4 ms·

A shame Stallman put the kibosh on QT quickly. Is he planning on there being a GPLv4? Not in the "leaving that option open for the future" kind of planning, but

A shame Stallman put the kibosh on QT quickly. Is he planning on there being a GPLv4? Not in the "leaving that option open for the future" kind of planning, but more, "A need has been identified that can't be met by v3, it's time to start working on v4." Because if they truly want a cross platform visual interface, AFAICT, QT is the closest you're going to get, and IMO, is the best means of doing so. Every QT app I've seen has looked and acted a lot closer to a native app on Windows and Mac than anything that ever came out of GTK or other GUI toolkits. And I don't understand why GTK doesn't have the same issues. It's not a GNU project AFAIK. It can't be a GPL vs LGPL thing, because QT is also available under LGPL. Is Stallman perhaps just stuck on the fact that QT was once not available under a free license?

josteink 6y ago
> And I don't understand why GTK doesn't have the same issues. It's not a GNU project AFAIK. Iirc GTK was born out Gnome, and Gnome was born as a FSF-project.
- korethr 6y ago
  Okay, but even if GTK is a GNU project or a FSF project, why does that mean it qualifies for being part of a future GPLv4 licensed EMACS, and QT does not? Both are available under the LGPL. I wonder if Stallman expects that a GPLv4 would likely or definitely be incompatible with LGPL3. I don't think it's because the LGPL version would be bumped if a v4 came out; GTK is still on LGPLv2.1
  - orangeshark 6y ago
    It is because of the license. GTK's license is LGPLv2.1 or later[0]. The important part is later, It means you can update it automatically to any later version, especially if the new license is not compatible with the previous version. Qt does not offer their software with a similar license. [0]: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/tree/master#licensing-terms https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/tree/master#licensing-t...
- _emacsomancer_ 6y ago
  GTK is the Gimp ToolKit originally, predating GNOME as far as I know.
- vlowther 6y ago
  GTK came from the Gimp, not Gnome.
plorkyeran 6y ago
Qt is licensed under GPLv2 or GPLv3, while GTK is LGPLv2.1+. If the FSF makes a GPLv4, GTK will automatically be available under that license, while Qt will not.
- korethr 6y ago
  > If the FSF makes a GPLv4, GTK will automatically be available under that license, while Qt will not. If that were the case, then why was GTK not updated to GPL or LGPLv3 when the FSF came up with that group of licenses? When I looked it up, I found that QT is available under LGPLv3[1], so unless there is already plans to ensure that a GPLv4 is not license compatible with LGPLv3, I don't buy it. 1. https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/lgpl.html https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/lgpl.html
a1369209993 6y ago
> A need has been identified that can't be met by v3, it's time to start working on v4. Software-as-a-service under GPLv3 isn't required to provide source code to remote users (AGPL acommplishes exactly nothing in this regard), so there definitely is such a need, but I don't know if RMS is actually working on that.
- tome 6y ago
  I thought that's exactly what AGPL was for. Is there something flawed about it?
  - a1369209993 6y ago
    Well, the biggest problem is that the AGPL isn't the GPL, so the existence of the AGPL doesn't actually help with the large number of existing GPL projects, even if they're licenced as "GPL version N or later" (which v4 would help with). However, the problem I was actually thinking of ("exactly nothing"), was that last time I looked into it, the consensus appeared to be that you could copy code between a AGPL project and a GPL one, which obviously makes the AGPL useless. But, on checking, I can't actually find a citation for this, and the licence text doesn't seem to support that interpretation. So I have to retract my previous statement and amend it to: the AGPL does very little to help with SaaS attacks on open source software, primarily because almost noone uses it, and because the FSF continues to recommend the known-broken non-affero GPL as its default copyleft licence.
mouldysammich 6y ago
I think they dont use QT because they already have native windows, mac, X11 and GTK ports, why would they use qt?

josteink 6y ago

> And I don't understand why GTK doesn't have the same issues. It's not a GNU project AFAIK. Iirc GTK was born out Gnome, and Gnome was born as a FSF-project.

korethr 6y ago
Okay, but even if GTK is a GNU project or a FSF project, why does that mean it qualifies for being part of a future GPLv4 licensed EMACS, and QT does not? Both are available under the LGPL. I wonder if Stallman expects that a GPLv4 would likely or definitely be incompatible with LGPL3. I don't think it's because the LGPL version would be bumped if a v4 came out; GTK is still on LGPLv2.1
- orangeshark 6y ago
  It is because of the license. GTK's license is LGPLv2.1 or later[0]. The important part is later, It means you can update it automatically to any later version, especially if the new license is not compatible with the previous version. Qt does not offer their software with a similar license. [0]: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/tree/master#licensing-terms https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gtk/-/tree/master#licensing-t...
_emacsomancer_ 6y ago
GTK is the Gimp ToolKit originally, predating GNOME as far as I know.
vlowther 6y ago
GTK came from the Gimp, not Gnome.

plorkyeran 6y ago

Qt is licensed under GPLv2 or GPLv3, while GTK is LGPLv2.1+. If the FSF makes a GPLv4, GTK will automatically be available under that license, while Qt will not.

korethr 6y ago
> If the FSF makes a GPLv4, GTK will automatically be available under that license, while Qt will not. If that were the case, then why was GTK not updated to GPL or LGPLv3 when the FSF came up with that group of licenses? When I looked it up, I found that QT is available under LGPLv3[1], so unless there is already plans to ensure that a GPLv4 is not license compatible with LGPLv3, I don't buy it. 1. https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/lgpl.html https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/lgpl.html

a1369209993 6y ago

> A need has been identified that can't be met by v3, it's time to start working on v4. Software-as-a-service under GPLv3 isn't required to provide source code to remote users (AGPL acommplishes exactly nothing in this regard), so there definitely is such a need, but I don't know if RMS is actually working on that.

tome 6y ago
I thought that's exactly what AGPL was for. Is there something flawed about it?
- a1369209993 6y ago
  Well, the biggest problem is that the AGPL isn't the GPL, so the existence of the AGPL doesn't actually help with the large number of existing GPL projects, even if they're licenced as "GPL version N or later" (which v4 would help with). However, the problem I was actually thinking of ("exactly nothing"), was that last time I looked into it, the consensus appeared to be that you could copy code between a AGPL project and a GPL one, which obviously makes the AGPL useless. But, on checking, I can't actually find a citation for this, and the licence text doesn't seem to support that interpretation. So I have to retract my previous statement and amend it to: the AGPL does very little to help with SaaS attacks on open source software, primarily because almost noone uses it, and because the FSF continues to recommend the known-broken non-affero GPL as its default copyleft licence.

mouldysammich 6y ago

I think they dont use QT because they already have native windows, mac, X11 and GTK ports, why would they use qt?