for V3. Probably indicates "Wish we would have thought of that" for V2. It is wrong, however, to say that a license embodies an intent that was formulated ten years after it was drafted.
It certainly indicates intent for V3. Probably indicates "Wish we would have thought of that" for V2. It is wrong, however, to say that a license embodies an intent that was formulated ten years after it was drafted.
> Probably indicates "Wish we would have thought of that" for V2. It is wrong, however, to say that a license embodies an intent that was formulated ten years after it was drafted.
The intent was formulated ten years ago, and covers this. Proxying the license to avoid the wording of the first sentence of section 7 is called a loophole. You're so fueled by FSF hatred you can't see this, just like you couldn't see KDE not being illegally distributed by Debian was not Debian's fault.
The intent was formulated ten years ago, and covers this. Proxying the license to avoid the wording of the first sentence of section 7 is called a loophole. You're so fueled by FSF hatred you can't see this, just like you couldn't see KDE not being illegally distributed by Debian was not Debian's fault.
> You're so fueled by FSF hatred you can't see this, just like you couldn't see KDE not being illegally distributed by Debian was not Debian's fault.
I have no hatred whatsoever for the FSF. I've never even met RMS or Eben Moglen, so I have no reason to hate these people.
What I do have is some understanding of law and contracts. I also understand the difficulty of trying to read minds. You may be gifted in a way that I am not, but I am stuck with my limited abilities, knowledge, and experience, all of which tell me that you can't reasonably expect people to read minds.
I have no hatred whatsoever for the FSF. I've never even met RMS or Eben Moglen, so I have no reason to hate these people.
What I do have is some understanding of law and contracts. I also understand the difficulty of trying to read minds. You may be gifted in a way that I am not, but I am stuck with my limited abilities, knowledge, and experience, all of which tell me that you can't reasonably expect people to read minds.
> What I do have is some understanding of law and contracts.
Yet you continue to blame Debian for not illegally distributing KDE. That makes your other positions re legality suspect.
Yet you continue to blame Debian for not illegally distributing KDE. That makes your other positions re legality suspect.
>Yet you continue to blame Debian for not illegally distributing KDE.
And you continue to ignore the simple english im my posts. That makes my presumption that you have reasoning capacity logically suspect.
And you continue to ignore the simple english im my posts. That makes my presumption that you have reasoning capacity logically suspect.
> And you continue to ignore the simple english im my posts. That makes my presumption that you have reasoning capacity logically suspect.
Ok, let's test reasoning capacity. Explain to me why the QPL was not incompatible with the GPL, then explain to me why you blame Debian for this despite their writing neither the QPL nor GPL.
Ok, let's test reasoning capacity. Explain to me why the QPL was not incompatible with the GPL, then explain to me why you blame Debian for this despite their writing neither the QPL nor GPL.
>Explain to me why the QPL was not incompatible with the GPL, then explain to me why you blame Debian for this despite their writing neither the QPL nor GPL.
Premature to test reasoning when english comprehension is the question. I have never claime that the QPL was not incompatible with the GPL and have never blamed Debian for that fact.
Words matter, grasshopper. Try reading them.
Premature to test reasoning when english comprehension is the question. I have never claime that the QPL was not incompatible with the GPL and have never blamed Debian for that fact.
Words matter, grasshopper. Try reading them.
> I have never claime that the QPL was not incompatible with the GPL
So do you see the QPL and GPL as incompatible, or compatible?
So do you see the QPL and GPL as incompatible, or compatible?
>So do you see the QPL and GPL as incompatible, or compatible?
What I see doesn't matter. And imcompatible/compatible is far too simplistic a viewing.
To the extent a problem might have existed -- RMS said it did, lawyers for other distributions said it did not -- The real problem was in KDE components that wrapped third-party GPL'd code. KDE authors themselves granted a license to link their code with QPL'd code by the very act of writing software that depended on QT and any KDE developer who tried to sue on that basis would be tossed right out of court.
It might have been too painful to excise those components, but it wouldn't have been painful to distribute KDE as source packages only, as Debian distributes source packages for everythng in the distribution anyway. Source ain't linked to anything til you link it. No GPL violation there. And -- oh, as you are a GPL expert, you are probably aware that users (as opposed to distributors) can link anything to anything.
What I see doesn't matter. And imcompatible/compatible is far too simplistic a viewing.
To the extent a problem might have existed -- RMS said it did, lawyers for other distributions said it did not -- The real problem was in KDE components that wrapped third-party GPL'd code. KDE authors themselves granted a license to link their code with QPL'd code by the very act of writing software that depended on QT and any KDE developer who tried to sue on that basis would be tossed right out of court.
It might have been too painful to excise those components, but it wouldn't have been painful to distribute KDE as source packages only, as Debian distributes source packages for everythng in the distribution anyway. Source ain't linked to anything til you link it. No GPL violation there. And -- oh, as you are a GPL expert, you are probably aware that users (as opposed to distributors) can link anything to anything.
> What I see doesn't matter.
It does for the matter at hand - I want to find out exactly why you blame Debian for not distributing KDE during the QPL period. If you see the QPL and GPL as compatible or incompatible will guide how I continue.
> To the extent a problem might have existed -- RMS said it did, lawyers for other distributions said it did not
Lawyers from Debian, Red Hat, and the FSF agreed, and they were the 800 pound gorillas at the time with real lawyers. I don't remember Slackware's position.
The QPL is probably the easiest Free Software license to determine is GPL incompatible, as it's blatantly obvious - the requirement that allows forcing release of non-distributed source that links to covered software and the requirement to distribute modifications only as patches are going to be a conflict.
> KDE authors themselves granted a license to link their code with QPL'd code by the very act of writing software that depended on QT
That's not how it works. They needed a written exception in KDE's license. A relicensing was an option on the table at the time and was quite feasible, but there was a lot of resistance to KDE doing that as it would mean anyone writing code that uses KDE would be unable to use other GPLed code without having to propagate the exceptions and requirements (e.g., you wouldn't be able to use GNU MP in a KDE app). As such, the same resistance to having to propagate the exceptions would have been there even if the implicit license exception theory was valid.
> and any KDE developer who tried to sue on that basis would be tossed right out of court.
It wasn't KDE developers suing that people were worried about. The issue would be that anyone using or linking to KDE would be depending on the good will of TrollTech to not enforce their license against the large violations. That's a dangerous situation to be in, for both sides.
> but it wouldn't have been painful to distribute KDE as source packages only, as Debian distributes source packages for everythng in the distribution anyway.
The GPL deals mainly in derivative works under copyright law. It's not going to matter if it's compiled yet (if it didn't, you could imagine a Just-In-Time source compiler circumventing the entire license). It'd be hard to argue that KDE is a separable, independent work from Qt.
> oh, as you are a GPL expert, you are probably aware that users (as opposed to distributors) can link anything to anything.
For the GPL side of it, yes. The lack of use restrictions is a core freedom.
It does for the matter at hand - I want to find out exactly why you blame Debian for not distributing KDE during the QPL period. If you see the QPL and GPL as compatible or incompatible will guide how I continue.
> To the extent a problem might have existed -- RMS said it did, lawyers for other distributions said it did not
Lawyers from Debian, Red Hat, and the FSF agreed, and they were the 800 pound gorillas at the time with real lawyers. I don't remember Slackware's position.
The QPL is probably the easiest Free Software license to determine is GPL incompatible, as it's blatantly obvious - the requirement that allows forcing release of non-distributed source that links to covered software and the requirement to distribute modifications only as patches are going to be a conflict.
> KDE authors themselves granted a license to link their code with QPL'd code by the very act of writing software that depended on QT
That's not how it works. They needed a written exception in KDE's license. A relicensing was an option on the table at the time and was quite feasible, but there was a lot of resistance to KDE doing that as it would mean anyone writing code that uses KDE would be unable to use other GPLed code without having to propagate the exceptions and requirements (e.g., you wouldn't be able to use GNU MP in a KDE app). As such, the same resistance to having to propagate the exceptions would have been there even if the implicit license exception theory was valid.
> and any KDE developer who tried to sue on that basis would be tossed right out of court.
It wasn't KDE developers suing that people were worried about. The issue would be that anyone using or linking to KDE would be depending on the good will of TrollTech to not enforce their license against the large violations. That's a dangerous situation to be in, for both sides.
> but it wouldn't have been painful to distribute KDE as source packages only, as Debian distributes source packages for everythng in the distribution anyway.
The GPL deals mainly in derivative works under copyright law. It's not going to matter if it's compiled yet (if it didn't, you could imagine a Just-In-Time source compiler circumventing the entire license). It'd be hard to argue that KDE is a separable, independent work from Qt.
> oh, as you are a GPL expert, you are probably aware that users (as opposed to distributors) can link anything to anything.
For the GPL side of it, yes. The lack of use restrictions is a core freedom.
>They needed a written exception in KDE's license
They needed nothing of the sort and a million "I say sos" -- even from RMS -- won't change the facts. The law (yes, the law that is not written down in the text of the license matters) will imply a right in cases like this.
>The issue would be that anyone using or linking to KDE would be depending on the good will of TrollTech to not enforce their license against the large violations.
The QPL granted all the rights needed. Trolltech would have no basis for suit. If you're going to argue this hard, you should make at least a minimal effort to reason test what you are saying.
>It's not going to matter if it's compiled yet (if it didn't,
Yes it is going to matter very much if it's compiled. Again, the GPL does not live in a legal vacuum. It is, in fact, based on rights derived from copyright. If RMS and the FSF tried going to court on the basis of some "magic law", they would be thrown out on their kiesters.
They are, of course, both too smart and too knowledgable to do that.
They needed nothing of the sort and a million "I say sos" -- even from RMS -- won't change the facts. The law (yes, the law that is not written down in the text of the license matters) will imply a right in cases like this.
>The issue would be that anyone using or linking to KDE would be depending on the good will of TrollTech to not enforce their license against the large violations.
The QPL granted all the rights needed. Trolltech would have no basis for suit. If you're going to argue this hard, you should make at least a minimal effort to reason test what you are saying.
>It's not going to matter if it's compiled yet (if it didn't,
Yes it is going to matter very much if it's compiled. Again, the GPL does not live in a legal vacuum. It is, in fact, based on rights derived from copyright. If RMS and the FSF tried going to court on the basis of some "magic law", they would be thrown out on their kiesters.
They are, of course, both too smart and too knowledgable to do that.
>>They needed a written exception in KDE's license
> They needed nothing of the sort and a million "I say sos" -- even from RMS -- won't change the facts. The law (yes, the law that is not written down in the text of the license matters) will imply a right in cases like this.
Funny how Debian's, Red Hat's, and the FSF's lawyers all agreed they did if they were to redistribute.
But let's pretend the KDE authors didn't need to add an exception as per your implicit exception theory. You're still left with the exact same situation as the "What if we relicensed to add an exception" option (it was on the table), which was considered unworkable at the time due to third party KDE applications not being able to touch existing non-KDE GPLed code without having them also include an exception (per your theory, they wouldn't have given an implicit exception since their software had nothing to do with Qt or KDE). E.g., you'd need to convince the GNU MP team to relicense their code in order for you to use it in an application that uses KDE which uses Qt.
It would have made KDE and Qt distributable together after such a relicensing, but there would be a resistance to code apps for it in such a condition, which is why the KDE folk didn't do it.
> They needed nothing of the sort and a million "I say sos" -- even from RMS -- won't change the facts. The law (yes, the law that is not written down in the text of the license matters) will imply a right in cases like this.
Funny how Debian's, Red Hat's, and the FSF's lawyers all agreed they did if they were to redistribute.
But let's pretend the KDE authors didn't need to add an exception as per your implicit exception theory. You're still left with the exact same situation as the "What if we relicensed to add an exception" option (it was on the table), which was considered unworkable at the time due to third party KDE applications not being able to touch existing non-KDE GPLed code without having them also include an exception (per your theory, they wouldn't have given an implicit exception since their software had nothing to do with Qt or KDE). E.g., you'd need to convince the GNU MP team to relicense their code in order for you to use it in an application that uses KDE which uses Qt.
It would have made KDE and Qt distributable together after such a relicensing, but there would be a resistance to code apps for it in such a condition, which is why the KDE folk didn't do it.
>It would have made KDE and Qt distributable together after such a relicensing, but there would be a resistance to code apps for it in such a condition, which is why the KDE folk didn't do it.
Had Debian made me download Qt on my own, I would not have complained. Grumbled a bit, perhaps, but gotten over it.
The Debian folks went about their business as if it didn't exist -- that is, the business of packaging a distribution. Until that time, I had had glitches with KDE on Debian, but nothing major. For something called unstable, it was amazingly good.
Once the politics began, it grew increasingly difficult to keep my KDE desktop up to date and usable. It really doesn't matter why, my workstation simply became too difficult to keep up to date, so I switched to SuSE.
I've considered going back to Debian once or twice over the years, but it seems there's always some political brouhaha to remind me why I left in the first place. It's not that their hearts aren't in the right place. I just don't to be a captive of their politics.
Had Debian made me download Qt on my own, I would not have complained. Grumbled a bit, perhaps, but gotten over it.
The Debian folks went about their business as if it didn't exist -- that is, the business of packaging a distribution. Until that time, I had had glitches with KDE on Debian, but nothing major. For something called unstable, it was amazingly good.
Once the politics began, it grew increasingly difficult to keep my KDE desktop up to date and usable. It really doesn't matter why, my workstation simply became too difficult to keep up to date, so I switched to SuSE.
I've considered going back to Debian once or twice over the years, but it seems there's always some political brouhaha to remind me why I left in the first place. It's not that their hearts aren't in the right place. I just don't to be a captive of their politics.
> Once the politics began, it grew increasingly difficult to keep my KDE desktop up to date and usable. It really doesn't matter why, my workstation simply became too difficult to keep up to date, so I switched to SuSE.
It was difficult to update because it was illegal for them to do so, for the aforementioned reasons. SuSE broke the law for you. TrollTech themselves were planning a QPL 2.0 that would remove the patch clause and the forced distribution clause that conflict with the GPL that I pointed out, before they decided to just GPL it.
> The Debian folks went about their business as if it didn't exist -- that is, the business of packaging a distribution.
The Debian folks were the most involved in fixing the license situation for you. They hardly ignored it. You're really being extremely rude to them which is why I refuse to drop this. Read this:
http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/167/
> It's not that their hearts aren't in the right place. I just don't to be a captive of their politics.
If you prefer functionality to legality, I'd recommend you try out Ubuntu with automatix and w32codecs. Lots of functionality, completely illegal. Just please don't try to redefine 'politics' to mean 'not breaking the law'.
It was difficult to update because it was illegal for them to do so, for the aforementioned reasons. SuSE broke the law for you. TrollTech themselves were planning a QPL 2.0 that would remove the patch clause and the forced distribution clause that conflict with the GPL that I pointed out, before they decided to just GPL it.
> The Debian folks went about their business as if it didn't exist -- that is, the business of packaging a distribution.
The Debian folks were the most involved in fixing the license situation for you. They hardly ignored it. You're really being extremely rude to them which is why I refuse to drop this. Read this:
http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/167/
> It's not that their hearts aren't in the right place. I just don't to be a captive of their politics.
If you prefer functionality to legality, I'd recommend you try out Ubuntu with automatix and w32codecs. Lots of functionality, completely illegal. Just please don't try to redefine 'politics' to mean 'not breaking the law'.
swbrown -
Yawn. I thought broken records went out with vinyl.
Yawn. I thought broken records went out with vinyl.
> Yawn. I thought broken records went out with vinyl.
Your way of giving up? :)
Ok, so to summarize what we've learned in case I need to link back to this:
- Functionality is more important to you than legality. "It really doesn't matter why, my workstation simply became too difficult to keep up to date"
- You are unable to show how the QPL and GPL weren't incompatible
- You don't blame KDE for not relicensing with an exception to link with Qt or agreeing to an 'implicit license exception' as per your theory, which would have made it distributable, instead you blame Debian
- You confuse Debian obeying the law and halting distribution with 'politics': "Once the politics began, it grew increasingly difficult to keep my KDE desktop up to date and usable."
- You parrot that Debian was ambivalent to the KDE situation despite having not responded to this link twice now: http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/167/ "The Debian folks went about their business as if it didn't exist"
- You single out Debian for not distributing KDE in that state despite other major distributions like Red Hat doing the same
Your way of giving up? :)
Ok, so to summarize what we've learned in case I need to link back to this:
- Functionality is more important to you than legality. "It really doesn't matter why, my workstation simply became too difficult to keep up to date"
- You are unable to show how the QPL and GPL weren't incompatible
- You don't blame KDE for not relicensing with an exception to link with Qt or agreeing to an 'implicit license exception' as per your theory, which would have made it distributable, instead you blame Debian
- You confuse Debian obeying the law and halting distribution with 'politics': "Once the politics began, it grew increasingly difficult to keep my KDE desktop up to date and usable."
- You parrot that Debian was ambivalent to the KDE situation despite having not responded to this link twice now: http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/167/ "The Debian folks went about their business as if it didn't exist"
- You single out Debian for not distributing KDE in that state despite other major distributions like Red Hat doing the same
>Your way of giving up?
Absolutely.
Absolutely.
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I'm reducing your arguments to find the core issue. Follow me: As you say I infer "ill intent", and that a violation of the GPL's spirit "is in the eye of the beholder", that means you must be arguing from the standpoint that Novell acted without knowing that authors like me would consider this a violation of the spirit of the license they use; that in Novell's eye, what they were doing was not a violation of the spirit, so there was no ill intent. Otherwise, you would have to agree that Novell acted with "ill intent" as they knew what they were doing was not intended to be permitted and so against the spirit. Got it? Ok, that position point settled, let's move on.
Novell now knows how strongly authors feel this violates the spirit of their license, even having one of their key developers resign over it. Thus they are in the position of knowing what they are doing was not intended to be permitted, a violation of the spirit as seen by the authors whose works they are covering, yet they continue despite having the option to stop. This means they do act with "ill intent" against the authors, even if what they are doing is legal.
So, either way it began, I claim Novell is now a horrible company, as they are clearly acting with "ill intent" against the authors who share the software that allows Novell to exist.