From:	Matthias Ettrich <ettr...@troll.no>
Reply-To: kde-licens...@kde.org
To:	kde-licens...@kde.org
Subject: Live and let live
Date:	Sat, 10 Oct 1998 18:43:07 +0200
Old-Return-Path: <ettr...@troll.no>
X-Loop: kde-licens...@alpha.tat.physik.uni-tuebingen.de

Let me summarize Debian's licensing problem without any pseudo-juridical
nit-picking textual interpretations:

a) "It's ok for Debian to distribute KDE as a source package with an
post-installation script that compiles and installs the stuff for the users."

b) "it's not ok, if Debian compiles the stuff before distribution and ships
both the binary and the source code to make the installation process on the
user's side faster."

Although I have a rather bad opinion of the Debian guys, I just cannot believe
that they are that irrational to claim that there is a significant, even
ethical difference between both approaches. But following the recent
discussion on our mailing lists I almost get the impression that some of them
really believe what they are saying. Naa, that can't be true. The fact that
Debian also removed the KDE libraries (that cleary are not covered by their GPL
interpretation since they are not distributed under the terms of the GPL),
showed their real intention.

In case some Debian developers read this mailing list: Guys, you don't like KDE
since it encourages people to write software for it. Therefore you don't want
to distribute it. That's fine with me. I would never dare to spam your mailing
lists for that reason. So please stop spamming our mailing list.

I still wish you could say this in public (Bruce Perens did it, for example)
without publishing "licensing problems" statements that insult their readers
intelligence. 

Come on,  the LInux world is large enough for both KDE and Debian. We let you
work on your social mission, so please let us fullfil our mission to make Unix
more friendly and powerful for users and application developers.

DISCLAIMER: this is a statement of my own, not of the KDE project. 


Matthias