From: Gregory Seidman <gsslist+ruby@...>
Date: 2008-03-04T01:24:32+09:00
Subject: Re: qtruby4 license

On Tue, Mar 04, 2008 at 01:10:00AM +0900, richard.j.dale@gmail.com wrote:
> On Mar 3, 3:10 pm, Gregory Seidman <gsslist+r...@anthropohedron.net>
> wrote:
> > On Mon, Mar 03, 2008 at 10:59:54PM +0900, richard.j.d...@gmail.com wrote:
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > > The QtRuby code is copyrighted by a small number of people, and it
> > > would certainly be possible to add another license type, such as
> > > commercial, bsd or mit. If you really do think you need a commercial
> > > license please email me to discuss. Note that it wouldn't be possible
> > > to release QtRuby under an LGPL license though.
> >
> > It seems like LGPL would be ideal in this instance. I believe that's
> > what KDE uses, for exactly the same reasons. Why wouldn't it be
> > possible for QtRuby?
> 
> Because I would need permission from Trolltech and my understanding is
> that they don't like an LGPL license used with language bindings,
> although they are happy that the KDE libs are LGPL'd.

I am confused. Why would you need Trolltech's permission for this?
Developing an LGPL library against a GPL library is one of the (implicit)
freedoms granted by the GPL. In fact, unless you and other contributors had
a Qt developer license the entire time you and they were developing QtRuby,
I don't believe you would be able to provide QtRuby under any license that
was not GPL-compatible. Basically, if you didn't have the right (by having
purchased a developer license from Qt) to develop closed code while you
were doing it, you don't have the right to close the code.

> A few years ago, when I asked them about changing the QtJava license
> from GPL to LGPL, they were very much against the idea. They were much
> happier with a QtJava dual license GPL/commercial to match the
> licensing scheme of Qt itself.
[...]

I find that bizarre, but I'm still not clear on why they have any say in
the matter.

> Their view may have changed now, and I haven't discussed it with
> anyone from Trolltech for a while. Now that Qt is getting better and
> better, and Ruby is beginning to really get some great runtimes, I
> think it makes sense to start thinking of some sort of commercial
> QtRuby version.

I still say their view is irrelevant. Legally, I don't believe you can
release QtRuby under any license that isn't GPL-compatible at this point.
IANAL, but that's what my reading of Qt's commercial license seems to
imply.

> -- Richard
--Greg