[Qt-interest] Licensing

[Josh]

For what it's worth...

It seems that this would be very helpful even if Nokia didn't agree to go 
all the way to filing a friend of the court brief. I would think it would 
mean a lot in court that the owner of the code (who placed their code 
under that license), interpretted the given checklist to be sufficient as 
satisfying the license. Thus while other people than Nokia could seek to 
enforce the LGPL, Nokia's interpretation of it should be far more weighty 
in court than an average user (as they could have placed their code under 
any license they desired, the license is enforcing *their* will on *their* 
property).

So in short I agree that it would be very helpful if Nokia/TT to produce 
such a checklist (even if they didn't agree to file a friend of the court 
brief).

Thanks!

Josh

> Thiago,
>
> Please take this with the intent I'm trying to put forth.
>
> This confusion over what closed sourced commercial apps (not Qt defined 
> commercial license apps) have to do to satisfy the requirements of the 
> LGPL + the Qt exceptions/extensions to the LGPL are extremely confusing 
> for us commercial developers.
>
> While I understand Nokia/TT will never do this, it would be great, if 
> Nokia would put out a checklist of "if you do this" we consider you 
> satisfying the requirements of the license.  And if a suit is brought 
> forth against you, and you can show that you followed our prescribed 
> checklist of requirements, we will file a friend of the court brief.
>
> Until this is cleared up, while I LOVE that Qt has been put into the 
> LGPL, there are many small companies that will just be afraid to use 
> it... Or roll the dice and every 3-6 months a QSO like this will occur.
>
> Scott
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: qt-interest-bounces at trolltech.com [mailto:qt-interest-bounces at trolltech.com] On Behalf Of Thiago Macieira
> Sent: Wednesday, June 02, 2010 11:49 AM
> To: qt-interest at trolltech.com
> Subject: Re: [Qt-interest] Licensing
>
> Em Quarta-feira 2. Junho 2010, às 20.03.28, Kustaa Nyholm escreveu:
>> But my point is that I can statically link my application as long as I
>> do not deny the users the right to re-link it.
>>
>> And I can do that with static linking if in addition to  the
>> statically linked  application executable  I will distribute the
>> unlinked object files of the application as well.
>>
>>  I was further speculating that under 6c I would not even have to
>> distribute those unlinked object files if I just promised in writing
>> to deliver them on request.
>
> That's how I personally read the LGPL, but that's not necessarily how everyone might.
>
> You have to deal with the risk that someone considers static linking as derived work and thus requests not only the ability to relink, but access to the source code.
>
> --
> Thiago Macieira - thiago (AT) macieira.info - thiago (AT) kde.org
>  Senior Product Manager - Nokia, Qt Development Frameworks
>      PGP/GPG: 0x6EF45358; fingerprint:
>      E067 918B B660 DBD1 105C  966C 33F5 F005 6EF4 5358
>
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