[Qt-interest] Qt SDK developer agreement

[Bo Thorsen]

I just downloaded Qt SDK 1.1 beta. It contains these items under the 
license for Qt SDK, part 6, Use of the Software:

"(iii) You will not use the Software in connection with any unlawful, 
offensive, abusive, obscene, pornographic, harassing, libelous or 
otherwise inappropriate content or material;"

I have never written any software that would be in violation of these, 
but if I decided to, you could be completely certain that I would fight 
Nokia in court over the right to use any GPL or LGPL licensed software 
to do so.

"You may not (a) reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble or otherwise 
attempt to discover the source code of the Software, except and only to 
the extent permitted by applicable mandatory law; (b) modify or create 
derivative works of the Software, except and only to the extent 
permitted by Nokia; or (c) distribute, communicate to the public, 
export, re-export, sublicense, rent, loan, lease, disclose, sell, 
market, commercialise, re-license, host, or otherwise transfer or make 
available to any third party (including without limitation any 
affiliates and subcontractors) the Software (or any portions thereof)."

So now we can't redistribute (L)GPL licensed code?

And more gems:

"(vi) You will clearly communicate to the users of Your Application(s) 
(e.g. in the Application UI) that the use of the Application(s) creates 
data traffic;

(vii) You will provide users of the Application(s) with easy settings to 
disable notifications;"

After this, there is the Qt SDK Third Party Agreement where we find the 
LGPL license and the list of items that are covered by it. But it does 
*not* say that these parts are not also covered by the first license 
agreement.

This license agreement is quite horrible and certainly not in the spirit 
of open governance or free software. This is written by old school 
lawyers who are clueless of the Qt community.

Bo Thorsen,
Fionia Software.

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