Trolltech adds GPLv3 to the licensing of Qt
Posted: Fri Jan 18, 2008 8:22 pm
Source: Trolltech’s Qt to be licensed under the GPL v3."Oslo, Norway, 18 January - 2008 - Trolltech ASA is licensing its Qt cross-platform development framework under the GNU General Public License version 3 (GPL v3), with immediate effect.
Qt is already available under the GPL v2 and will continue to be so in addition to the GPL v3.
The GPL v3 license will make it easy and safe for free software developers to use Trolltech’s Qt with the most recent license framework from the Free Software Foundation. Trolltech hopes that its move will inspire free software projects to use GPL v3 when programming with Qt.
The move to GPL v3 licensing reinforces Trolltech’s strong tradition of giving developers the liberty to create and share software in accordance with the “four freedoms” defined by the Free Software Foundation.
"We decided to add GPL v3 licensing after consulting with both KDE e.V. and the Free Software Foundation," explained Eirik Chambe-Eng, co-founder of Trolltech. "I first read the GNU Manifesto from the Free Software Foundation back in 1987 and it forever shaped the way I viewed software. We at Trolltech are proud to continue serving the free software community by allowing software developers to choose which GPL version they want to use."
"I am very pleased that Trolltech has decided to make Qt available under GPL v3," commented Richard Stallman, author of the GPL and president of The Free Software Foundation. "This will allow parts of KDE to adopt GPL v3, too. Even better, Trolltech has made provisions for a smooth migration to future GPL versions if it approves of them."
According to Chambe-Eng, Trolltech owes much to free software developers. Free software developers provide high quality feedback and suggestions for improving Qt, ensuring that Trolltech can deliver high-quality developer tools to the market faster."
The provision that Richard is referring to is this:
Source: Qt 3.3.8b source files."**
** This file may be used under the terms of the GNU General
** Public License versions 2.0 or 3.0 as published by the Free
** Software Foundation and appearing in the files LICENSE.GPL2
** and LICENSE.GPL3 included in the packaging of this file.
** Alternatively you may (at your option) use any later version
** of the GNU General Public License if such license has been
** publicly approved by Trolltech ASA (or its successors, if any)
** and the KDE Free Qt Foundation.
**"
GO TROLLTECH!!!
This is really good, because some recent enhancements in KDE's handling of Samba shares had created some licensing problems because Samba is under GPLv3, and you can't link GPLv2 code to GPLv3 code. Great to have that fixed, Fedora currently has smb:/ disabled in their KDE 4.0 builds, because of this, so I'm sure they're happy that this is solved.