[Interest] Qt 4.8 (and Qt 5 too?) really need a digested file of to-be-shown copyright, licensing information

Jonas Thiem jonasthiem at googlemail.com
Thu Apr 3 00:43:11 CEST 2014


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EA's links are sometimes broken yes. (Depends on the browser, don't
ask me how they did that) Correct the \ to a / in their links.

Regarding the Qt link, my mistake. I meant this one:
http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-4.8/licensing.html

Do you agree it is hard to download this and digest it nicely in an
application?

On 04/02/2014 06:25 PM, Etienne Sandré-Chardonnal wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Very interesting question indeed, but I do not understand your two
> links: - The first one is a very simple license with no links and
> no "branching", I do not see any mess - The second one (EA) has
> only dead links
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Etienne
> 
> 
> 2014-04-02 4:46 GMT+02:00 Jonas Thiem <jonasthiem at googlemail.com 
> <mailto:jonasthiem at googlemail.com>>:
> 
> Hi *,
> 
> I checked the Qt licensing a bit: 
> http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-4.8/legal-easing.html Short
> conclusion: it is complex.
> 
> 
> Now I see the following problem (keep in mind IANAL):
> 
> Any application linking to Qt falls under "work that uses the 
> Library", no matter if it ships with Qt or not, specified in the
> LGPL 2.1 used for Qt 4.8. (unless I am mistaken of course)
> 
> This means each program needs to (again assuming I'm newbishly
> reading correctly): * display prominently they use LGPL-licensed
> Qt * link to the full LGPL license (no matter if it's hidden in
> whatever folder Qt/Licenses of the Qt install on whatever place of
> the disk)
> 
> Also, any other of the TONS of licenses Qt uses may or may not
> require us to do similar things. (all the Apple contributions and
> more)
> 
> But who has the time to read all them?
> 
> Big companies like EA do. They have their lawyers to compile all
> the licenses: http://gpl.ea.com/qtlicense.html
> 
> Surprisingly, most smaller open-source devs don't or aren't aware.
> 
> What does that mean? Most Qt programs probably violate Qt's LGPL
> terms and probably others by missing out on displaying information
> they should display. Only the big commercial players will actually
> comply, and the actual open-source devs will have trouble reading
> up on what they actually need to embed and display to the user for
> a simple Qt program that doesn't even ship or install Qt.
> 
> 
> Now if I look at http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-4.8/legal-easing.html
> I can easily understand why. The page is a mess!
> 
> Why is there no single text file with all required licensing 
> information which I can simply slap into my About dialog? Or do I
> need to hire a lawyer first or manually check all licenses that may
> require me to display them or Copyright or whatever in my about
> dialog, so I can actually comply with them?
> 
> Some more guidance on what an open-source dev linking to Qt
> legally needs to display would really help. (e.g. to start with, a
> SINGLE FILE assembling all copyright notices + licenses).
> 
> Regards, Jonas Thiem
> 
> PS: Sorry for mailing this if all of what I said is false. Again I
> am not a lawyer, I am just guessing from casually reading the LGPL 
> license that the display of stuff is needed. But if it is, it
> could really help if Qt/Digia bothered to assemble a slap in and
> forget file which has all the stuff that legally needs to be
> displayed. (that huge nested HTML page isn't really suitable for
> embedding into an application!) 
> _______________________________________________ Interest mailing
> list Interest at qt-project.org <mailto:Interest at qt-project.org> 
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> 
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