On 18/04/12 11:33, John Layt wrote: > On Wednesday 18 Apr 2012 03:55:19 Nikos Chantziaras wrote: >> I went to register for a Gerrit account. There I saw that I must agree >> to a "contributor agreement". It's very legalese, so I'm not sure if it >> means what I think it means: Nokia can transform open source code I >> contribute into non-open code? >> > ... >> >> The beef is the phrase "under license terms of Nokia’s choosing", which >> can be an open license, but is not required to. >> >> Did I understand that correctly? > > Yes, you can find more details at [1]. The licence you grant Nokia is > required for two reasons: > > 1) For Qt Commercial to continue supporting the commercial users with the same > unified code base and preventing a fork. > > 2) For the Free Qt Foundation to allow all of Qt to be released under the BSD > if Nokia stops releasing Qt under a free licence. See [2] for details. > > It is a trade-off, but not entirely one-way. They get to sell your code, but > the money raised goes towards supporting Qt.
Just to make it clear: I don't have any problem whatsoever if they sell code. What I find problematic is transforming said code from open to closed source, thus allowing others to modify it without giving back the modifications. I suppose the deal with KDE to relicense under the BSD in case of a Qt close-up means the above problem would still be there even if relicensing under a proprietary license was not allowed in the agreement. (I'm not an RMS fan, btw. I do not believe that "all software should be free". I couldn't disagree more with that statement. I believe that software should be whatever its author wants it to be.) _______________________________________________ Interest mailing list Interest@qt-project.org http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/interest