[Interest] aboutQt (Qt 4.8) dialog lacks vital information -> people relying on it violate license terms(?)

[Jonas Thiem]

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Small additional note:

I'm assuming the users want to use Qt with LGPL licensing.

But even with the GPL licensing alternative, I believe the dialog would
also be insufficient since it would need to point to the GPL license
instead.

And even for commercial licensing it is also insufficient I believe,
since I doubt Qt has commercial licensing rights for the Apple or
FreeType code with simply dropping the need for the required copyright
notices in the final application.

So in the end, it simply doesn't appear to be working for anyone and
people would be better off researching their own about dialog contents
no matter what license. (given I'm not mistaken with most of my
admittedly unqualified guesses about its possible legal issues)

And that's a bit sad. It would be awesome if Qt could do better than that!

A legally qualified person should look into the possibility of simply
adding all missing copyright and license info as summed up in my
previous mail, also the full GPL and LGPL license text e.g. as buttons
to open it up. This would fix the dialog for everyone I guess (but
again, this needs proper legal review and not my unqualified rambling).

Regards,
Jonas Thiem

On 04/06/2014 12:25 AM, Jonas Thiem wrote:
> Hi guys,
> 
> I asked for a summary text of all licensing information which needs
> to embedded into an application for legal reasons before, and I got
> the IMHO not really satisfying answer to simply use the aboutQt
> dialog. (what if I want my own with some info about my own app
> added? why is it so hard to put the required text in some complete,
> easy to copy form on the homepage of Qt as well?)
> 
> Anyway, I followed the pointer and looked at the aboutQt dialog of
> Qt 4.8. I compared it with Qt 4.8 licensing as described on 
> http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-4.8/licensing.html to see if its
> contents hold up to it.
> 
> Please note IANAL. But it seems the dialog is incomplete in
> various regards, which puts everyone who relies on simply showing
> that dialog on a legal risk. Therefore I suggest the following
> issues to be corrected as soon as possible, given a lawyer agrees
> after a review that those are indeed a problem as I'm just guessing
> here:
> 
> 1.) No full LGPL license text:
> 
> The LGPL 2.1 as per section 5, 6 appears to require that an
> application includes copyright information on any LGPL libs it
> depends on (no matter if statically or just dynamically linked),
> *and include the full LGPL license text*.
> 
> Quote:
> 
> "You must give prominent notice with each copy of the work that
> the Library is used in it and that the Library and its use are
> covered by this License. You must supply a copy of this License. If
> the work during execution displays copyright notices, you must
> include the copyright notice for the Library among them, as well as
> a reference directing the user to the copy of this License."
> 
> The about dialog contains Qt 4.8 copyright information, but not the
> LGPL license text. This means every application linked to Qt would
> need to include it and add a note to the about dialog on where the
> file is exactly, so the user can read it.
> 
> The website link is void, because the LGPL requires that you supply
> a copy of the license along with your application.
> 
> 2.) PySide 1.2.1 is not in aboutQt at all
> 
> This is PySide-specific, but PySide is also LGPL, but it doesn't
> bother to add itself to the about dialog. So any application just
> relying on the about dialog will also violate the PySide LGPL.
> 
> 3.) Apple contributions to Qt 4.8 are not covered in the about
> dialog.
> 
> The licensing of those contributions includes:
> 
> "Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright 
> notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in
> the documentation and/or other materials provided with the
> distribution."
> 
> Since Qt itself is just a lib and cannot pop up such a dialog
> randomly, the application needs to take care of this. And again,
> the standard provided aboutQt dialog doesn't fulfill those
> conditions, so applications appear to be again at a loss if not
> fulfilling this.
> 
> 4.) qt3to4 contributions are not covered in the about dialog. (I'm 
> assuming they are part of Qt 4.8? The licensing page doesn't
> really specify this)
> 
> The licensing of those contributions includes:
> 
> "The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
> included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software."
> 
> I'm guessing legally, "copies or substantial portions of the
> Software" includes binary distributions. In that case, again Qt
> cannot display this on its own without relying on the application,
> so I guess the application would need to fulfil this and again,
> this would really need to be in the aboutQt dialog?
> 
> 5.) No mention of Easing Equations by Robert Penner.
> 
> Again it isn't quite obvious if those are included in standard Qt
> 4.8, but in case they are:
> 
> The licensing of Easing Equations includes:
> 
> "Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright 
> notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in
> the documentation and/or other materials provided with the
> distribution."
> 
> Again, the standard Qt about dialog lacks both the copyright and
> license text as asked for by the licensing.
> 
> 6.) Catharon Code is missing from the about dialog.
> 
> The licensing specifies:
> 
> "If you use it, or  only parts of it,  in a program,  you must 
> acknowledge somewhere  in  your  documentation  that  you  have
> used the Catharon Code. (`credits')"
> 
> Again, the Qt dialog doesn't mention it. I suppose Qt includes
> FreeType and with that, Catharon Software as well?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Please don't take this purely as an annoying nitpick. I would
> really ask you to keep in mind that those issues possibly affect
> EVERY Qt program where the author relies in good faith on the
> accuracy of the aboutQt dialog to safe him from legal trouble and
> to fulfill all copyright & licensing display issues. And I guess
> that's about every Qt program out there.
> 
> Therefore, please consider passing this on to some legal person
> from Digia or to someone else who can actually do something about
> this! (again I am not a lawyer, I cannot suggest what would be a
> correct solution, just point out what APPEARS to be faulty)
> 
> It would be really awesome if for the sake of everyone using Qt
> without a huge legal department behind them, the aboutQt dialog
> could be fixed.
> 
> Also again a huge sorry for bothering if all those issues are wrong
> and the dialog is sufficient. Again, I'm not really qualified to
> say if the dialog is legally wrong or not.
> 
> Regards, Jonas Thiem
> 
> PS: I only examined the Qt 5.x dialog very shortly, but it has a
> similar obvious possible issue: it doesn't contain the full LGPL
> text either, and also it doesn't refer to a file on disk shipped
> along with the application that contains it.
> 
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