Re: [Texmacs-dev] native and GPL port of QT to win32

[Joris van der Hoeven]

> > Though Qt is good technically, I tend not to trust the licensing
> > policies of TrollTech very much.
> >
> > Also I find it risky to base a win32 port, which is *very* important
> > to the commercial viability of a project on Qt *and* kde-cygwin. If
> > for some reason the development of kde-cygwin is stalled or Qt decide
> > to change their licensing policy, we would get into trouble.
> 
> David,
> such strong statements require some explanations.
> 
> 1: Why exactly don't you trust TrollTech licenses??
>    AFAIK, Qt/X11 is GPL licensed and GPL cannot be revoked for the code
>    already released into public. 
> 
> 2: What exactly do you mean by TeXmacs "commercial viability"?

In the future, we might be (or might not be, depending on how things will
work out) interesting in selling services around TeXmacs in order to
finance further development. For instance, David is going to have a one
year's contract from people who would be interested in such a project.
Unfortunately, it is difficult to finance software developement by
universities, so we have to keep all possibilities open.

>    Do you imply by any chance that win32 port of TeXmacs will be closed
>    source??

No, except if we would have to base such a port on Trolltech's Qt license,
which is non-free for windows. The best we could (from the users point
of view) in that case would be to distribute the binaries for free
(like in free bear).

But with Dan's work, the question becomes hypothetic,
because we will have a native Windows port, which is even better.

>    In TeXmacs documentation Joris gives some good reasons why
>    TeXmacs should (always) be open source. Has that policy changed
>    recently? 

No.