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Qtopia - Licensing

Qtopia depends on Qt/Embedded. There are two types of third-party software in Qt/Embedded -

  1. Software compiled as part of the Qt library itself - Licenses
  2. Independent packages that may be added to enhance the capabilities of Qt - Licenses


Qtopia itself also includes software of the following types:

  1. Trolltech original software licensed under a full commercial license to commercial customers (Commercial Licensed Software).
  2. Trolltech original software licensed under the GNU General Public License, and additionally under a full commercial license to commercial customers (Dual Licensed Software).
  3. Third-party software licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL Licensed Software).
  4. Third-party software licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL Licensed Software).
  5. Third-party software licensed under liberal licenses (Very Free Software).

If modifications are made to Dual Licensed Software, this may effect your right to redistribute GPL Licensed Software that links with the Dual Licensed Software, unless the modifications are made available under the terms of the GPL.

If modifications are made to GPL Licensed Software, your right to redistribute that software is under the terms of the GPL.

If modifications are made to LGPL Licensed Software, your right to redistribute that software is under the terms of the LGPL.

Modifications to Very Free Software generally does not impose constraints upon redistribution.

A specific example case of Dual Licensed Software is the Media Player. The Media Player normally links with GPL Licensed Software such as the libmpeg3 plugin, and therefore if you make modifications to the Media Player, you must either make those modifications under the terms of the GPL, or you must not distribute the GPL Licensed Software that links with the Media Player, such as the libmpeg3 plugin.

This document is merely a guide. Full details of licensing is given in the license documents.

Non-Trolltech licensed software

Qtopia references some code that is not original code produced by Trolltech, but rather under specific licenses from the original authors. This page lists the licenses used for that code, names the authors, and links to the points where it is used.

Trolltech gratefully acknowledges these and others contribution to Qtopia. We recommend that all users of Qtopia also acknowledge these contributions, and quote all these license statements in an appendix to the documentation.


GSM is a codec optimised for recording human speech, and is used by the MediaRecorder.

The GSM code was extracted from verison 12.17.3 of the Sox sound tools. The author of Sox is Chris Bagwell <cbagwell at users.sourceforge.net>. Sox is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. More information can be found at http://spies.com/Sox/


Keypebble, the VNC client for Qtopia, is based on Keystone from the KDE project. Keystone and Keypebble are distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. The VNC server code in Qt/Embedded is copyright Trolltech.

A primary copyright holder is Richard Moore <rich@kde.org>.

This software owes a lot to Markus Wuebben's kvncviewer, which some of the code is derived from. Thanks also go to ORL for making the RFB protocol and servers GPL.


LibMAD is an integer-based MPEG audio decoder that supports all three MPEG Layers, and is used by the MediaPlayer.

The libmad library is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, Version 2. The primary copyright holder is Robert Leslie <rob@mars.org>. More information about the Mad library can be found at http://www.mars.org/home/rob/proj/mpeg/


Libflash renders Flash movies for the MediaPlayer.

The libflash library is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. The primary copyright holders are Olivier Debon <odebon@club-internet.fr> and Fabrice Bellard <fabrice.bellard@netgem.com>. More information about the Flash library can be found at http://www.swift-tools.com/Flash


QJpUnicodeConv and the classes that use it (QEucJisCodec, QJisCodec, QSJisCodec) are the copyright of Serika Kurusugawa. These classes provide conversion between different Japanese encodings and Unicode, and are used by the Qtopia server.
QObex links with OpenOBEX, which is an open source implementation of the Object Exchange (OBEX) protocol. This protocol is essentially a typed file-exchange protocol. OpenOBEX is distributed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). Primary copyright holders of OpenOBEX include Dag Brattli and Pontus Fuchs. QObex is used by Qtopia for infra-red communications.

The version of OpenOBEX included here includes some functions of GLIB, which is distributed under the terms of the GNU Library General Public License (LGPL). The primary copyright holders of GLIB are Peter Mattis, Spencer Kimball and Josh MacDonald. More information about OpenOBEX can be found at http://openobex.sourceforge.net/


QRsync links with librsync, which provides fast incremental file transfer in the style of rsync. Qtopia and QtopiaDesktop use QRsync for PIM data synchronization.

Librsync is distributed under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License. The primary copyright holder and and author is Martin Pool <mbp@samba.org>. The primary copyright holder and author for rsync is Andrew Tridgell <tridge@samba.org>. More information about librsync can be found at http://librsync.sourceforge.net


The CardMonitor applet is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License, Version 2. The CardMonitor applet monitors PCMCIA and CF card insertion and removal. The author and primary copyright holder of the CardMonitor applet is Devin Butterfield <dbutter@wireless.net>.
The FreeType library provides a clean-room implementation of TrueType font rendering.

FreeType is distributed under one of two licenses, either the GNU General Public License, or the FreeType License. More information about FreeType can be found at http://freetype.sourceforge.net/


The Terminal allows command-line access to the system and is used for development and debugging activities.

The Terminal (embeddedkonsole) is based on the KDE Konsole application and is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. A primary copyright holder of the code is Lars Doelle <lars.doelle@on-line.de>.


The atd program is based on Russ Nelson's lightweight At daemon. It is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. The atd program is based on Russ Nelson's lightweight At daemon. The At daemon will run a program at a specified time. It is distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License.
The avformat and avcodec code was extracted from the FFMPEG project. FFMPEG is a large project that allows recording, conversion and streaming of audio and video data. avformat and avcodec are used by the MediaPlayer.The author and primary copyright holder is Fabrice Bellard <fabrice.bellard at free.fr>. The FFMPEG project is distributed under the GNU Lesser General Public License. More information can be found at http://ffmpeg.sourceforge.net
This version of Pickboard is Dual Licensed Software. However, for you to be able to license the technology to others, you may require a T9(R) Text Input license from Tegic Communications Corporation. More information can be found at http://www.t9.com/.

The original Norgwegian translation of Qtopia was contributed by Frank Paul Silye <fpsilye@broadpark.no> and licensed for redistribution.


ALL MATERIALS, INFORMATION AND SOFTWARE INCLUDED IN OR AVAILABLE THROUGH OR IN CONNECTION WITH THIS DOCUMENT (THE "CONTENT") ARE PROVIDED "AS IS". THE CONTENT IS PROVIDED WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, TROLLTECH ON BEHALF OF ITSELF AND ITS LICENSORS AND SUPPLIERS, DOES NOT WARRANT THAT THE CONTENT IS ACCURATE, RELIABLE OR CORRECT; THAT ANY DEFECTS OR ERRORS WILL BE CORRECTED; OR THAT THE CONTENT IS FREE OF VIRUSES OR OTHER HARMFUL COMPONENTS. YOUR USE OF THE CONTENT IS SOLELY AT YOUR RISK.


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Qtopia version 1.7.0