[Development] Incorporating Intel Threading Building Blocks into Qt? (Was: Evolving Qt's multithreading API)

[Sze Howe Koh]

On 4 March 2013 18:49, Knoll Lars <Lars.Knoll at digia.com> wrote:
> On 2/28/13 5:01 PM, "Thiago Macieira" <thiago.macieira at intel.com> wrote:
>>On quinta-feira, 28 de fevereiro de 2013 18.35.23, Sze Howe Koh wrote:
>>> On 23 February 2013 00:16, Thiago Macieira <thiago.macieira at intel.com>
>>wrote:
>>"Some legal team" does not help, of course. But I did a little more
>>digging
>>and it looks like the exception is not like libstdc++'s. The one there is
>>a
>>MUCH longer text. It's also not the short text found in GNU classpath.
>>
>>Moreover, I've just noticed it says "you may use this file as part of a
>>free
>>software library". That means if you're not doing a free software
>>library, it
>>does not apply.

I read the Intel forums, and some people were convinced that the "free
software library" refers to TBB itself. That's not a legal opinion
though.


>>> It sounds a bit far-fetched to me, but it would probably be prudent
>>> for us to get an official response from Digia's legal team before we
>>> go ahead, right?
>>
>>Yup.
>>
>>Bit I can also check with Intel's legal team what the intention was. They
>>may
>>not give a legal opinion, but the people behind TBB might be able to say
>>what
>>their intention was.

IIRC, court decisions are based more on "what the text says" than
"what the intention behind the text was", unfortunately.

Still, I'd be very interested to know their original intention, if
they're happy to let you discuss it in public :-)


>>Also note that TBB is available under a commercial license too.

Does that mean businesses will pay both Digia AND Intel for licenses
to use Qt (with the TBB module) commercially?


> The exception above unfortunately doesn't look good enough to me to
> incorporate the whole thing into Qt, at least not as part of qtbase. I
> think an add-on based on TBB might be possible.

Hmm... but if that add-on can only be used under certain restrictions
that don't apply to the rest of Qt, I'm not sure we should do the work
from the open-source side.

Who can we ask for an authoritative verdict?


Regards,
Sze-Howe