Re: Qt Xemacs ??

Simon> The only relevance of RMS opinion here seems to be that Simon> such code would not end up in Emacs. The FSF is the copyright holder on enough XEmacs code to block[1] any change that it thinks violates the GPL. I'm sure they would, too. Here is rms's opinion (reposted in full with his permission): ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [sjt] Under what conditions would the FSF permit XEmacs to distribute a version "intended" for linking only to the GPL-compatible versions of Qt? [rms] We would not give permission for that. [sjt] It has been suggested that a configure test that causes ./configure to issue a fatal "unsupported" error on any platform where Qt has no version distributed under a GPL-compatible license is sufficient. And of course no "gratuitous" support (eg, in Makefiles, documentation, or platform-specific files) for "unintended" platforms would be admitted. [rms] That is a very good approach. I thank whoever made the suggestion. It would be good to add comments next to these tests, saying that they are intended to warn people before they violate the GPL. The comments could say that removing the tests would not per se violate the GPL but linking with non-free Qt versions would violate it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Please do it this way, and add the config tests as early as possible. Once that's done, the legal issue is settled (pretty much as everyone expected). From now on it's up to technical review as usual. Resources you (ie, the core people on a Qt/KDE/XEmacs project) can request (with review and approval by the Board as usual): - a CVS branch. This would be a convenience if you have multiple developers, for merging new core code to your workspaces, and for communicating with beta testers. In general this is the preferred way to work on large speculative projects like supporting a new platform. - any new commit privileges to the core (needed to manage a branch). - a web page (eg, under Develop). Adrian Aichner is the guy to ask. You need separate CVS permissions to commit to the web page. - I recommend you should have discussions on xemacs-design, but a separate xemacs-qt mailing list would be considered if traffic seems to justify Let me know if there are other ways "the management" can help. N.B. None of the above is a promise, just a suggestion for how you can get started and eventually merge to trunk if things go well. Footnotes: [1] Technically, the developers involved could fight it, but I think the side with the bigger lawyer wins. -- Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN My nostalgia for Icon makes me forget about any of the bad things. I don't have much nostalgia for Perl, so its faults I remember. Scott Gilbert c.l.py