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

[Jonas Thiem]

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I just talked with Thiago Macieira on IRC, and we concluded that maybe
the about dialog is only meant for someone interested in paying credit
to Qt, and nothing more. (no legal complete write-up of all the
required copyright stuff and such)


In that case, let me suggest again that
http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-4.8/licensing.html should have a single
text file version with all that info in one single, easy to embed text
file including all copyright & license info, including the full LGPL
and possibly GPL text, Apple contribution licenses and all that.

(or alternatively, a single simple HTML file with no CSS or other
dependencies)

The current website version with lots of sub pages and complex styling
is just not very suitable for embedding into an application.

Of course, something similar for Qt 5 would be neat too.

Regards,
Jonas Thiem

On 04/06/2014 04:18 AM, Jonas Thiem wrote:
> True about the source code distribution, but maybe the dialog could
> at least attempt to cover all written stuff that needs to be in a
> program according to all the licenses in Qt? That would already
> save a lot of work.
> 
> And yes, people shouldn't rely on it. However, I suppose many will 
> naively assume that the copyright mumble jumble in there is
> sufficient in regards of the required copyright mumble jumble to
> fulfill that part of the licenses, but apparently it just isn't.
> (which shouldn't be too hard to fix)
> 
> You can kind of see it from the previous mailing list reaction:
> 
> I asked for a neat summary for what I need to put in my program to 
> fulfill the copyright quotations a few days ago since 
> http://qt-project.org/doc/qt-4.8/licensing.html isn't exactly
> easily to embed, and I was pointed to the about dialog.
> 
> 
> If in addition the documentation was improved too, I don't mind of
> course.
> 
> Regards, Jonas Thiem
> 
> On 04/06/2014 04:00 AM, Thiago Macieira wrote:
>> Em dom 06 abr 2014, às 00:25:17, Jonas Thiem escreveu:
>>> 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.
> 
>> No one should simply assume a dialog fulfils the legal needs. It 
>> doesn't and it will never do it.
> 
>> Most of the above requires changes to the documentation. Not to
>> the about dialog.
> 
>> What's more, there are a few requirements that cannot be met by
>> a dialog. For example, everyone needs to distribute Qt
>> themselves, on a server they own or are responsible for, not rely
>> Qt Project or Digia to have the sources.
> 
>> Can the dialog be improved? Yes. But "author relies in good
>> faith on the accuracy of the aboutQt dialog to save him from
>> legal trouble" is just never going to happen. The dialog will
>> never be enough.
> 
> 
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