On Monday April 03 2017 15:33:34 Jake Petroules wrote:

Thanks for all your answers.

>> Are there legal restrictions to making my modified versions available (say 
>> on github) other than maintaining the license headers and any licensing 
>> files? 
>
>In short, no. You know Qt is licensed under GPL & LGPL, right?

Yep. I just wanted to be sure.

>Actually, I'm working on making the platform styles into plugins right now, so 
>it'll be very easy to build QMacStyle standalone once 
>https://codereview.qt-project.org/#/c/186909/ is merged. Keep in mind it'll 
>still require a number of private headers, though.

Good new, thanks! I haven't looked yet but with luc that'll make it easier also 
to isolate the current style sources too (5.8). For the private headers I was 
thinking I'd include any of those that aren't installed in a complete install. 
Using private headers is acceptable for low-level plugins like this; the Plasma 
integration platform theme plugin also does that (and so does my Mac fork of 
that plugin).

>Possibly, if others contribute to your modifications, they'll also need to 
>sign the CLA and somehow "co-submit" the changes to the Qt Project alongside 
>you.

The only contributions I'm daring to hope for are ideas and opinions ;)

>On that note, why not upstream the changes immediately and make things better 
>for everyone?

Others made similar remarks, and normally I wouldn't disagree. In this case I'm 
not sure:
- I've been getting a bit of an idea about what's upstreamable and my 
modifications might not be, or not in a form that I am happy with. In the 
latter case I'd still be wanting to make my own take available. FWIW, most of 
the modifications I make aim at improving what I call the "KDE experience" 
(where that cannot be done directly in KDE code).
- Providing modified Qt behaviour through plugins rather than patches to apply 
to the Qt sources makes it easier for others to use them, which in turn should 
allow me to present a more mature and tested concept if and when I decide to go 
for upstreaming. In an ideal world and all that ;)
- In addition, that modified behaviour becomes available *now*, and not in some 
more or less far-off future version. That also has a practical consideration 
for me personally: I don't have the resources to maintain a development Qt 
install with all dependents to test things properly.

The cocoa QPA plugin isn't very big (QMacStyle certainly not) so keeping a fork 
in sync with upstream developments shouldn't be very hard even when done 
manually at intervals. With that it might be possible to build and use 
newer/development versions of those components with a Qt release version, no?

R.


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