

About the KDE issue.

I got a lot of questions about Debian not distributing KDE. Most people
point me to the 'Qt issue' page on the KDE web site. (http://www.kde.org).
Although they only tell the truth, the KDE people seems to simply miss
or ignoring the point of the conflict between the GPL and the QPL(1).
I'm a bit boring about this issue and think it makes bad press to Debian
since we are the only distribution to not include KDE.

Should we make a 'KDE issue' page to explain why Debian are so 'injust'
against KDE? The page should said:

- that Debian recognize the Qt libraries as free software and included it
  in it's official distribution, as well as other softwares based on qt2.0
- Point out the problem with some KDE projects (kghostview is a pretty
  good example, IMHO).
- Offers some possible solutions as *suggestions* about how to finally
  make KDE distributable (the removal of the conflicting clause from the
  QPL or adding the exception clause to the GPL Licensing term for Qt
  based programs).
- Point out the unofficial site to get the KDE debs (http://kde.tdyc.net/)
  but with some warnings about the licensing issues previously explain.

We should be careful so that we can warn people about the importance of
the issue (which dilued greatly the strength of the GPL) without flaming
either TrollTech or the KDE project, which we'll not help at all. That's
why I'm asking you some advices.


(1): IMNSHO, KDE is ignoring the point because they will have to give up
some important parts of their project (like kghostview) if they admit
the case. So it's either to change all licenses or none and ignoring the
issue. Currently, the first one is merely impossible so they have to
choose the second solution which just make some important clauses of the
GPL a joke. All IMHO, of course. I doesn't even try to contact the KDE
people about this.

Fabien Ninoles        Chevalier servant de la Dame Catherine des Rosiers
aka Corbeau aka le Veneur Gris               Debian GNU/Linux maintainer
E-mail:                                                    fab@tzone.org
WebPage:                                    http://www.tzone.org/~fabien

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