Re: SEUL: What's the diff to SEUL ?

[Micah Yoder <yoderm@geocities.com>]

Erik Walthinsen wrote:

> > Qt is the sticking point.
> That's why I had to tell a member of the KDE project that SEUL could *not*
> use KDE as its environment.  Qt just doesn't have a very friendly license.

I've been thinking a little more on that one.  3 points:

1.  I agree that all software *WE WRITE* should be based completely on
free software.  However, does that mean we can't distribute Qt and the
(increasing number of) free applications that use it?

2.  I recently read the free license and it's FAQ.  Basically, it said
that there is no problem with including it in a Linux distrubtion. 
Also, it gave a number of reasons why Troll will *never* revoke the free
license.  And I agree - it's giving them a *lot* of good publicity.  If
I understand correctly, our biggest beef with the license is the
possibility of it being revoked...but if they did that they'd only screw
themselves!

3.  Our target is end users.  I've mentioned it before, but I'll say it
again:  Not one single one of them is going to give a rip about the Qt
license!  It doesn't affect them in any way.  Why should it?

Commercial software vendors can use Motif, Xforms, GTK, Qt,
whatever...it's their choice.  We should try to support them all.  If
they want what appears to be the best toolkit (Qt), they pay for it.  If
they don't, they develop for GTK.  It would all work in SEUL.

I'm not saying we should use KDE as the desktop.  We could, but GNOME
appears to be taking shape nicely.  But KDE applications can run without
using it as the window manager, and I still don't think we should refuse
to distribute anything that uses Qt.  There's a lot of good stuff out
there for it!

-- 
"win95 n. 32 bit extensions for a 16 bit
patch to an 8 bit operating system originally
coded for a 4 bit microprocessor by a 2 bit
company that can't handle 1 bit of competition."