#21 licensing error

[stephan beal]

Hiya!

From the home page:

"In the spirit of the original SQLite source files, the
authors disclaim copyright to this source code. It may
be used as the basis for other programs, public domain,
open source or commercial. Do whatever you want with it."

Unfortunately, you can't do that. At least not with the
Qt-based front end. Qt is GPL, and GPL is viral,
meaning that all apps you write which use [the
non-commercial version of] Qt are also GPL.

:(

[Nobody/Anonymous]

Logged In: NO

This is not a problem according to FSF's interpretation page on compatible free licenses. Further, SQLite makes no restrictions either. See web page citations and excerpts below.

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http://www.sqlite.org/index.html

Sources are in the public domain. Use for any purpose.

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http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#SoftwareLicenses

Whether it is compatible with the GNU GPL. (This means you can combine a module which was released under that license with a GPL-covered module to make one larger program.)

Public Domain

Being in the public domain is not a license--rather, it means the material is not copyrighted and no license is needed. Practically speaking, though, if a work is in the public domain, it might as well have an all-permissive non-copyleft free software license. Public domain status is compatible with the GNU GPL.

[David Claughton]

Logged In: YES
user_id=1886638
Originator: NO

Not quite true actually.

Although the combined program is GPL - it's OK that parts of the source code fall under different licenses provided these licenses are compatible with the GPL. So you can combine BSD code with GPL code for example.

In this case PD isn't a licence as such, but the principle still holds.

See http://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.html#PublicDomain

[Mauricio Piacentini]

Hi. The binaries available for version 1.x were built with commercial versions of Qt, fully licensed. I did not use the GPL version of Qt.
The browser code is public domain, but the end product depends on which Qt license you accept and how you link it (statically or not). The binaries available for version 2 were linked dynamically against the LGPL version of Qt 4.6.
In any event, I believe your understanding of the compatibility between GPL and public domain is not right. From the FSF pages:

http://www.fsf.org/licensing/licenses/gpl-faq.html#CombinePublicDomainWithGPL

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If a program combines public-domain code with GPL-covered code, can I take the public-domain part and use it as public domain code?

You can do that, if you can figure out which part is the public domain part and separate it from the rest. If code was put in the public domain by its developer, it is in the public domain no matter where it has been.

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