“This editorial by James Ramsey “attempts to counter Troll
Tech’s apparent misconceptions about the QPL/GPL controversy, and
attempts to walk through the GPL to explain why it conflicts with
the QPL.“
“QPL 2.0 is coming. In my opinion, this is a great development
that will hopefully end this whole messy controversy with the QPL
and the GPL. Why, then, am I even bothering to write this?”
“There are two reasons. First, I’ve being following the QPL/GPL
controversy for a while, trying to sort out what exactly is going
on. It has taken me some time to sift through all the discussion
and the flames, and one thing I’ve noticed is that there hasn’t
been a point-by-point explanation of why the QPL and GPL supposedly
conflict. Second, I think Troll Tech only halfway understands why
the QPL and GPL supposedly conflict, and if it doesn’t fully
understand the reasons for the conflict, it may only turn the QPL
from one possibly GPL-incompatible license to another. The
editorial that Eirik Eng from Troll Tech posted, in my opinion,
seemed to indicate a very partial understanding on Troll Tech’s
part. While I agree with its conclusions that the “patch clause”
and clause 6c of the QPL should be nixed, I found that it did a
poor job of rebutting the arguments claiming that the QPL and GPL
conflict. It seemed to me that Eirik Eng, at least, was rebutting
some of the noise surrounding the QPL/GPL controversy, rather than
dealing with the crux of the controversy itself. Therefore, I’m
going to go out on a limb and try to detail the argument of why the
QPL and GPL conflict, based on what I’ve observed from the various
discussions, flamewars, etc.”