[Qt-interest] Qt examples licensing

[David Boddie]

Denton Vis wrote:

> I started using a Qt example class as a building block for my own. After
> customizing and redoing a lot of stuff to my taste, the class little, if
> not nothing, in common with the original Qt source.
> 
> I was just wondering, if I can remove the Qt comment block at the
> beginning of the file and put the generic GPL open source comment block at
> the beginning. Or am I constrained to keep it there since I started from
> their code.

Warning: I am not a lawyer; this is just my impression.

I would compare the original and the current source code to see what they
have in common. If there's very little in common (just a few lines of code),
or there are parts which people would call "boilerplate" (use of common
idioms), then you could say that the code is not derivative, even if the
process that created it involved derivation of some other code.

To play it safe, you could still retain the original copyright attribution
and GPL license text and add your own copyright attribution to cover your
work, but this would mean that you couldn't unilaterally relicense the code
at some later time if you wanted to.

Like I said, I'm not a lawyer, so you should seek further advice.

Good luck!

David
-- 
David Boddie
Senior Technical Writer
Nokia, Qt Software