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SubjectRe: Linus Speaks About KDE-Bashing

On Sun, 12 Jul 1998, George wrote:

> I think the issue here is that Motif has been the standrad GUI for just
> about any unix for the past few years ...

I'm surprised this point still isn't clear to people. Whether Motif has
been been the standard GUI for Unices is inmaterial to the GPL as applied
to Linux. Motif only falls under the "normally distributed with the OS"
clause of the GPL *if and only if* _your_ system is distributed with
Motif. This exemption was fine before when it was fairly clear what
defined as "distributed with the OS" since an OS was generally
distributed by a single vendor. There is no clear definition of a
"distribution" when it comes to the free OS distributions. Alan Cox has
mentioned via IRC that at least one lawyer has stated that only the pieces
distributed by maintainer of Linux (ie, Linus) fall under this exemption
for Linux so both Motif & Qt are violations in this respect.

> we would have the same problem with motif I'd think, had it not been for
> lesstif

The existence of Lesstif does not make using Motif(tm) (as distributed
by the TOG, RedHat, etc) ok. It makes using the Motif API ok but nothing
more. This is a subtle distinction that people tend to overlook
(purposefully or not). Meaning that you cannot distribute GPL'd Motif
applications under Linux just because Lesstif is available.

At this point, I'm in full agreement with Terry, we need to get this
matter settled legally once and for all. Everyone has their own
interpretation of the GPL and no single interpretation, including the
FSF's, has any more weight than the other. Yes, the FSF's intent of the
GPL can be considered important, but the GPL is sufficient vague enough
that it might have different meanings in situations in which the FSF did
not forsee. I will also pledge $100US to the legal fund to get all
current issues with the GPL resovled. There are too many grey areas in
the GPL that are only protected by the threat of legal action and bad
publicity. If it were ever proven in a court of law that the legal
interpretation of these grey areas contradicts what the FSF claims they
are, the GPL will effectively become a useless license. It would be
better to settle this "in-house" (local to the free software community)
and roll out a GPLv3 that properly handles these issues than be
unplesantly surprised later.

- cls






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