Messages in this thread | | | Date | Mon, 13 Jul 1998 13:40:51 -0600 | From | Richard Stallman <> | Subject | Re: Linus Speaks About KDE-Bashing |
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The problem with Qt is simple: it is not free software. Its authors have used copyright law to prevent people from sharing changes to it. To use the word you used, these restrictions are unethical.
Copyright law is a weapon, and like any weapon, it can be used for various purposes--in particular, to dominate others or to defend others' liberty. Using copyright as the basis of copyleft is using it to protect liberty. Using copyright to make a program non-free is using it for domination. When that happens, people should not complain--they should object.
On a controversial issue, no view goes without saying; arguments for this position can be found in http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/why-free.html.
Of course, there are thousands of non-free programs, and while this is unfortunate, we don't spend our time worrying about them. So why is Qt different? Because Qt sets a trap for free software developers in a way that most other proprietary programs do not.
With our free software community, with our complete free operating system, we have pushed most of the non-free software far enough away from us that we don't need to be angry about it--we can just ignore it, writing free replacements as we feel the need.
But we can't just ignore Qt, because Qt is tempting free software developers to use it. And when they do, they write free software that won't run on a free operating system, because a free operating system does not include Qt. Since popularity tends to attract more users, there is a positive feedback problem here--the more Qt is used, the more it is likely to be used. So we needed to take action, the sooner the better, to warn others away from the pitfall that KDE fell into.
The community has taken several kinds of action: writing GTK, writing Harmony, and having public discussion to make people aware of the potential mistake. We faced the problem, we took necessary actions, and we have probably averted the potential catastrophe.
Motif posed a similar problem, and that is why LessTif is so important. It took many years to develop LessTif to the point where it really does the job, and in the mean time, many useful free programs were unavailable for free operating systems because they needed Motif. I'm glad that we took on the Qt challenge more vigorously and faster.
By the way, it is true that unauthorized copying is a crime in the US--since 1996. Smoking pot is also a crime. When I was young, it was a crime to have an abortion, and a crime in some states for a Black person to sit in the front of a bus. It is necessary to have laws, but that doesn't mean the laws we have are ethical. The legislature can make something a crime, but it takes more than a vote of the legislature to make something right or wrong.
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