[Freeciv-Dev] Re: KCiv?

[Arien Malec <arien_malec@xxxxxxxxx>]

Ach -- nobody enjoys a license battle. Write the damn KDE port already, instead
of arguing about the open source goodness of the GTK port, or the RMS jihad
against KDE :-)

There are four legitmate reasons to write a port:

1) To learn more about writing Freeciv clients
2) To learn more about QT
3) To get some benefits for KDE users (I can't see this last, since none of the
existing KDE applications have any special KDE integration as it stands (and I
use KDE as my desktop...))
4) Because you can write a better client with QT than the existing client.

When it gets to stage 4, and we want to replace the GTK client with a QT/KDE
client, then let's argue about licensing issues....

Until then, code more, argue less.

Arien
--- Trent Piepho <xyzzy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Thu, 9 Aug 2001, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > It comes down to this paragraph of the GPL:
> > 
> >    [ Source for all components, except those that are normally part of
> >     operating system]
> > 
> > Since Motif is "normally distributed" with most commercial versions of
> > Unix, it was permissible to distribute GPL software that used Motif.
> > 
> > But then Linux came along, and it doesn't pay licensing fees to OSF for
> > the use of Motif, so it doesn't normally *have* Motif.  Therefore it
> > raised some debate about the meaning of this paragraph in regards to
> > Motif programs on Linux, and on Unix in general.
> 
> The real problem, is that this paragraph is out of date.  Back when your
> hardware, OS, compiler, C library, windowing system, etc. all came packaged
> from the same vendor, it was pretty clear what should get the "OS exception"
> and what shouldn't.  Now it's really not clear at all.  You have OSes that
> don't even come with a compiler, you need to buy one from a seperate company.
> 
> You have libraries like gtk+ and Qt that have functions that were normally
> part of the operating system components.
> 
> Mandrake included Qt since it was created, so does that make qt an OS
> component?  Redhat didn't, so does that make it not an OS component?  Do you
> have to look at the market share of all operating systems, and if over 50% of
> the market includes qt, it gets the "OS component" exception?  Do you apply
> that same reasoning to motif and POSIX libraries that don't come with
> windows? 
> I don't think any of those methods make any sense.
> 
> It seems that the FSF decided that Qt didn't get the exception.  But you have
> things like xmcd that uses Motif, LyX that uses XForms, a number of programs
> ported to windows 3.11 when it didn't come with winsock, a GAIM plugin that
> uses IBM's ViaVoice, OpenGL programs from when it was IrisGL and SGI only,
> and
> so on.  I really don't see any way you not give the "OS exception" to Qt, and
> yet give it to these applications with non open source libraries, without
> being somewhat hypocritical.
> 
> 


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