[Ctk-developers] Qt licenses model

Thu Nov 12 13:51:02 EST 2009

An OSI approved license is fine with me.

Historical note - the original Berkeley license had a fourth clause in it that required acknowledging UCB in any advertising.  This was a sore point within the open source community.  So Berkeley modified the license to remove the advertising clause.  This modified license is known as the "Modified Berkeley"  or "Modified BSD" license, or in some circles the "New BSD License",  and is the one that OSI approved.  In 2008, the OSI board approved a variant which they call the "Simplified BSD License", which is essentially the same as what historically has been called the "Modified BSD" license.  So we are talking about the same thing.

Some people remove the third cause (the "no endorsement" clause), which is allowed by OSI.  I would prefer if we leave it in.

In fact some people (e.g. the caBIG(r) community) do not feel that the third clause goes far enough.  They feel that one should mention trademarks, and not just the name of the copyright holder (i.e., that the software license is not a license to use the copyright owner's trademarks).  Some of the other OSI licenses have such trademark clauses (e.g. the Apache V2.0 license).

Also some people (e.g. the caBIG(r) community) feel that a patent clause is needed.  Some of the other OSI licenses have such patent clauses (e.g. the Apache V2.0 license, the Mozilla 1.1 license, CDDL, the Eclipse Public License 1.0).

Although I am relatively neutral, in some ways I would prefer the Apache license over the Berkeley license.  The Apache license is closer to the caBIG(r) Model License Agreement that we were required to use for the initial XIP development.

I definitely do not want to use a GPL license, or any license that has a viral (sometimes called "copyleft") provision, though I have no problem with utilizing LGPL code if accessed solely as a library.

Lawrence

From: Will Schroeder [mailto:will.schroeder at kitware.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2009 10:27 AM
To: Tarbox, Lawrence
Cc: Marco Viceconti; ctk-developers at commontk.org
Subject: Re: [Ctk-developers] Qt licenses model

Maybe this wasn't clear, but if possible use a OSI-compliant license, not a modified BSD. This makes it possible to seek funding or respond to technology requests (since I believe an OSI-compliant license can be a pre-condition to engagement, it also gives a sense of authoratative approval which warms some people's hearts). We thought about gaining OSI approval for VTK's original license but eventually just adopted a standard BSD.
Will
On Thu, Nov 12, 2009 at 10:00 AM, Tarbox, Lawrence <tarboxl at mir.wustl.edu<mailto:tarboxl at mir.wustl.edu>> wrote:
I think the reason that the Qt Software folks (now owned by Nokia) left the GPL option in is for the benefit of some of their partners who were writing GPL code (or dual-licensed GPL/Commercial code) back in the days when Qt Software was TrollTech.  Some of those partners have made additions/modifications to Qt, released them under GPL, and do not want to ever release them under LGPL.  While technically they could still release their additions/modifications under GPL even though Qt is LGPL (i.e., LGPL allows it), these partners prefer to keep their licensing straight forward, and just say the whole combined mess is GPL.  Qt Software is merely saying formally that Qt Software is OK with that model, basically reaffirming their partners' right to continue releasing modified versions of Qt under GPL.

At least that is the impression that I get.

I don't think that there is a problem with release our software under a modified BSD license, as long as we are only linking to Qt, and not modifying Qt code directly (i.e., one could switch to a Qt clone, if it existed, or to a modified version of Qt by simply rebuilding against a different link library).

If we do modify the Qt code itself, then those modifications would have to be released as LGPL.  Of course, if we modify Qt itself, I would vote for feeding those modifications back to the Qt community for potential incorporation into a future release of Qt.

Lawrence

-----Original Message-----
From: ctk-developers-bounces at commontk.org<mailto:ctk-developers-bounces at commontk.org> [mailto:ctk-developers-bounces at commontk.org<mailto:ctk-developers-bounces at commontk.org>] On Behalf Of Marco Viceconti
Sent: Thursday, November 12, 2009 3:44 AM
To: ctk-developers at commontk.org<mailto:ctk-developers at commontk.org>
Subject: [Ctk-developers] Qt licenses model

I would like to open another discussion thread, parallel to the one we
started on Qt core.  Currently Qt is available under two possible open
source licenses: Qt GNU LGPL v. 2.1 and Qt GNU GPL v. 3.0.
http://qt.nokia.com/products/licensing

If I understand correctly the code is the same, the access rules are
the same, so I am not sure why one would choose GPL which is more
restrictive than LGPL.  Can someone clarify this to me?

Secondly, having agreed that CTK will be BSD-like, can anyone confirm
me that by using a LGPL library to develop CTK we shall not break the
BSD-like license we plan to adopt?

Thanks

Marco

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MARCO VICECONTI, PhD
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Laboratorio di Tecnologia Medica              tel.   39-051-6366865
Istituto Ortopedico Rizzoli                            fax.
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Opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of my employer

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