[ILUG] RMS: KDE in violation of GPL

[John O Sullivan]

I'm just catching up on my ilug mail and I have to pull you up on your flawed
arguments.

On Wed, 06 Sep 2000 13:47:31 you wrote:
> 	Speak for yourself..it Linux not GNU/Linux, the FSF contribution is
> invaluable but it's not the be all end all and he is not the second coming.
> 
I've been using GNU software for 12ish years! Now unless I've been in a coma
and dreamt the whole lot you very much wrong here. The bash I'm running right
now is a decendant of the bash I ran back then. Same goes for nearly all of the
programs I run. Except for a few fonts and unzip everything I use is Free
Software.

> 	So what? what's you point?, Troll go the final mile GPL the major
> point of contention and then he uses it as an opportunity to beat up on
KDE.
> 
I don't think he was beating up on KDE anymore than he always has. Trolltech
!= KDE. KDE have been causing the FSF all kinds of nightmares since its
inception. KDE broke the GPL and continued to break it despite all the efforts to solve
the problems. I am a developer on the Debian Project for the last 6 months and
I've seen first hand how much effort KDE put into solving the problem over the
last couple of years. None at all! A couple of sponsers offered 1000's of
dollars to members of the KDE team to remunerate them for the effort it would take
them to change their licence to include an exception clause allowing it to link
with QPL'ed code. Nobody *RESPONDED*! Now Trolltech pull KDE out of the fire
and suddenly KDE are supposed to be the good guys and get a clap on the back?
Make no mistake, GNOME and the GNOME Foundation are two of the reasons that
Trolltech GPL'ed the library! The CEO admitted their influence in one of the
interviews I read over the last few days.

> 	I'd like to point out that it was the rise of KDE that got the FSF
> off it's backside and working on the GNOME/Harmony projects. 
I'd like to point out that it was the rise of AT&T, Digital, MS and Sun that
got the FSF started in the first place. I'll give KDE credit where its due, but
KDE wasn't planned to get the FSF working on similar Free project any more than
the above companies planned to get RMS to setup the FSF. (fscking TLA's!)

> It wasn't the
> KDE team that went 1.0 at the first LinuxWorld months before they were
> ready, it was so "Stallman-the-forgiver" could whip out the soap box, bash
> KDE and all others. 
> 	 
I don't see where he "bashed" KDE at all, he says some uncomplementary things
about them though:
"The design of KDE was based on a fundamental mistake"
"the KDE developers were not concerned about this problem"
"in some cases code was copied into KDE from existing GPL-covered modules
whose copyright holders had not given special permission"
All these points are _facts_

> Two things, it's not his forgiveness to give, "Saint" Stallman has no right
> to forgive anyone, statements like that prove what a narrow mind he has. If
> KDE or others broke the GPL, they broke the law..go sue them. If they broke
> it and he did not sue them then the GPL is nothing than words on a page.
> Forgive them?, screw that.
>
Its Saint Ignutias actually, and his forgiveness is legally neccesary to free
up large portions of KDE so that we can include it in the next release of
Debian GNU/Linux. Its his way of legally stating that the problem is resolved for
all the code that he/FSF is the copyright holder for. I'd encourage everyone on
the list who thinks any of their GPL'ed code might be present in some part of
KDE to send them some kind of message of forgiveness as well. As for not suing
them, the GPL has been broken many many times over its history and everytime its
been brought to his attention RMS has managed to convince the offenders (mostly
software companies) to comply without resorting to a court case. Would you
prefer to see the FSF actually suing talented well-meaning coders like the KDE
team? I wouldn't, some of them are friends of mine.

In short - RMS did what he had to do. He will continue to do it in the future.
He is not a politician. There are enough intelligent people out there that
understand what he stands for that he doesn't need the kind of baaing herds that
follow other Free Software leaders.

johno - jos at debian.org