[CS-FSLUG] Re: [Foss-cafe] NI: OfB.biz: I GNU It!

[Aaron J. Seigo]

On Tuesday 12 July 2005 07:53, Timothy R. Butler wrote:
> Tim Butler knew when he mentioned something negative about the GNU
> Project’s General Public License (GPL), in his column on KDE last week, he
> would inevitably be accused of arguing the GPL was a bad license. What did
> not fit into that piece shall now be dealt with: is the GPL a bad license
> or is the issue he complained about</a> something else? Find out at here:
>
>     http://www.ofb.biz/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=370

you mention that Qt wasn't good enough for Sun, Real, etc, etc... well, let me 
offer some perspective here for you: for many it had nothing to do with the 
license. nothing.

Sun picked GNOME for reasons of control, and not licensing control. then they 
went around in the early days of JDS, when they were still developing it, and 
told companies working on open source desktop software that if they used Qt 
they would not ship their software with JDS (which is funny, given the fact 
that they used SUSE under the hood, but whatever). they then made bold claims 
that JDS was going to be THE desktop linux OS. after all they were about to 
sew up a million+ seats in China and a .25 million in the UK and .... none of 
which came to fruition. but, playing the monopoly card, they managed to cow 
enough companies into turning away from Qt.

how do i know this? because i've been told this in person by people in these 
companies, including Real.

never assert to licensing what you can assert to politics.

there are further factual issues in your piece, but... i think that's a good 
start =)

-- 
Aaron J. Seigo
GPG Fingerprint: 8B8B 2209 0C6F 7C47 B1EA  EE75 D6B7 2EB1 A7F1 DB43
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