Re: Qt "stuck" at v5.6 in SFOS
 

That interpretation is still wrong. The "transfer of the right of possession" does not happen just because the museum lends you a tablet. That would imply that you can assign possession to someone else other than you or the museum, and that the museum would not be able to reclaim the possession of the tablet, which is also absurd.

But, again, this is precisely the item mentioned in the FAQ...

Re: Qt "stuck" at v5.6 in SFOS
 

Nope, the act of lending is one form of a "transfer of the right of possession".
And while the act of stealing does not include an explicit "transfer of the right of possession", it results in a "adverse possession".

No, because a "transfer of the right of possession" only allows the recipient to possess something (and that may be additionally limited in time and space), not (necessarily / implicitly / usually) to "transfer of the right of possession" again. I.e., it is not (automatically) transitive.
It takes "ownership" (being almost equal to but exactly a subset of having "property rights" of something) to be able to "transfer the right of possession" at free will.

I assume(d) that I was only given the "right of possession and usage" of that "museum tablet", likely limited to (have not read the contract details, wanted to see classical Dutch paintings) the duration of my visit, the museum grounds etc.

Re: Qt "stuck" at v5.6 in SFOS
 

I don't know where you are getting this from, is it a local thing? Can you provide some source on that?

It looks as if you are understanding this in the opposite way to everyone else, including the authors of the GPLv3 (thus your insistent contradiction of the GPLv3 FAQ).

E.g.

Re: Qt "stuck" at v5.6 in SFOS
 

Yes, but why don't you just read the source you quoted, its definition proper (and first sentence!):
"The right of possession (jura possessionis) means that someone currently holds something in hand and this person may be the temporary keeper or the long-term owner of an object."
But its wording is very colloquially ("holds something in hand"), hence imprecise, and it consistently (also in the examples) adds the irrelevant aspect that that entity may also be the owner.

A brief and concise source for separating these rights properly is the "Updated November 4, 2020" paragraph here (the remainder of the article is only about property rights).
If you want to read for hours (it is really interesting): This site explains the basic terms and concepts, commonalities and differences of British, US-American, French and German law. But you will not find a significant difference WRT these fundamental terms and concepts, as they all root in Roman law.


As you seem to be quite emotional about this topic, you may expect others to be equally emotional about the GPLv3.
To me "it is what it is", one just should be aware of its true properties when utilising it!
Or as @rinigus expressed that WRT all *GPL* licenses:
One may call the the wording and consequences of the *GPLv3 "absurd", but it does not matter for most private use cases: I.e., when the "user" of the software is the owner of the device it runs on.

Side note: The suggestion to alter the term "user" to "licensee" (or a definition of "licensee"; as in most other FLOSS licenses, including the GPLv2 & LGPLv2.1), and to "device owner" specifically for the "Anti-TiVo section" was brought to the FSF's attention in the GPLv3 consultation process (ca. 15 years ago). That would have expressed the publicly stated goals of the GPLv3 properly. But obviously the switch to "user" in the first place, plus ignoring that input was done deliberately.

Thus "it is what it is", including its properties which make *GPLv3 software unsuitable for use cases, in which the software user in possession of a device (on which this software runs) is not the owner of that device.


P.S.: What gets me started are interpretations or statements about FLOSS licenses, which are not backed by the specific license in question.

Re: Qt "stuck" at v5.6 in SFOS
 

See below an exchange in Telegram that I put below that provides some insight from Andrew, working for Jolla.
I am pretty sure he cannot say this is the official view but it helps understanding the official position:

Re: Qt "stuck" at v5.6 in SFOS
 

The main problem here is that people tend to accompany definitions with examples precisely in order to clarify these definitions, and at this point we have at least two different sources (the GPLv3 FAQ itself, and Wikipedia -- the latter arguably not worth much) with multiple examples that directly contradict your position, and instead agree with mine.

Finally, sources!!!

So it is a "local" thing... do note that there is no "possession" vs "ownership" as separate words neither in France nor in Spain at least, and while the concepts are there, the word equivalent to "possession" is actually closest to "ownership" as the ultimate superset of rights.

But I see the concern nonetheless.

... sigh. What did you expect on this forum, really? That most of us who came here did it only because of the colorfulness of the Nokia tune? This forum is all full of free software fanatics because one of the biggest draws of these devices where that they were running way more free software than anything else in existence. At least at that point.

And by the way I do not know what you expect to gain from repeating things like that on every post. You have been hammering your agenda since post #1:


Source?
Or are you saying _you_ brought it to their attention?

Not to mention that "licensee" is actually an even more complicated definition......

So again let me summarize your point of view:
You think that lending a device with GPLv3 software requires distribution of source code, encryption keys, etc. in order to comply with the GPLv3 requirements.
You think that the authors of the GPLv3 have done this explicitly, by making deliberately confusing definitions in the license text.
You also think that the authors of the GPLv3 are further lying by misrepresenting the stated goals of the GPLv3 in the supporting materials such as the preamble or the FAQs vs the actual license.
You also think that they are doing this misrepresentation deliberately to support some agenda.

Forgive me if I have difficulties believing that.
Even less when about half of the other assertions you have been making on this thread were gross exaggerations or false.

Re: Qt "stuck" at v5.6 in SFOS
 

Why would you give the name away, then? :P

Even if you were to do an interpretation of the license like the above, all you'd have to do as the "corporate customer" is to claim that you are not giving away possession of the device, just usage.

This reminds me of all the scaremongering about GPLv2 at companies, where there were worries that _employees_ could sue the company when they were given copies of internal closed-source software linked with GPLv2 code. This also directly contradicts the FAQ (and 2).

Not to mention that I find the entire "company device" excuse paper-thin. The entire reason for this is likely to prevent "unauthorized" or "unauthorizedly modified" devices from joining the company network. Well, you can just write on a paper that only "authorized" devices with "authorized software" are permitted to join the network; likely your company already has this. Even if the GPLv3 were to turn out to allow the employees to modify the software on phones they don't own (something I still don't see), it for sure does not force you to accept these modified devices from joining your corporate network (or accessing its services), at the risk of unlawful intrusion. The phones will still work with all their functionality intact, but the remote service won't answer. Obviously nothing prevents the phone from lying and claiming to be "authorized software" at this point, but nothing prevented it before either...

I'd have a bigger problem with excuses such as in IVI/cars where there may be actual legal impediments (at least in some countries) to the manufacturer actually giving you, the rightful owner of the car, control over the device software. But this is not Jolla's situation, last that I knew...

Re: Qt "stuck" at v5.6 in SFOS
 

Why would I not give his name given this is public information? Maybe you think this is from a private chat between him and me but no, this is freely available in the SFOS telegram chatroom. I thought this was relevant to this conversation and I wanted to make sure this is from a Jolla employee. Otherwise, there is always someone to ask you who is the source, and where you get the info...etc... :D

Regarding your second statement, maybe you should support and help Jolla and other companies, maybe as a lawyer consultant, to provide them with the proper use of GPLv3?

For info, I know quite a famous example in France of a company avoiding GPLv3.
An internet provider (FREE) have FOSS in boxes (modem, set-top boxes), see the list of free software in https://floss.freebox.fr/ and you will see that they avoid GPLv3 software too.
In this case, we are talking about a relatively big company (at least for France) so I do not think this is only a problem of Jolla being too small.
FREE (the company, I know their name is not easy to use in sentences along with FOSS :P) had many complaints in the past from the FOSS community. It went to court afaik at several occasions, and one important part of the defense of FREE is that the boxes are not sold but remain its property, and so they are only giving the usage to their customers in a large network. Still they do not use GPLv3.
Hope that helps.

Re: Qt "stuck" at v5.6 in SFOS
 

They are using Qt 5.9......

But not over this issue, right?

Which makes little sense, because I am legally allowed to just ditch their box and use mine, and they can't really use encryption to prevent that ... (though due to some sheninangs, I am still forced to rent their box).

Re: Qt "stuck" at v5.6 in SFOS
 

and they use the licence LGPL afaik

the claim is usually to ask for the modifications to FOSS indeed. I am not sure that they do that anymore.
Why would it be on GPLv3 that they do not have?

indeed you are not obliged to use their modem.
The issue between FOSS and FREE are not that acute anymore, I believe. But I wanted to try another example than Jolla.