GPL (Was Re: [LI] Switching to Debian)

[Arun Sharma <adsharma@xxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Nov 15, 1999 at 06:39:02PM +0530, Shanu wrote:
> Rahul wrote:
> 
> > 1) does it ship with KDE?
> 
> 	Nope. QT 1.4x is not GPL'd. U can get .deb it from ftp.us.kde.org

Correction. QT 1.4x is not open sourced. GPL is not the same as open
source. Apache is not GPL'ed, sendmail is not GPL'ed, but they still
ship on the Debian CD.

QT 2.x is released under QPL (http://www.troll.no/qpl/)
It meets the open source definition http://www.opensource.org/osd.html,
but not Debian free software guidelines (someone correct me if I'm
wrong here on DFSG)

http://www.debian.org/social_contract#guidelines
http://www.debian.org/intro/free
http://lwn.net/1998/1210/dfsg2qt.html

Again, I don't think Shanu had an ulterior motive in saying that a
package has to be GPL'ed in order to ship on the Debian CD. There are
large chunks of code that are not GPL'ed and which are a part of any
Linux distribution (Apache, sendmail, BIND, perl, python and even parts
of the kernel). So guys, please be precise and do not equate GPL with
open source or free software. You may think that I'm being a little
picky here - but I think that this is an important distinction.

If you prefer GPL as a license - please say so. Just like I do below.

Personally, I prefer the BSD license, which is the least restrictive of
all and bypasses a lot of the free software politics. It's as simple
as - you can do whatever you want to do with the code, as long as you
preserve the copyright notice.

	-Arun

PS: Here's some interesting reading on various free software ideologies:
http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/writings/homesteading/homesteading-2.html
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