01.19.08
Qt Goes GPLv3, is KDE Next?
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him… The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself… All progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
“People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don’t believe in circumstances. The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them.”
–Mrs. Warren’s Profession, 1893
The last time we boasted a project whose choice was the GPLv3, it was SimCity. Other large projects include Funambol (AGPLv3) and SugarCRM (GPLv3). Here is another ground-breaking transition that is certainly going to have ripple effects. It might also instill confidence in the minds of some of who are still cautious and hesitant.
Trolltech CEO Haavard Nord announced today at the KDE developer conference that the company’s cross-platform open source Qt application development toolkit will be released under the GPL 3. This move, which comes shortly after the release of KDE 4.0 (watch for our review on Sunday night), will allow the open source desktop environment to adopt the new version of the GPL.
Also on the same subject, Free Software Magazine has an excellent new interview with Richard Stallman. Among the things that he says there with regards to Tivoization:
Companies making consumer electronics products want to impose DRM on us; they want to do this in programs that they receive as free software, then pass them on to us in such a way that we do not have the freedom to change them. So they invite us to allow our software to be tivoized, and offer us, as an inducement, that our software will be “more popular” if we cave in.
The only way to keep our freedom is to have the steadfastness to reject those tempting offers. We have to move to a license like GPL version 3 that will stop these tempters in their tracks.
With Qt’s new licence, courtesy of Trolltech whose business is on the incline, the future of GPLv3 is all about business, not against it. █
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