Licencing issue with Qt Open source

[BeS]

I don't know how about in your country, but in Poland it is called "stealing", as you're breaking the copyright.

Maybe in common speech some people will call it "stealing" because they have learned the term through the propaganda campaign by the industry. But if you look at the text of your law i'm confident that you find it in the section about copyright as copyright infringement and not in the section about criminal acts as theft.

[Brandybuck]

Maybe in common speech some people will call it "stealing" because they have learned the term through the propaganda campaign by the industry.

That "propaganda" was around long before software showed up on the scene. The common vernacular in English is to use "steal" for copying materials in violation of copyright. Like the "hacker versus cracker" argument, you are not going to be able to change the public's mind on this.

I brought up the bit about BSD licensed code being "stolen" because that's a very common argument against unrestricted (non-copyleft) licenses. Even, in fact, from people with fsf.org emails who should know better. That's what I meant about ideological blinders.

[BeS]

That "propaganda" was around long before software showed up on the scene. The common vernacular in English is to use "steal" for copying materials in violation of copyright.

If i violate copyright law, no public prosecutor will accuse me of "stealing" but of "copyright infringement" and no judge will adjudge me because i have "stolen" something but because i have infringed copyright. This are even two completely different sections in law.

Like the "hacker versus cracker" argument, you are not going to be able to change the public's mind on this.

I don't want to change publics mind but on the other hand i don't let the public (manipulated through the industry) change my mind and reality.
If i ask people what the consider as "stealing" most will describe it as something like "take something away from me", that means at the end the thief has something which i don't have anymore. This just dosn't happens if you copy a file or sourcecode. The only thing is that you violate copyright if the license doesn't allow you to copy my file.

I brought up the bit about BSD licensed code being "stolen" because that's a very common argument against unrestricted (non-copyleft) licenses.

I don't hear this argument very often and i think it's wrong. The disadvantage of non-copyleft Free Software compared to copyleft Free Software is, that the non-copyleft software can be turned into non-Free Software which than will deny users freedom and i consider this as a bad thing for society as a whole. But even if someone turns my non-copyleft Free Software into non-Free Software he has nothing "stolen" from me, i have nothing lost.
But i think we are way to much off-topic now.