[Qt-interest] Qt 4.5 Open Source (Windows) -- is it legal to redistribute the Qt DLLs?

[André Somers]

Hi,

I am not sure if that is correct. If it is, then how on earth can it be that 
there are closed source device drivers and closed source applications around 
in the Linux ecosystem? Don't they link to system libraries?
As I have understood it, it is allowed to link your closed source 
application to a GPL system lib. However, admittedly, there is a lot of grey 
area here... However: IANAL!

André


André Somers wrote:
>The rule of thumb is that the restrictions do not apply if the library
> is a system library

That is correct, but you must understand we're talking about the reverse
direction.

A GPL application is allowed to link to a system library even if that
system library is closed source. That's how there are GPL applications on
Windows.

However, a GPL system library is not allowed to link (or be linked) to a
closed-source application. That's why the system libraries on Linux are
actually LGPL (and one of the reasons why we chose to change the licensing
for Qt -- we want Qt to become one day "system library").

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