Date: Sat, 21 Nov 1998 10:49:38 -0500
From: rms@gnu.org (Richard Stallman)
Newsgroups: gnu.misc.discuss
Subject: On the QPL

The latest news about Qt is that Troll Tech has proposed to rerelease
it under a new license, the QPL.  This license would make Qt free
software; there would no longer be a principled reason to reject using
it, and thus no principled reason to reject using KDE.  Indeed, if Qt
is Troll Tech's only product (which might be so; I don't know), then
by a strange reversal, this would actually make them a free software
company.

However, the QPL has major practical drawbacks: source modifications
can be released only in the form of patches, and it is incompatible
with the GNU GPL.  This means that linking existing GPL-covered
software with Qt would require giving special permission.

With Qt being free software, there would be no fundamental reason to
refuse this special permission, but it remains better if we can avoid
it.  As a practical matter, it will be preferable to use Harmony, both
to avoid the need to make special exceptions, and to avoid the
practical inconvenience of the requirement to distribute modifications
patches.