Wednesday, September 6, 2000

KDE Griping -- 1:57 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Well, J.t.Qbe is a prophet. Richard Stallman (the guy who came up with the Gnu Public License or GPL and a big GNOME supporter) took the opportunity to bash KDE and Qt, even though TrollTech is releasing a GPL-compliant version of the Qt windowing library. Here's a snip:

Also, where code was copied from other GPL-covered programs, their copyright holders need to be asked for forgiveness. To lead the way, the FSF hereby grants this forgiveness for all code that is copyright FSF. More precisely, those who as of September 4, 2000 have used some FSF code in violation of the GPL solely by linking it with Qt, and thus have forfeited the right to use that code under the GPL, will once again have full GPL permissions to use that code upon switching to a GPL-covered version of Qt. I appeal to all the other copyright holders of affected code to grant similar forgiveness and thus help resolve the situation quickly.

So apparently going GPL isn't enough, they still need to beg his forgiveness. Give me a break. The KDE team has issued a formal response, basically dismissing all Stallman's charges. Certain members of the KDE team have released a more pointed statement, lest anyone be confused as to how they feel. Thanks Ars Technica.

Here's my take. Stallman likes GNOME, he doesn't like KDE. The end. He tries to wrap it all up in open source pseudo-philosophy, but that's the long and the short of it. Even if I weren't using KDE as my Linux desktop, I'd probably move over to it right now just because of all of this stupidity.

J.t.Qbe comments: Very perceptive, A.T. RMS has done some great things (far beyond the GPL) and has probably done more than anyone to keep the world from being dragged into a Microsoftian Dark Ages. However, he's off his rocker on this one. More specifically, his idealism has lost sight of reality. RMS wants all software to be free, period. His GPL is designed to enforce that: any GPL-licensed software MUST be released with source code and permission to modify, and all products derived from that source must also follow the GPL.

In a perfect world, all software would be free to anyone who wanted it. However, in a perfect world there'd also be no need to work and money would grow on trees. The GPL is supposed to promote software freedom. Is it freedom to be forced to give out your own work, whether you want to do it or not? Is it freedom and happiness to work hard to produce good software, as the KDE group has done, then push to make it totally GPL free, then get slapped in the face for it? Is it freedom to be criticized by legions of GPL zealots because your free software isn't free enough?

Go, KDE, and humbug to you GPL zealots. Qrap like this is enough to make you want to say humbug to Linux altogether. I really think that BSD is truly more free than Linux/GPL, and if my work machine would run it, I'd use FreeBSD instead of Linux. Linux really used to be a fun, open, welcoming world, but zealotry (Linux-only/GPL-only/GNOME-only) is going to destroy Linux as Microso~1 could only dream of doing.</prophetic ranting >

News for 09/06/2000

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