Linux Gaming, Qt Drama, New Hardware Kept Open-Source Enthusiasts Entertained This Month

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Linux Gaming, Qt Drama, New Hardware Kept Open-Source Enthusiasts Entertained This Month

During the course of April while much of the world was in lockdown, there were plenty of interesting happenings in the Linux/open-source and hardware space to keep enthusiasts interested while social distancing from the release of Linux 5.6 to the releases of Fedora 32 and Ubuntu 20.04 LTS, among other milestones...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=April-2020-Highlights

[Baguy]

I've since found out that KwinFT is actually not good for anyone. Roman has reverted all but two patches in upstream Kwin this year, and has been quite erratic... For example, back when he was finishing up scaling support in Wayland for Plasma 5.17, he deleted the original patch and rewrote it, which is why it didn't land till the later bug fix release of Plasma. And he never merged his final latency patches into kwin either.

https://cgit.kde.org/kwin.git/log/?q...r&q=roman+gilg

[eydee]

This month? It's the first day, it's too early to draw conclusions.

[oiaohm]

The Qt drama thread also ended with someone claiming Nokia and Qt wrote such a poor CLA that KDE actually now owned everything. Cringe.

Really I pointed to the historic agreements that cause that to be case and the holes in the Contributor agreement, Nokia put a hole in the Contributor agreement to allow LGPL works to be included in Qt.

https://www.phoronix.com/forums/foru...42#post1174142

Really go read that post 144Hz. There are two events that put a hole in the agreement.

1) The right to license under BSD that Trolltech gave KDE.
2) Nokia include of LGPL work in Qt so had to alter the contributor agreement not to breach LGPL.

Remember Nokia change to the CLA they had no interest in selling a commercial version of Qt for profit at the time.

So there are two groups parties that can come after "The Qt Company" hide if they decide to release commercial version without matching open source version.

KDE is really the only one in the position who could put forward the action to re-license the Qt code bases as a whole but even then they would have to get those holding the LGPL licensed sections to agree.

In some ways the simplest way have KDE free qt foundation re-license the complete Qt code base to LGPL so getting rid of all the complex contributor agreements and go back to something basic you submit code to Qt base it just has to be LGPL and done.

[oiaohm]

The Qt drama thread also ended with someone claiming Nokia and Qt wrote such a poor CLA that KDE actually now owned everything. Cringe.

This what you wrote here like it or not false. I never wrote that KDE owns everything in the other thread.

oiaohm That’s your non-professional opinion. KDE and Qt haven’t said or indicated they share this view.

No that is not my non-professional opinion its the opinion I got from legal 5 years ago when I was going to use Qt in a project and I had to put it though a full legal audit. The legal department was not exactly chuffed with what they found. Particular that the commercial version had LGPL code in it because of Nokia.

[oiaohm]

oiaohm Lol, did you pay for such advice? What a waste of money. Here’s your quote from #212 in the old thread: “144Hz basically you have had the out right owner of Qt wrong. KDE is legally basically the out right owner of Qt and its letting "the Qt Company" make money from Qt.” Now you claim that’s not the case. Please clarify your position.

https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/phoronix/general-discussion/1171418-more-open-source-participants-are-backing-a-possible-fork-of-qt/page22#post1174142

That the link and that section not referring nokia section of contract but the Trolltech section of contract.

The Qt drama thread also ended with someone claiming Nokia and Qt wrote such a poor CLA that KDE actually now owned everything. Cringe.

https://www.phoronix.com/forums/forum/phoronix/general-discussion/1171418-more-open-source-participants-are-backing-a-possible-fork-of-qt?p=1174142#post1174142

Now go read #216 I did 216 because it was well and truly possible that you would read it wrong.

KDE control come from Trolltech not Nokia. Nokia is the one that bring LGPL into the mess in a big way.

Basically out right owner is operationally can be the out right owner.

Does KDE own Qt? Y/N.

There is exact reason why I wrote it "Basically the out right owner" is because they are not fully the out right owner but for how they will use the contract it will not make any difference that they are not.

Does KDE own the LGPL 2.1 parts in Qt code base Nokia and other parties added answer is no they don't and if KDE are force relicensing all of Qt to LGPL 2.1 as the Trolltech causes allow they don't need to own these bits already under LGPL 2.1 already so missing that ownership makes no difference. The Qt Company would still be up the creek trying to sell commercial version with everything they do on Qt now LGPL. So from operational point of view you basically treat kde as the out right owner. The fact they are not does not really make an operational difference unless KDE decided to license to Qt code base to something other than a LGPL 2,1 compatible license.

In some ways Nokia was sneaky letting the LGPL 2.1 code in to Qt because this tied KDE hands from using any open source license as the Trolltech causes allow.

It is a true historic contract mess with Trolltech and Nokia both doing things in their own best interest at the time.

[skeevy420]

Shouldn't "Entertained This Month" be changed to "Entertained During April". Yeah, "This Month" is technically correct...but putting This Month in an article released 5 hours before This Month ends makes This Month appear to be May.