[Development] Updating the licence policy for Qt Project

[Olivier Goffart]

On Friday 22 August 2014 10:13:52 Knoll Lars wrote:
> On 22/08/14 11:32, "Jake Petroules" <jake.petroules at petroules.com> wrote:
> >What makes the iOS App Store different from the others?
> 
> Microsoft has added explicit exception clauses for FOSS software in their
> terms. To quote
> (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh694058.aspx):
> 
> "Your license terms must also not conflict with the Standard Application
> License Terms, in any way, except if you include FOSS, your license terms
> may conflict with the limitations set forth in Section 3 of the Standard
> Application License Terms, but only to the extent required by the FOSS
> that you use."
> 
> 
> Google play has this term in section 5.4
> (https://play.google.com/intl/ALL_us/about/developer-distribution-agreement
> .html):
> 
> "5.4 You grant to the user a non-exclusive, worldwide, and perpetual
> license to perform, display, and use the Product on the Device. If you
> choose, you may include a separate end user license agreement (EULA) in
> your Product that will govern the user's rights to the Product in lieu of
> the previous sentence."
> 
> 
> So both are actually rather friendly to open source, as Google gives you
> enough flexibility in your licensing terms, and Microsoft explicitly
> removes restrictions that would conflict with your usage of open source
> software contained in the product.
> 
> Apple has restrictions, but no exceptions for open source software.

I think the restrictions may be annoying for strictly copyleft GPL licenses. 
The problem is that in order to deploy an application on the app store, you 
need to link against proprietary components.
But the LGPL does not have this problem, since it is possible to mix 
proprietary and LGPL.

Then the problem with the LGPLv3 is that you must indeed be able to provide 
the users with instruction on how to replace the Qt. 
For that, one must provide the objects files.
The user will be able to link and deploy on his device using the Apple SDK 
just like any other developer does.

-- 
Olivier

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