KDE Plasma & Friends See Many Fixes + Improvements Ahead Of Christmas

[sa666666]

And now for a response that is actually relevant to this thread (first one IMO after 20+ posts). Thank you Nate for the update, and the work you and others are doing for Plasma. It may not seem like it, but is is appreciated by at least a few people here. Try to ignore the trolls (although it's getting harder and harder to do that on Phoronix).

[skeevy420]

I didn't know gay was a gender.

[Charlie68]

Charlie68 GNOME is not relevant here. They don’t get into such problems because they got a completely Free toolkit. No CLA, no problems.

But what to do about Qt? I say fork or drop it..

Like the Ubuntu-Canonical CLA? The Ubuntu CLA has been accepted by the FSF it seems to me ... and anyway it's not this subject matter here! What I wanted to say is that discussing is finding solutions is normal, I don't see all these problems on the horizon!
EDIT
What is the Contribution Agreement and why is it needed?
A Contribution Agreement defines the license rights and obligations that the contributor (i.e. the developer/company holding copyright to the software to be submitted to the Qt project) is willing to grant to recipient (i.e. the other party of the agreement, here The Qt Company). In case of Qt, the Contribution agreement for Qt defines the license rights and obligations that the contributor is willing to grant for the benefit of the Qt Project. It is important to note that the contributor retains ownership of the contribution as the Qt Project does not require copyright assignment for contributions made to the Qt Project.

In case of Qt, a contribution agreement is primarily required because The Qt Company has existing obligations regarding Qt and wants to enable the broadest, most vibrant Qt ecosystem. The contribution agreement facilitates The Qt Company’s compliance with the spirit of its commitments to the Open Source Community, under the agreement with the KDE Free Qt Foundation, and enables participation of commercial Qt users in the Qt project.

[tildearrow]

Charlie68 GNOME is not relevant here. They don’t get into such problems because they got a completely Free toolkit. No CLA, no problems.

But what to do about Qt? I say fork or drop it..

You. Are. GhostOfFunkS.

But what to do about you? I say ban..

[Britoid]

Like the Ubuntu-Canonical CLA? The Ubuntu CLA has been accepted by the FSF it seems to me ... and anyway it's not this subject matter here! What I wanted to say is that discussing is finding solutions is normal, I don't see all these problems on the horizon!
EDIT
What is the Contribution Agreement and why is it needed?
A Contribution Agreement defines the license rights and obligations that the contributor (i.e. the developer/company holding copyright to the software to be submitted to the Qt project) is willing to grant to recipient (i.e. the other party of the agreement, here The Qt Company). In case of Qt, the Contribution agreement for Qt defines the license rights and obligations that the contributor is willing to grant for the benefit of the Qt Project. It is important to note that the contributor retains ownership of the contribution as the Qt Project does not require copyright assignment for contributions made to the Qt Project.

In case of Qt, a contribution agreement is primarily required because The Qt Company has existing obligations regarding Qt and wants to enable the broadest, most vibrant Qt ecosystem. The contribution agreement facilitates The Qt Company’s compliance with the spirit of its commitments to the Open Source Community, under the agreement with the KDE Free Qt Foundation, and enables participation of commercial Qt users in the Qt project.

One of the reasons people don't like CLA's is because they give a company (you're signing an agreement with a company after all) an avenue to make proprietary versions of the software, including future versions. This imho goes agaisnt the very spirit of the GPL and the FOSS movement and is a "we only do FOSS when it benefits us" approach and gives the company permission over the code that no other contributor has.

I think even Fedora tries to avoid projects with a CLA because of it. Can you imagine if the Linux kernel was dual licensed where companies could get an avenue to not have to make their changes open source (at least legally).

[Nth_man]

One of the main reason the CLA is needed is due to the agreement with the Free-Qt Foundation, that says that if Qt is ever closed sourced, or stops being maintained the last released versions becomes available under a BSD license. It wouldn't be possible to do that re-licensing without the CLA.

-- @carewolf in https://www.phoronix.com/forums/foru...873#post945873

[Britoid]

One of the main reason the CLA is needed is due to the agreement with the Free-Qt Foundation, that says that if Qt is ever closed sourced, or stops being maintained the last released versions becomes available under a BSD license. It wouldn't be possible to do that re-licensing without the CLA.

-- @carewolf in https://www.phoronix.com/forums/foru...873#post945873

It could never be closed-source if it was under a license like the LGPL.

[Nth_man]

> It could never be closed-source [...]

Any author can publish another version of his software with another license. Except, for example, if he has signed a contract, etc.

[Britoid]

> It could never be closed-source [...]

Any author can publish another version of his software with another license. Except, for example, if he has signed a contract, etc.

Can I take Qt, add some extra functionality, then sell it closed-source?

[Morty]

It could never be closed-source if it was under a license like the LGPL.

And this is the case for the currently released and latest avalible version inn the Qt source repository, sine it's already under the LGPL license(and GPL too actially).

So what is your point again?