[QGIS-Developer] [Qgis-psc] Position on Qt wrt The QT Company announcements

[Greg Troxel]

Nyall Dawson <nyall.dawson at gmail.com> writes:

> 3. A community fork would likely end up being great for Qt (my
> opinion). It certainly had a huge positive impact on
> OpenOffice/LibreOffice. Qt is currently REALLY difficult for new
> contributors to contribute to, so it's possible a community driven
> fork with more of a collaborative focus would see a bunch of new
> contributors coming in. Certainly the talk on the Qt mailing lists
> over the last 1-2 years has shown a huge amount of dissatisfaction
> with the leadership and direction taken by the Qt Company, and
> complaints about how out of touch they are with their user's needs.

I think the CLA issue is a huge one, and I'm commenting only because you
didn't explicitly say "proprietary relicensing CLA".

I am uncomfortable with signing a CLA with an entity that is not a Free
Software charity (definitions vary by country, but the point is that
charities are legally obligated to act in the public interest).  I also
don't think that free software developers should have to grant
permission for proprietary relicensing.  While these views are certainly
not universal, I think they are reasonably mainstream.

Even among those who do not have conceptual objections, many would be
cautious about signing a formal agreement.  (I'd want to get legal
advice before doing that, and I certainly don't want to pay a lawyer in
order to give a company the right to engage in proprietary relicensing!)

If Qt were forked to continue as an Free Software project (as opposed to
a joint proprietary/Free project), then I would expect participation
from people who didn't before because of either a distaste for
proprietary relicensing or discomfort with a corporate CLA.