Qt-interest Archive, May 2007
licensing question
Message 1 in thread
I am somewhat confused regarding "Using the Qt Open Source Edition,
can I make non-opensource software for internal use in my
company/organization?" question in Qt FAQ. My situation is somewhat
as follows: I'm developing core functionality of an application, that
(this core functionality) say consist of set of programs, accepting
input on standard input and printing results on standard output.
These programs do not use Qt, thus we haven't purchased a Qt license
for me. Further, my programs, when finalized, could be used as is,
and also from Qt based GUI (launched trough QtProcess mechanism). We
have a guy in team working on this, and a Qt license is purchased for
him. So far so good, I think, since I'm not touching any Qt code; same
guy will do GUI testing and anything else regarding development needed
to touch/use Qt. In the meantime, I'm testing my programs like any
simple command-line programs - preparing some text inputs in expected
format, and examining program outputs. But sometimes I'd like to
automate creation of test input files, and interpreting of results, so
I'd create some simple GUI to generate input files for my programs,
and a simple visualization or something alike to examine program
results. This code won't be in final product, moreover it would be
probably written in Python, that we (unfortunately ;-)) don't use for
production, so it wouldn't be possible at all for it to leak in
production. So would alike programs represent "software for internal
use", that is allowed to be developed using GPL-ed software (if I
understood GPL properly at all in that respect)? I'd like to
emphasize that I'm asking this really out of curiosity and wish to not
breach the license, mentioned programs would be very small and I can
equally easy build them using Tk or something alike, but I do like Qt
and would prefer to use it if possible. Further, while I obviously
don't understand license completely in that regard, I admit use I
described would be somewhat "unfair" even if allowed by license
legalese, because after all the arrangement would be that library is
used to help development of software that will be sold commercially.
But then, what would be exact (and not "for example") definition of
"internal distribution" in the sense of following question from GPL
FAQ: http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#InternalDistribution?
Seems to me that there exist an uncertainity regarding this, even
answer to above mentioned question from Qt FAQ starts with a resolute
"No", only to conclude after that it is "...recommended to use
commercial licenses for all internal software development". So - is
alike usage plainly forbidden, or only not recommended?
Thanks.
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