Thinking on the issue of licensing and KDE, an old hymn came to the mind of OfB’s Tim Butler. “As it was in the beginning, is now, And ever shall be…” Yes, the issue of licensing has been a perennial problem for the Free/Open Source desktop and he suggests its biggest licensing issue remains: the GPL. Read more at OfB.biz
It is more the price, the entry point for Qt is very steep, not very expensive for big companies, but very expensive for small developers, shareware developers, small software shops.
One solution out of this would be some kind of reduced Qt light license with a subset of the original Qt, which could be enough for most shareware authors.
Another one would be a small volume/shareware/non gpl oss author license with a less steep entry fee point.
> very expensive for small developers, shareware developers, small software shops.
Trolltech has always said that they are open to special deals for those and start-ups. Just contact them!
Having looked at the prices of the personal editions of other toolkits, all I can say is it would be nice to be able to get Qt for about USD $100 to $250 as long as it has most if not all of the features of the GPL version. Trolltech can still make money off of that, and I have no doubt that they will get more customers, plus large companies can still be expected to get business/corporate versions.
Just my $0.02, are you listening Trolltech? 🙂
Well I saw this article some mins ago after waking up and was reading it. The first impression I got was that the guy was only repeating the very old fears from people like a programmed robot only to stirr up worries of people. I don’t think this is the right tactics to have people switch from KDE to something else.
Besides this a bunch of his arguments are quite wrong too. First of all There are plenty leading Distributions out there who have KDE as default Desktop and the amount of people using KDE these days have never been that big as it is today, not alone for the wrong choices made by GNOME. Even some key Editors of this site have been switching away from GNOME to use XFCE. Novell’s main Desktop is not Ximian D2 basicly they haven’t settled which Desktop to use and from what I heard Novell’s president is switching away resources of people who initially worked on GNOME to now work on something else. Also the facts that if QT becomes propritary again that it means the dead end of KDE is pretty much wrong. But diving deeper into this argument would be quite boring since it has been repeated many times now that this will not happen. There are signed license agreements that if Trolltech shuts down or if anything problematic will happen that QT will turn into a totally free (the way Tim wants it) license.
He is also diving into the comments that you don’t need to pay licenses when developing for MacOSX or Windows. But he is forgetting to mention that you need to PAY for MacOSX and Windows as well as for Windows’ development suite to get work done. So where is this money going to go ? The dual licensing ain’t bad and keeps people doing free licenses. Companies can easily focus and write propritary applications and money don’t seem to be an big issue either as we have recently seen. Nokia and Google spent 50.000 USD and more to the GNOME Foundation for basicly nothing. So the big money issue is absurd.
Imagine this, he said that small companies can’t pay the money for creating closed source applications and make some money with. Now see Trolltech as this small company too, how should they make money and keep their employees happy, if they are not allowed to make a few bucks off of it ?
Another key factor is the RAD (Rapid Application Development) the time you invest and the cost of it afterwards. I do come from the GTK+ and GNOME camp and thus know the quirks and isues from GTK+ and GNOME and how problematic it can be rewriting huge leaps of code and refactor all the stuff only to fit the new situation. The amount of manhours that companies need to pay their employees hacking with GTK+ comes close to the money they need to pay for QT but have their employees and developers be more productive.
Now he is also talking about GTK+ and GNOME all the time but forgets to mention (probably on purpose) how many issues GNOME as Desktop has. It made a lot of people angry, a lot of people simply switch to alternatives and stuff as of now are hardly working satisfying enough and leave a bad taste of incompleteness in the heads of people. Changing all this will take time, a lot of time. Then there are the worries that GNOME is being canned up different languages for a basic system. As of now you require Python, C, C++ maybe pretty soon MONO too only to set up a working system. Sure a normal user probably doesn’t care. But as a developer I know that the more different languages get involved, the more bindings used the more problems can show up. Such as the interfaces to these bindings and languages may be incomplete, show a different look or feel of the application or in case of crashes it confuses people or require people with high technical skills to react on it or report things properly. All the stuff is not existing for KDE who primarily requires C++ only for all of it’s Desktop. So people, users and developers know what’s going on.
Irrelevant to the dual licensing issue KDE is a very good Desktop solution that doesn’t leave any expectations open. Personally I believe that KDE is even in the position to easily compete with commercial players such as Microsoft. The software keeps working and the overal look and feel is quite pleasing and professional. Something I wasn’t able to say with the counterpart GNOME that I kept using and even programming for the past years. I don’t want to discredit GNOME as a Desktop alternative, but I simply know to much about it to say that it’s not going to hit the roads. Too much marketing and technical blah blah than what’s really being shown to the public.
So please dear readers, don’t get stuck with badly researched articles from people, who like, Tim used to be die hard KDE guys but then changed the sides because of personal issues that they now like to show in the public.
Qt is a very nice toy, but if you compare with M$ Visual Studio.NET the gap betwen the M$VS and Qt is far bigger then Qt/GTK+. And the price is close to equal. Yes, Qt is multiplatform, but the 1-5 percent of users who are uses linux on desktop IMHO not enought reason for the most of companies to choose Qt instead of M$VS.
>but if you compare with M$ Visual Studio.NET
You compare a toolkit to an IDE?
>You compare a toolkit to an IDE?
I compare a complete solutions.
>I compare a complete solutions.
Nope, you do not. You compared Qt, a toolkit, to Visual Studio, an IDE.
What you should compare is:
Qt against MFC
or
Qt against .NET
or
Visual Studio + MFC against Visual Studio + Qt
or
Visual Studio + MFC against KDevelop + Qt
or
…
Please compare apples to apples….
The outcome would be even worse for Qt then
Ever tried mono/gtk#? That’s a nice modern development environment not like this C++ stuff in M$VS, QT or gtkmm.
> Nokia and Google spent 50.000 USD and more to the GNOME Foundation
If you refer to Google bounties, the GNOME foundation gets only 500 USD for each and as there are 12 accepted GNOME bounties it sums up to only 6.000 USD.
Well, KDE Free Qt foundation only guarantees that this will happen if Qt/Free is ended. The problem I describe has nothing to do with that. Read what I say again. This is a different issue.
I do not ignore the problems with GNOME, rather I’ve addressed those earlier. If I wrote on them every time I mentioned GNOME, I could never write anything new! 🙂
Now, about having personal issues with KDE, please tell me more, because I’m unaware of any. I happen to disagree with its direction, but I have no issues with it or its people. I know a number of KDE developers that are, at the least, good acquaintances. I switched when I felt GNOME saw the direction of the desktop in a more proper light, as I’ve written before. No more, no less.
Well,
ATM KDE and GNOME are duplicating a lot of work. Choose one toolkit and go with that. So we double the developers of the toolkit which can, say, focus on performance or whatever they need to focus at and the KDE and GNOME folks will just implement different approaches to the desktop. Where’s the problem? They will share a common toolkit which will help A LOT and also remove a lot of problems. But I’m afraid this will never happen anyway, so I’m just giving my opinion.
Regards
ATM KDE and GNOME are duplicating a lot of work. Choose one toolkit and go with that. So we double the developers of the toolkit which can, say, focus on performance or whatever they need to focus at and the KDE and GNOME folks will just implement different approaches to the desktop. Where’s the problem? They will share a common toolkit which will help A LOT and also remove a lot of problems. But I’m afraid this will never happen anyway, so I’m just giving my opinion.
Highly unlikely indeed. The Qt/KDE guys will rightfully claim that their toolkit is technically superior, while the Gnome/GTK+ camp will rightfully claim that their toolkit is more free (as in beer and speech). You see the problem, right? Neither side is willing to give up the toolkit that they refer to as superior.
I don’t think that this is necessarily a bad thing. It may be a bit of a cliché, but competition is good. Some may argue that the cost of competition is duplicate effort, but I do not think it is duplicate. Both projects adopted/developed a messaging system, for example. Same goal, but a different implementation. And the implementation of the idea is what makes it unique and therefore not duplicate.
As long as both projects adhere to certain standards to guarantee interoperability, there should not be One toolkit imo.
another article of i know better , all who think different are wrong .
I think there are are four possibilities:
1 – Opensource development, qt application: release application as GPL, noy a problem.
2 – Opensource development, kde application: release application as GPL, not a problem.
3 – Closed source development, qt application: release application as GPL, or buy commercial licence from Trolltech.
4 – Closed source development, kde application: release application as GPL. You cannot buy a license for the kde libs.
So the only option for a commercial shop doing closed source app development is Qt development using a commercial Qt license.
I think this is completely fair: Earn money by selling a closed source app ? Buy a Qt license.
Maybe it is possible the license the KDE libs as LGPL so it will be possible to buy a commercial license for QT and link agains LGPL Kde libs. Don’t know if this is legally possible.
> Maybe it is possible the license the KDE libs as LGPL so it will be possible to buy a commercial license for QT and link agains LGPL Kde libs. Don’t know if this is legally possible.
Breaking news: KDELibs _are_ LGPL, so you can write closed source software for KDE without problems, as long you have purchased Qt.
I gave you a negative vote for not doing your homework
People like you give good things bad names. I hope you’re proud of yourself.
Its annoying how he sometimes uses “commercial software” to mean something that is incompatible with the GPL when he really means “proprietary, closed software”. Even more annoying is how he purposely confuses no-cost with liberty. I suggest that the people most fearful of the GPL seem to be those who don’t want level playing fields. It is unfortunate that fundamentally they don’t get it. Fortunately, no one is forcing anyone to do anything — choose what works best for you and perhaps one day these free-lunch pundits can spare us the crocodile tears.
Well,
ATM KDE and GNOME are duplicating a lot of work. Choose one toolkit and go with that. So we double the developers of the toolkit which can, say, focus on performance or whatever they need to focus at and the KDE and GNOME folks will just implement different approaches to the desktop. Where’s the problem? They will share a common toolkit which will help A LOT and also remove a lot of problems. But I’m afraid this will never happen anyway, so I’m just giving my opinion.
Regards
How do you propose we make people choose? F/OSS doesn’t have a CEO that can tell people what to do.
Maybe it is possible the license the KDE libs as LGPL so it will be possible to buy a commercial license for QT and link agains LGPL Kde libs. Don’t know if this is legally possible.
It obviously is possible as the KDE libs are licensed under the LGPL. They probably link against QT using the QPL.
See this page for most info. Only one of the KDE libs are GPL
http://developer.kde.org/documentation/licensing/licensing.html
I found this funny:
It would take time away from more “pragmatic,” “critical” projects for the end users.
Just say those words in the extragerated scarcastic style that Tim probably meant and it reminds me of a Chris Farley skit where he complains about getting fired for (exagerated finger quotation marks) “not taking a shower” and “having anger issues” and other valid things.
Pragmatic, critical projects sounds like the sort of things KDE should be working on. Its almost like Tim is trying to talk himself out of it.
Breaking news: KDELibs _are_ LGPL, so you can write closed source software for KDE without problems, as long you have purchased Qt.
And even if they weren’t, you could still do what Opera does, use QT without KDE libs. Isn’t the primary advantage of using QT is that it is available on so many different platforms…way more than KDE is?
(For example, Windows and QTopia)
> Isn’t the primary advantage of using QT is that it is available on so many different platforms…way more than KDE is?
For KDE4, it’s planned to support OSX and Windows natively. KDE should on par with Qt by then.
All this effort on cross-platform when KDE itself needs major work on Linux. It just does not make any sense.
In fact, Qt screwed Unix on the desktop forever
The license of QT is a barrier to acceptance of the KDE Desktop. Don’t just reply “no it isn’t” and think about that. It doesn’t mean that the license of QT has prevented KDE from growing, or that QT sucks, or that Gnome is better, or that no commercial applications exist for KDE. It means simply that because of the license of QT, some developers choose to use another platform.
Is this a big deal? Well, KDE is still an option for most distros, and the default for two of the larger ones. People develop it, use it, like it. But you lose Nokia, you lose Sun, and you lose being the default desktop of any operating sytem targeting the enterprise corporate market. Maybe you don’t think it’s a big deal, and maybe it’s not. After all, open source software doesn’t die because it’s not on Nokia’s handheld or on Sun’s workstations.
But do realize: just because it doesn’t matter to you, that doesn’t mean the problem doesn’t exist. It’s simply that different people care about different things. When people point out the problems with the licensing, they are not trying to hurt you but instead to tell you why they have to seek alternatives.
Besides haven’t been able to read so much trolling comments made by you there is something I need to correct.
> But you lose Nokia, you lose Sun, and you lose
> being the default desktop of any operating sytem
> targeting the enterprise corporate market.
Throw an eye on the Trolltech site and have a look what coperation partners there are for the enterprise corporate market. Besides that GNOME lost HP and even SUN drove back with the long praised 1mio Chinese customers. And KDE won Wienna and you GNOME lost Munich.
I agree about the price of commercial licences for Qt – they are staggeringly high. But I suppose a big software house like Adobe has more than enough money, and they rely on those that don’t being able to persuade a venture capital company to lend them a relatively small sum of money. Let’s face it, ordinary people find loans for houses in London, and they cost upwards of UKP 200,000 – Qt only costs €2,630 for one platform, and twice that for all three.
Anyway what happened to all the benefits of open source? The wider range of eyes leading to bugs getting fixed quicker and more security? Anyway, where are all the little software houses developing low-cost closed software for the GTK toolkit? I’ve never seen closed commercial software for GTK, nor any shareware scene for Gnome. I don’t think the community would accept it.
Actually there is a lot non-GPL GTK-software and have been for a long time, examples are the Yahoo and AOL official Linux/Unix chat clients, the Netscape browser, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Applixware Office used GTK, the Opera browser shipping with the Nokia 770 is using GTK, Wing IDE, Real Player and more.
Actually there is a lot non-GPL GTK-software and have been for a long time, examples are the Yahoo and AOL official Linux/Unix chat clients, the Netscape browser, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Applixware Office used GTK, the Opera browser shipping with the Nokia 770 is using GTK, Wing IDE, Real Player and more.
Fair enough. But there’s nothing like the shareware scene you have for Mac OS X. I was pretty surprised when I started getting the Mac magazines (Mac Format, MacWorld) here in the UK and discovered that most of the software on the cover disks is either shareware, demo or by-agreement free beer. The vast majority of GTK software is open-source, and even Netscape is just a closed variant of a free package (Firefox).
Yes, there is NEROLinux, using GTK as toolkit. And I would say that NERO is a commercial product…
http://www.nero.com/eng/NeroLINUX.html
AndyZ
“the KDE Project should consider abandoning Qt for the eventual release of KDE 4”
[/i]”…either wrapping KDE around another library, such as GTK+, or perhaps simply building a better, Qt compatible, library in the same vein as the old Harmony project that sought to do just that in the KDE 1.x era”[/i]
This guy don’t know what he is talking about, or he is just spreading FUD. This is getting really, really old and boring.
You don’t like KDE? Fine, leave it alone. You want to use QT, one of the best toolkits out there? Either write Free Software, or pay the license. It’s as simple as that. Don’t want to pay for writing propietary apps? Use something else, but quit whining.
“You don’t like KDE? Fine, leave it alone. You want to use QT, one of the best toolkits out there? Either write Free Software, or pay the license. It’s as simple as that. Don’t want to pay for writing propietary apps? Use something else, but quit whining.”
Well, not everybody is a developer – the author of the article isn’t – so he does NOT want to use QT to develop apps. He merely “whines” about the license isssue preventing _others_ from writing QT apps. In fact that’s a legitimate ‘fear’ anyone who really likes KDE may have. It all depends on what you want or need. KDE could be ‘the thing’ for him, but because others can’t use it (license) it COULD be better… well, you ge the idea.
Well, not everybody is a developer – the author of the article isn’t – so he does NOT want to use QT to develop apps. He merely “whines” about the license isssue preventing _others_ from writing QT apps. In fact that’s a legitimate ‘fear’ anyone who really likes KDE may have. It all depends on what you want or need. KDE could be ‘the thing’ for him, but because others can’t use it (license) it COULD be better… well, you ge the idea.
KDE developers are not worried at all, and they know better than me. Why should I, as a user? At least they know what to use and have a direction. Gnome people still has to decide if they are going to use Java, Mono, or stick with C (which they won’t get them anywhere)
But you lose Nokia, you lose Sun, and you lose being the default desktop of any operating sytem targeting the enterprise corporate market.
Sorry, but both Nokia and Sun are totally unimportant players on the desktop. And why should you lose being the default desktop of any operating sytem targeting the enterprise corporate market? These enterprise corporate desktops are not aimed at developers anyway, so it does not matter if the toolkit they use is GPL or LGPL.
Maybe you don’t think it’s a big deal, and maybe it’s not. After all, open source software doesn’t die because it’s not on Nokia’s handheld or on Sun’s workstations.
Yes, I think it is not a big deal. I am interested in free software and for this the GPL is the right license. I even think that too much cooporate influence is a bad thing and GNOME is a good example for it.
I think what alot of people are failing to grasp about opensource is this; they assume because it isn’t ‘mainstream’ or ’embraced by a big company’ that some how the whole project is going to die.
From what I see, KDE has never been stronger, its going from strength to strength; make the installation extremely easy for those distros that don’t have it available by default, and you’ll find that KDE will gradually creep onto Joe Average desktop, even when the distribution may concerntrate only on GNOME.
I think some people here (I’m obviously pointing it at the guy who you replied to), who need to get it through their head that just because something is pre-loaded or mainstream, it doesn’t automatically ‘dying’ or ‘obsolete’.
What I’m sure they can’t hear anymore is stuff like this:
“Unless KDE can get Trolltech to release Qt/X11 under the LGPL, or at least get a guarantee that Qt/Commercial licenses will never go above a certain price and never have any more restrictions in usage than the present EULA has”
The KDE project has communicated and dealt with Trolltech (GPL versions, KDE Free Qt Foundation) so that all KDE’s needs are fulfilled and Free Software future is assured.
Why do people demand from the KDE project to also care about proprietary companies’ interest? Can’t those talk and deal themselves with Trolltech!? Make a special contract with Trolltech or if you are a big company put the money where your mouth is and buy Trolltech.
“Why do people demand from the KDE project to also care about proprietary companies’ interest? Can’t those talk and deal themselves with Trolltech!? Make a special contract with Trolltech or if you are a big company put the money where your mouth is and buy Trolltech.” Because people are users. User of KDE maybe. User want a broad range of applicatins available.
The Qt license kind of limits this. Simple enough?
The author of the article is either a clueless idiot or a regular troll. Someone should read up on the Free Qt foundation.
In the worst case scenarioes he describes Qt would automatically be released under a BSD license, due to the agreement between Trolltech and KDE e.v.
The Free Qt foundation is about ensuring all-time availability of Qt for Free Software developers. The author is hammering on availability/prices/EULA for proprietary development.
If there was ever a good move, it would be fore Trolltech andRealBASIC to merge into one company, base the next version of RealBASIC on Qt – for Mac, X11 and Windows; it would move the primary motive for profit generation away from charging for the framework and put it back into the camp of providing cross platform RAD tools for developers.
RealBASIC + Qt multiplatform capabilities, sell the whole thing for US$399 for a commercial licence, 3 years software update support, and believe me, it would be a damn fine deal for people who wish to deploy Linux/Mac and Windows desktops, and need to migrate their quick and dirty VB solutions from the Windows world to a multiplaform world.
Firstly the licenscing costs are not particularly significant for propietary software developers. Sure it may impact the smallest of such companies but the prices that QT charges are completely in line with other propietary software development environments. Simply put this, the price issue, is a non-issue for the overwhelming majority of propietary software companies. This argument is simply a red-herring and is, as such, completely disengenuous.
The straw that broke the camel’s back was, however, when Mr. Butler suggested KDE4 abandon QT. This suggestion is just blatant trollish flamewar inducing behavior. All that Mr. Butler succeeded in doing in suggesting such is to reveal how little grip on reality he has. For the life of me I cannot understand someone prefering one desktop vs. another yet feeling the need to so viciously attack and or insult those who prefer another desktop. Ok a little jabbing here or there is not the end of the world- but this suggestion is just a blatant disregard for the entire QT/KDE community. What irks me is that he, Mr. Butler, knows this.
People who have read what I hve written know that I prefer GNOME. But I couldn’t be bothered trying to dream up such non-issues to smear the KDE community. Perhaps he did not think this was the result of what he wrote- but QT is what enables KDE to be KDE-without QT KDE as a project would simply cease to exist. I guess this is somewhat simliar to asking the GNOME folks to drop their dependency on GTK/Glib- if such were to happen in what way would this still be GNOME ?
And all of this at a time when KDE is preparing to embrace QT4 which undoubtedly will bring many incredible enhancements and new technologies to the plate. What utter nonsense.
Me: So, if I develop an app and license it under the GPL do I have to pay for a developer license?
Trolltech: No, you only need to pay for a developer license if you’re developing commercial software.
Me: So I’m not allowed to sell my GPL app?
Trolltech: Yes, you are, but it must be licensed under the GPL.
Me: So what you mean when you say “commercial software” is actually “proprietary software”.
Trolltech: Yes.
Me: So why don’t you say that?
Trolltech: Huh? Oh, yeah, right, ok.
Me: So what if I want to write a BSD-style licensed app?
Trolltech: You can do that, but you have to license it under the GPL.
Me: Huh? So you’re saying I can’t do that.
Trolltech: We’re saying you don’t need a developer license.
Me: Oh, ok. So what happens if I develop my app, releasing it under the GPL, for say, 3 years and then I decide I want to close the source code and release future versions as propertary software.
Trolltech: You will need to buy a developer license.
Me: Now or then?
Trolltech: What?
Me: Do I have to buy the license now or do I have to buy it in 3 years time?
Trolltech: Oh, umm, ya know, I guess you would only have to buy it in 3 years time.
Me: So if I develop my app completely in house for 3 years and never release it under the GPL do I need to buy a license now or in 3 years time.
Trolltech: Oh, you need to buy the license now.
Me: Huh? So if I distribute my software under the GPL for 3 years whilst I’m developing it, I don’t have to buy a license but if I don’t distribute my software during those 3 years I do?
Trolltech: Yes, that’s right.
Me: Well if I’m not distributing the toolkit how can you force me to buy a license? After all, that’s the point of a license isn’t it, to give me permission to distribute the software?
Trolltech: No, developers pay for the license, not users.
Me: huh? If I’m sitting in the comfort of my own home using the GPL version of your toolkit to develop software how can you force me to purchase a license if I decide to release my software under a non-GPL license?
Trolltech: You MUST buy a license BEFORE you start development.
Me: What if I start development before I aquire a license?
Trolltech: We will not sell you a license.
Me: Tell ya what, this is so confusing I’m gunna go use something else.
Trolltech: Sorry to hear that.
Me: So if I develop my app completely in house for 3 years and never release it under the GPL do I need to buy a license now or in 3 years time.
Trolltech: Oh, you need to buy the license now.
The Trolltech guys are clearly wrong here. The GPL allows you to use GPL’ed libraries in a closed app for as long as you don’t distribute that software. The GPL only tells that if someone has got the binary from you (you may even ask a huge pile of money for that binary) – you must provide him the source code under the GPL license.
I have to first start by saying it sounds like you came to the call with no intention of liking any answer they might have given you but I would like to ask when you were having this conversation was it with someone that would be expected to know the legal intricacies of using their products in your application development like maybe a sales rep? I would not expect every person I talk to at the company to be able to answer those types of questions.
Anyway what happened to all the benefits of open source? The wider range of eyes leading to bugs getting fixed quicker and more security? Anyway, where are all the little software houses developing low-cost closed software for the GTK toolkit? I’ve never seen closed commercial software for GTK, nor any shareware scene for Gnome. I don’t think the community would accept it.
The latest VMWare is Gnome HIG compliant and uses GTK+
VMWare is hardly a “small software house”, is it? The issue was about those small 1-5 person software companies.
Ever tried mono/gtk#?
No and I won’t use it as long as Novell does not provide an official statement that Mono does not infringe .NET patents. And many other people won’t either, so it is just not an option.
This is the question that is to me as important as any of the licensing issues, and I’ve never found an answer for it.
It’s all very well to say that the source would still always be available, but who could actually pick it up and start working on it again?
As it is, I think it’s a very uncomfortable position that KDE is in, that they are still reliant on a commercial company in order to continue to develop their free software.
> It’s all very well to say that the source would still always be available, but who could actually pick it up and start working on it again?
The Free Qt Foundation agreement says that if Trolltech will ever stop to release new Qt versions under GPL that the foundation has the right to put Qt under a BSD-like license. So everyone could develop Qt then himself including for non-Free Software purposes.
Some of the GNOME people here seem to push it too far. Now look buds, have you spent looking at your Desktop closely ?
http://zerv.internetcafe.nl/~nexu/lol/gnome-the-movie.avi
Throw an eye on this movie to know what you’re using.
that Kde is crap.
Is that KDE-the-API or KDE-the-desktop-environment ?
its 100% crap
what Trolltech told you is absolute garbage and they know it. The GPL v 2 specifically allows you to modify and use GPL licensed software in house without licensing it under the GPL. The GPL only kicks in once the software is distributed.
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#InternalDistribution
Yeah I know, that’s why I asked them how they thought they were going to enforce this policy of theres and the representative I was talking to said they would not license Qt to me for proprietary use if I already had software developed. I guess that means that before they license Qt to people who already have some development done they want to see the source code to ensure that you havn’t tried to avoid developer licenses by using the GPL licensed version of Qt. Seems like a suicidal policy to me.
It’s all very well to say that the source would still always be available, but who could actually pick it up and start working on it again?
Anyone who felt like it.
KDE and its toolkit can only ever be an alternative desktop. No matter what the zealots want, you can’t have dual-license KDE/Qt /
It’s too bad because KDE is the superior framework, but will always lose. KDE will always lose to Gnome
Some of the GNOME people here seem to push it too far. Now look buds, have you spent looking at your Desktop closely ?
http://zerv.internetcafe.nl/~nexu/lol/gnome-the-movie.avi
Throw an eye on this movie to know what you’re using.
I would download and watch the movie if it would go faster than 10 kb/s. Anyways, what is so horrible about this movie that you feel the need (or think its ur duty) to inform people about the horrible software they are using? Did you happen to think that maybe, just maybe, people use it because they like it (like me) and don’t really care about the video or what you have to say?
And the same goes to all the people saying KDE sucks. Would you all get a life?
> It’s too bad because KDE is the superior framework,
> but will always lose. KDE will always lose to Gnome
Lumbergh, because you gonna repeat it over and over doesn’t make it true. As we speak Wienna decided for Linux in its administration and they use KDE as their Desktop. I think the ones who lost here are the GNOME people who regulary shouted out to have 1 million chines GNOME users and now it has been come to reality that SUN who initially wanted to do this deal has backed out of it. As well as HP has backed out of GNOME due their expectations hasn’t fulfilled. How will the future look like once GNOME adopts MONO as default framework. It will only scare even more people away from it. Think about that. And yes KDE has the superior framework.
Yeah I know, that’s why I asked them how they thought they were going to enforce this policy of theres and the representative I was talking to said they would not license Qt to me for proprietary use if I already had software developed. I guess that means that before they license Qt to people who already have some development done they want to see the source code to ensure that you havn’t tried to avoid developer licenses by using the GPL licensed version of Qt. Seems like a suicidal policy to me.
What are they going to do, turn their customers down? It’s a good thing most of the shareholders work inside the company, because if I was a shareholder and knew Trolltech was turning down customers like that I would be pretty pissed (not that it would matter but still).
Pretty much enough corporate backup.
http://partners.trolltech.com/partners/resellers.html
http://partners.trolltech.com/partners/tech.html
http://partners.trolltech.com/partners/service.html
http://partners.trolltech.com/partners/training.html
Lumbergh, because you gonna repeat it over and over doesn’t make it true. As we speak Wienna decided for Linux in its administration and they use KDE as their Desktop. I think the ones who lost here are the GNOME people who regulary shouted out to have 1 million chines GNOME users and now it has been come to reality that SUN who initially wanted to do this deal has backed out of it. As well as HP has backed out of GNOME due their expectations hasn’t fulfilled. How will the future look like once GNOME adopts MONO as default framework. It will only scare even more people away from it. Think about that. And yes KDE has the superior framework.
Unless they change their license, which would be impossible, I could still develop applications for Gnome in Python, C, C++, Java or whatever I wanted.
@rm6990:
To clarify (now with a working account), I meant who could actually start working on it right away. How long is it going to take people to learn the code and to start a community around it. Qt has no non-Trolltech developers as far as I know. How long would it be until the next major release happened, 12 months? 18 months?
@84.129.191.—
Are you saying that I shouldn’t use GNOME because it doesn’t work for one person somewhere? I’ve never seen any of those bugs (at least in the 5 megs of that movie, I’m not waiting any longer on that,) so why should they affect me?
To clarify (now with a working account), I meant who could actually start working on it right away. How long is it going to take people to learn the code and to start a community around it. Qt has no non-Trolltech developers as far as I know. How long would it be until the next major release happened, 12 months? 18 months?
Given the audience, I don’t think it would take that long… A bit bumpy, but nothing critical, kinda like the GTK1->2 transition. After all, the framework is already there and the documentation isn’t shabby.
For bugfixes, less than a week. After all, they are routinely committed to KDE’s qtcopy repository until TT rewrites them and puts them back into official Qt.
For extra widgets, even less, since all that would be needed is moving chunks of libkdeui into Qt. Hundreds know how to hack new widgets.
For major architectural changes… we just had one with the release of Qt4, there is no need for another at least for a couple of years.
They chose the wrong toolkit. That is fact. It might be a good license for the trolltech business model but a horrible deal for KDE
@phil
> I’ve never seen any of those bugs
Of course not, you ough to die before you gonna admit that there are huge architectual issues with GNOME.
Oh yeah, call every GNOME user a liar, that will help the situation. Maybe I can clarify: “I’ve never seen any of those bugs.” Oh wait, did I just say exactly the same? That must mean that was what I meant before.
The damned QT license is GPL. QT is superior to GTK+ and these days, it’s lighter. Please, get a clue.
Could you GNOME people (those who just woke up and started embarrassing themselves in this article) please stop spreading false allegations towards KDE or QT ? You make yourself look quite retarded and it’s not helping either your own poor situation nor does it help anyone else.
KDE sold their soul the devil when they chose Qt. They’re can’t be standard KDE desktop with a horrible liicensed Qt
KDE sold their soul the devil when they chose Qt. They’re can’t be standard KDE desktop with a horrible liicensed Qt
Now this is starting to sound quite desperate.
I see no reason KDE couldn’t be the standard desktop for any distro or even OS, except political or religious.
Many developers will not develop for KDE because of the licensing problems with Trolltech/Qt.
Many developers will not develop for KDE because of the licensing problems with Trolltech/Qt.
So what. Many developers will not develop for GNOME because of the framework. Many developers will not develop with MONO because of the possible patenting issues. Others won’t just because the standard came from Microsoft.
You can’t expect to please everybody. If you don’t like QT, just say it and be done with it.
We were talking about KDE/Qt. Of course other platforms have their issues, but most of the issues tend to be technical issues, not legal issues. Mono is perhaps the exception to this. There may be patent problems down the road with Mono, but the likelihood of “shortsighted and greedy corporate overlord” problems seems remote.
Of course not, you ough to die before you gonna admit that there are huge architectual issues with GNOME.
You know, normally I don’t engage in conversations with people with the maturity level of a 13 year old pre-teen, but he said he didn’t notice those bugs. Which means, unless he is a developer, he doesn’t give two shits what some random person put on the net about Gnome. Get it through your skull.
If they stop release free GPLed QT, last version will become BSD licensed.
http://www.trolltech.com/newsroom/announcements/00000171.html
Well that certainly is interesting! Thanks for the link.
before it went GPL back in ’98 it haunted them and it sitll haunts them. You can’t have a desktop with that license.
KDE sold their soul the devil when they chose Qt. They’re can’t be standard KDE desktop with a horrible liicensed Qt
Lumbergh, I’m a Gnome supporter and don’t particularily like KDE, but seriously, shut the fuck up. you’re really annoying me, and probably a whole lot of other people on here, pro-gnome or pro-kde.
@Phil, Lumbergh, rm6990
Well you want to have a normal conversation, you want people to take you serious ? Then why do you flame ahead about KDE or QT and make false allegations towards both ? It’s quite obvious that your primary intentions are to flame ahead and cause trouble. If you disagree with the terms and conditions of QT then be it so, you can chose to not use QT or KDE in case you dislike it (and it’s quite obvious you don’t like it). So please go ahead and do something productive with your time rather than spending it here to insult people or trying to convince them with your retarded opinions that none of us gives a flying fuck for. You are only here to stirr shit up that’s all you do. So before accusing me or any beloved KDE follower try seeking the problems and issues you cause infront of your own door.
To clarify (now with a working account), I meant who could actually start working on it right away. How long is it going to take people to learn the code and to start a community around it.
The Qt code is reasonably “clean”, it won’t take ages to get into it. This I know firsthand. I could imagine that if Trolltech went bankrupt or did no more continue Qt, (ex-)Trolltech employees could continue working on the code.
Qt has no non-Trolltech developers as far as I know.
Well, the main development is of course done by Trolltech employees, but patches come from Suse and KDE hackers for example (KDE even maintains a “qt-copy” branch), and I think that Mandrake and Debain developers do occasionally release patches too.
How long would it be until the next major release happened, 12 months? 18 months?
That looks like a reasonable timeframe for a *major* release to me, or, maybe a little longer would be even better. What do you think?
But I would not worry about a development stop of Qt anyway. Trolltech has some serious investments, makes some money of its own, Qt is their main product and the KDE Free Qt Foundation is in place. Combined, these factors make it quite likely that development will continue for a few years at least.
—
El Pseudonymo
For a non-GPL developer, it will cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $2000/yr to maintain a Qt license for two platforms. This is beyond the $5000 or so to purchase the original license.
If you look at Trolltech’s release cycles and policies, the cost of Trolltech’s C++ framework vastly exceeds that of any other development framework.
With a Rolls-Royce pricing model and restrictive licensing, Trolltech has guaranteed that Qt will never be developed by anyone except for Trolltech.
Once Mono (or something else) is up to speed, Qt will be over. All their mindshare and potential energy will have been wasted due to an unskilled and immature management team that sacrified a long term future for short term greed and a pathological degree of control. In their heart of hearts, Trolltech does not truly understand open source has to be open. That means license, price, and attitude. In their brief history, Trolltech has failed at all three.
Well you want to have a normal conversation, you want people to take you serious ? Then why do you flame ahead about KDE or QT and make false allegations towards both ? It’s quite obvious that your primary intentions are to flame ahead and cause trouble. If you disagree with the terms and conditions of QT then be it so, you can chose to not use QT or KDE in case you dislike it (and it’s quite obvious you don’t like it). So please go ahead and do something productive with your time rather than spending it here to insult people or trying to convince them with your retarded opinions that none of us gives a flying fuck for. You are only here to stirr shit up that’s all you do. So before accusing me or any beloved KDE follower try seeking the problems and issues you cause infront of your own door.
Ummm, please point where I flamed KDE. If you would open your eyes and learn to read, you would see that despite being a gnome supporter, i defended kde and told lumbergh to shut up and that he was pissing me off. I also told other people to use what they want and quit flaming over it.
It’s impossible with the horrible Qt license. Too bad IBM didn’t buy them 5 years ago
With the recent giant price increase for Qt, I cannot see any future for this platform.
The price for any sort of real Qt development (i.e. all the features) is prohibitive to any sort of market share evolution. Only giant companies can afford Qt and this will often be for a small number of developers.
By keeping the price insanely high, Trolltech has doomed their product to a minor place in history. There will be no broad-based adoption of the Qt frameworks.
By crippling the affordability of Qt, Trolltech is in effect harming Linux greatly. KDE has a lot of mindshare and this mindshare is going to waste because of Trolltech’s greed.
But I thought free, open source software development was the way of the future?
I am not talking of you specifically, but it amazes me that some people agree with RMS and promote FOSS… while moaning and bitching at the dual-licence solution that Trolltech brought up.
Trolltech should not use the term “dual license” because it is not similar to how most other companies use this license terminology.
“Dual license” usually means “same product” and a different license dependent on commercial usage or not.
For instance, MySQL does not remove features from their “non-commercial” GPL version of the product.
If you look at Qt’s feature matrix vs. license, you will see that Qt does not really do “dual license”.
Finally, if you look at Trolltech’s price points for their framework, you will that they are extremely high. The pricing, through simple economics, means a low adoption rate by all software vendors who wish to use the full functionality of the Qt framework. This is the crux of the matter.
With a Rolls-Royce pricing model and restrictive licensing, Trolltech has guaranteed that Qt will never be developed by anyone except for Trolltech.
How does price or anything guarantee that? QT is licensed under the GPL. Meaning you, me, Novell, or anyone else can fork it if need be, at no charge. Unless I am misunderstanding what you are trying to say.
Qt is not licensed under the GPL. To say so is inaccurate, if not disingenuous. Trolltech has many license stipulations based on what features you want and how you want to use them. Only one small subset of Qt functionality and Qt usage is made available via the GPL.
There is no license that I am aware of that would allow a customer to “fork” the entire commercial edition of Qt and go off and do their own thing and sell it for money. Only in this most recent license are commercial customers even allowed to modify the Qt source code. This is very very far away from the GPL.
I doubt Qt will have a truly open licensing system until the sands of time have buried Qt in the deserts of the past.
Pravda – Every single assertion in your above comment is patently false. Qt/X11 Free Edition is the exact same code as included in the commercial version. The same is true of the OSX version and, at least now as of Qt 4, of windows as well.
This whole thing is getting stupid.
I use what works for me. I don’t like KDE, but not because of licensing or religious reasons, just because I like Gnome better. It’s a personal preference. I don’t run around flaming KDE users over it (despite some people somehow thinking I am…). Even though I prefer Gnome, I do use KDE and QT applications, such as Opera, Kalarm, Kaffeine, because I like them better than Gnome software (except for Opera lately, I’m having horrible performance issues, but that’s besides the point). I simply use what works best for me!
Just like some people use Gaim or VMWare on top of KDE, because they prefer that setup. It is a matter of personal preference, and flaming is stupid. There will never be one desktop that fits everyone’s needs. If there was, the desktop would not have a name, it would just be the Linux desktop, and everyone would use it, and there would be no competing desktops. The fact that there are different DE’s shows that people’s needs differ, plain and simple. So get over it and move on. Get therapy if you need to. But please quit fighting over something so pathetically stupid that it is unbelievable. Do you see people on Windows forums fighting over Windows skins? If that sounds stupid…well, fighting over Gnome and KDE is just as stupid.
Qt is not licensed under the GPL. To say so is inaccurate, if not disingenuous. Trolltech has many license stipulations based on what features you want and how you want to use them. Only one small subset of Qt functionality and Qt usage is made available via the GPL.
There is no license that I am aware of that would allow a customer to “fork” the entire commercial edition of Qt and go off and do their own thing and sell it for money. Only in this most recent license are commercial customers even allowed to modify the Qt source code. This is very very far away from the GPL.
I doubt Qt will have a truly open licensing system until the sands of time have buried Qt in the deserts of the past.
I was referring to the version of QT that, for instance, is shipped with Debian. I was talking about maintaining a GPL’d fork, not a proprietary one. Sorry if I didn’t make it clear
This KDE bashers are so funny.
They first bash KDE because is not multiplatform. Then they say it’s a pity they’re wasting efforts porting it to windows.
They call themselves big free software supporters, but all they do is moan about licensing prize for propietary developments.
Did Gnome get started because they wanted a Free Software desktop or because they didn’t want to pay a dime for developing propietary apps?
Fortunately, not every one in Gnome camp is like this.
…stands for “Lesser”. I agree with Wawrat (sp?): it’s hard to understand how somebody could, on the one hand, righteously proclaim that free-as-in-speech software is the only way to go, and on the other hand state that KDE/Qt has no future as a desktop platform because it is GPL’d.
Let’s face it: anybody who runs any kind of small business incurs much larger expenses than those related to Qt licensing. How about rent, utility bills, non-technical staff? Advertising and marketing? Travel expenses? Ever wondered how costly it is to attend a trade show? In short, $10,000 in licensing fees per year does not seem like a big deal to me.
There is, however, one excep[tion to this. Qt is probably out of reach for individual shareware developers. Now, generally speaking, shareware software tends to be “smalll” and focused on a specific task (unlike, say, word-processing software, office suites, VM software, etc.). [I don’t mean to sound negative: shareware programs, at least on the Mac, typically do one or two things only, and do them very well]. Unfortunately for shareware developers, this kind of software tends to fall in the “scratching an itch” category, so is a perfect candidate for FOSS development. Hence, the licensing price for Qt is not the biggest worry for the independent shareware developer—or, in other words, shareware authors are probably not a market Trolltech needs to cater to.
That said, it would be nice if Trolltech did offer special pricing for shareware authors, in a more public way (vs. just inviting authors to “talk to them”). The problem is of course where to draw the line between shareware software and “regular” commercial software.
Sorry for the lengthy post.
There is no justification for the cost of the Qt commercial license and license maintenance fees. They are higher, vastly higher, versus any other offering.
You can get the entire MSDN Universal and a development workstation for just the price of a Qt license, nevermind license maintenance.
The world has moved (and continues to move) in a direction where cost is king. Trolltech seems to be insanely contrarian and going with massive price increases in the face of a worldwide downward price trend for technology.
Just based on simple elasticity of demand economics, it is easy to see there will never been any great market share for Qt. It has been priced out of reach of the bulk of developers.
Trolltech does not understand how to build an ecosystem around their framework. There are basically no competent third party components available for Qt. No libraries other than a bunch of stuff in KDE that may or may not be useful. Trolltech has miserably failed to build any sort of developer community (if they even tried) because Trolltech’s management team is a bunch of control freaks. They would rather see Qt die than lose control.
> There are basically no competent third party components available for Qt.
http://www.trolltech.com/products/3rdparty/tools.html
> Trolltech’s management team is a bunch of control freaks. They would rather see Qt die than lose control.
You are trolling.
For all the years Qt has been out in the world, to have only 2-3 tools available and those even from ex-Trolltech people, is not impressive.
I’ve met Trolltech management. If you don’t agree with my control freak assessment, that is okay. It is my opinion based on my experience. Not every “less than 100% politically correct” statement is trolling. An open mind sees shades of gray, not black and white, not “good posters” and “trolls”.
> Fortunately, not every one in Gnome camp is like this.
Unfortunately you are wrong. Coming from the GNOME camp I can not confirm your last sentence. Not everyone – yes … But the majority is. I find the KDE people far more mature and far better to have a good talk with than with most GNOME people that I met. People can try to prove me wrong as much they want. The past years have manifest an opinion in my head that can’t be get rid of that easily.
This has been my experience as well. GNOME people are more like Apple/Mac developers — i.e. long on attitude, short on perspective. KDE developers tend to be more into the code and less into the attitude. The exception to this is Mono developers who tend to be very much into code and not at all into attitude. I believe this will be the new blood that defines the future of Linux.
GPL, LGPL, and all the other GPL related licenses killed linux on the desktop. That’s why it never took off. Oh well, its good on the server rack.
I thought we’d left this behind years ago, but it is clear that the vast majority of people still do not understand what is actually practical, and possible, with open source software of different licenses nor the business models and investment involved. It also depends if the nature of the software is adequate enough for LGPLing etc. In the case of the desktop, it quite clearly isn’t.
Additionally, I just get the impression that several people are very worried about the advent of KDE 4. They’re also silly people with absolutely no business sense (who don’t write software for a living) who think they’re going to be able to develop everything for nothing.
Look at the major enterprise vendors offering X Window-based desktops: Red Hat, Sun and Novell. None of them, that is right, zero out of three, use KDE for their enterprise desktop GUI.
For Red Hat, certainly, but for Sun it isn’t very clear what parts of Gnome they are using. In terms of Novell’s enterprise offerings, their Open Enterprise Server (the money spinner) uses KDE and absolutely nothing else.
While it is true that SUSE has remained KDE-oriented, notice that Novell’s self-branded Linux Desktop, the enterprise oriented version to SUSE’s repositioned SOHO product, uses Ximian XD2 GNOME.
Absolutely not true. Ximian Desktop now doesn’t exist, and isn’t worked on. The NLD does not default to any default desktop whatsoever. There’s a radio button for KDE or Gnome during install and that’s what you get. Even with the Gnome version you still get the KDE-su dialogue popping up.
I can write my program on Windows for free; I do not need to acquire one iota of development licensing from Microsoft to draw off of the common controls of Windows.
Absolute bollocks. You can’t use Microsoft’s operating system for free, nor any of the software that you will likely integrate with on a Windows platform. The revenue has to come from somewhere. In Microsoft’s case it’s a monopoly on the OS, in Trolltech’s case it’s producing development tools for people to develop free software with or to make money from. Which would you like?
What the hell do you think we have open source software for in the first place?
If one has five developers at a small company, you are looking at up to $15,000 just to get licensed before any development work gets started. That might be a small amount in the long run, but many small shops may find the lure of no cost of entry very attractive.
It’s nowhere near $15,000, but again we get this small development shop crap again. I work in a small development shop and we have Java IDEs and app servers, we have MSDN subscriptions and we also pay for Microsoft software (not all of it my choice). Under no circumstances do we ever expect good software to always bee free. There is a limit.
KDE is beholden to Trolltech and must totally trust that the company will keep the environment for GNU/Linux developers friendly and accessible.
No actually. Because of the compatibility of the GPL and the LGPL it is absolutely possible to write a KDE application with GTK or another toolkit and have it use Qt and KDE infrastructure. That’s where the QtGTK theming comes from. It’s just that no one’s found the need to do it yet.
This aspect of control is the reason why enterprise focused desktops are not using KDE.
What enterprise desktops? GTK and Gnome supporters continually delude themselves with something that doesn’t exist. I don’t think KDE is an enterprise desktop, but it’s used by enterprises mostly in server capacities.
at one point KDE had a much better application library than GNOME
It still does.
For these dual reasons of control and cost-of-entry, the KDE Project should consider abandoning Qt for the eventual release of KDE 4.
And now it comes out. Qt 4 is going to provide unrivalled levels of productivity for KDE developers working on KDE 4, and basically, KDE 4 is going to kick the backside of every other desktop going.
That’s why we’ve got this article in the first place, because he knows the users actually using KDE today don’t care about any of the stuff he’s talking about. People want an open source desktop that’s good enough to use first and foremost, and Qt 4 is going to provide the tools for developers to adequately do that. It’s very, very clear now to just about everyone that GTK, Mono and all of the other Gnome surrounding technologies are not good enough for commercial developers to use, and what’s more, you can’t adequately develop something as large and complex as a whole desktop environment with them. Companies are going to want to pay for good stuff, and that’s what is demanded in the enterprise world.
Undoubtedly, this would take a lot of work. It would take time away from more “pragmatic,” “critical” projects for the end users.
Yer, which is what he hope will happen. Hint: it isn’t.
Apple, for example, placed its infrastructure in the background while concentrating on the end user applications and paid dearly for it
KDE has exactly the right infrastructure. It’s Gnome he wants to be worried, because that’s exactly what they’re doing.
if giving a lot of power over one’s product to a seemingly harmless little corporation seems like a good idea, ask Big Blue about a little company named Microsoft. Ever heard of them?
Trolltech do not have that kind of power over KDE. Far from it.
Unless KDE can get Trolltech to release Qt/X11 under the LGPL
But where does the investment come from? GTK and othr technology surrounding Gnome are LGPL’d, they’re not good enough and there is not a snowball in hell’s chance that I could convince any enterprise developers (i.e. people developing for a living, not in their bedroom) to use it.
With the right planning and dedication, perhaps in a few years KDE can move beyond Qt once and for all.
End users see the quality Qt indirectly, or directly, brings to them in their KDE desktops, that’s what the license fees pay for (along with the dedication of KDE developers) and that’s all users care about. There’s no way that will be given up. Sorry.
To do otherwise will keep the enterprise developers looking at other options and insure that the licensing debate is a debate “without end.”
A common theme is how deluded these people are about what an enterprise developer is. I see no one in any major enterprise using GTK (or who even know what it is), apart from a minority in Linux vendors themselves. Qt is in a minority, but at least there are known projects out there using Qt and software you can actually buy that uses it. Additionally, when you look at the complexity of a Unix/Linux desktop, what’s required of it, performance etc. and the structure of it (objec-oriented), Qt is the best possible choice anyone could have made for KDE, regardless of license. That’s all that users care about.
You make some very rational observations and points about KDE, Qt, etc.
However, I would seriously ask the question, “Why is there basically zero development for Qt outside of Trolltech?”. I am not talking KDE here, but Qt.
Compare Qt to MFC or .NET (or Borland’s VCL, or Java, etc) and you will see two very different ecosystems. In the Microsoft/Borland/Java world there are many third-party developers. In the Trolltech world, there are essentially none.
Any company that thinks their framework has a future without developers, without building and extending an ecosystem, is just lying to itself.
While there are many “discussions” that can be had regarding Qt/KDE/Trolltech/etc, the basic objective facts are that Qt will not likely ever be the foundation of a broad ecosystem of developers. It will stay a small stagnant pond for the rest of its life.
Thank you for the information, pravda. You all should listen to pravda; pravda is a reliable source of information.
> For all the years Qt has been out in the world
And how long has Qt 4 been out?
> those even from ex-Trolltech people
So tell me when did Kalle Dalheimer work for Trolltech?
“Many of the components listed here are currently in the process of being updated to take advantage of all the new features and capabilities of Qt 4.”
The referenced URL is for all versions of Qt, not just Qt4. And there is basically nothing available of note. A few tools that are pretty raw compared to what is available on other platforms.
I find it a joke that people try to hold a few measly testing toolkits and say “look, here is a vibrant developer ecosystem”. What folly.
They’re can’t be standard KDE desktop with a horrible liicensed Qt
It’s horribly licensed because people sitting unemployed and broke at a computer, spouting on forums such as this and Ofb.biz, think that they will be able to develop everything for nothing. No enterprise developer believes that, and if the better option is Qt and KDE, that’s where the money is going. However favourable the license, absolutely no enterprise environment will consider using Gnome, GTK etc. as either a user or development envornment today. The barometer is whether it is good enough – absolutely nothing else.
A lot of people still don’t get that these issues with KDE are not issues in the real world to real people. They’re not issues to the, up to, 60% of Linux deskop users who use KDE. How do you think Microsoft got where it is? I know that hurts some peoples’ egos, but there it is.
All of this is pretty academic though because a lot of people are just plain worried about KDE 4 ;-).
Microsoft got where it is by making good development tools available at an affordable price. Trolltech is 20 years away from even comprehending this concept.
> All of this is pretty academic though because a lot
> of people are just plain worried about KDE 4
KDE 4 definately wipes everything else off of this planet including GNOME and all their wannabe experts.
I knew when I saw an Anon start bashing GNOME for no apparent reason that something seemed familiar. That, along with your long-windedness, sometimes awkward use of English idioms (left a bad taste in some people’s minds?), and linking to that gnome video blew your cover.
Ali (Anonymous (IP: 84.129.191.—), or Anonymous (IP: —.dip.t-dialin.net)) is at it again, as he did in a past (again, he starts the big GNOME vs KDE debate) http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=10807&offset=0&rows=15&th…
His posts are so inflammatory that probably about half of his posts in that thread were moderated down; you’ll notice some gaps in the conversation from the moderations. The best part is when he starts trying to illustrate GNOME’s problems using pretty pictures of tangled wires and the infamous ‘inconsistent toolbars’ pictures that show why GNOME is just so unusable.
Ali, stop the madness.
If KDE4 works as well as the Windows 2000 desktop I would be truly amazed. If there is anything resembling a desktop for Linux in 5 years, it would be true accomplishment. The various shells that pass as “desktops” in the Linux world today are hardly usable by human beings. Linux itself is a busted pile of parts that like some cranky old car only works on random days of the year.
That’s not a KDE problem, you know. KDE works on many UNIXes, not just Linux. Those of us who use KDE daily, know it has already surpassed easily windows XP desktop. And I’m not talking about the OS underneath, just the desktop experience.
“Yes Trolltech, spend a lot of money developing superb toolkit, and make it LGPL, because we want to develop commercial and closed source software, and earn money using your work, and we don’t want to give anything back. Isn’t that fair?” Come on guys..
If you look at Qt’s feature matrix vs. license, you will see that Qt does not really do “dual license”.
The GPL version has all the same features as the Enterprise version, the most expensive you can get.
> Anonymous (IP: 84.129.191.—) His posts are so
> inflammatory that probably about half of his posts
> in that thread were moderated down;
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=11106&threshold=-5&limit=…
You mean modded down to +5 like this ?
If KDE4 works as well as the Windows 2000 desktop I would be truly amazed. If there is anything resembling a desktop for Linux in 5 years, it would be true accomplishment. The various shells that pass as “desktops” in the Linux world today are hardly usable by human beings. Linux itself is a busted pile of parts that like some cranky old car only works on random days of the year.
My mom uses Gnome daily and my elderly grandpa uses KDE daily. I converted them both from XP. If they can use these desktops and you can’t, well, perhaps a technology site isn’t the best place for you to visit.
Qt is not licensed under the GPL.
If the license has got GPL on it, it’s the GPL.
Only in this most recent license are commercial customers even allowed to modify the Qt source code.
What in God’s teeth are you talking about?! If it’s GPL you can modify the code quite easily (derr, the code is there) – it’s just a question of whether Trolltech will accept the patch. If there’s enough demand then they’re practically forced into it. You look at the features added to Qt such as DBUS and the accessibility support that would never have been added without KDE.
I think this just highlights why a lot of people in the real world are just turned off by the open source community and the software the tout in front of you. You need to get yourselves examined by the men in white coats.
Qt has many licenses. Here is what I was referring to about modifying the source code:
Qt LICENSE UPDATES
——————
The Qt commercial license has been updated. It now states that a
separate agreement with Trolltech is required for joint hardware and
software distribution of Qt and Qt applications. In addition, the Qt
Commercial license now explicitly allows you to modify your Qt source
code – allowing you to extend and modify Qt to meet the unique needs
of your project or team.
Qt’s licensing can be very restrictive dependent on what path you take. Trolltech charges $5000/developer + $2000/yr maintenance after the first year for a basic Qt license for commercial software. Trolltech’s basic premise is “the more you pay, the more of the sharpened stick we give you”.
If you twit would have spent reading the ofb.biz article then you’d by now know who started the GNOME mud throwing.
You are arguing on a technical basis, the ofb.biz article is arguing on a licensing basis. You purposely changed the topic (licensing) to bash GNOME. Just stop it.
I think is more possible that GTK gets as good as Qt than trolltech selling cheaper licenses.
So, I think GTK has more chances to survive and become a true complete option (and already is making it).
Christian Schaller (GStreamer):
“Yannick and Gustavo from Nokia is interviewed on the latest LUGRadio show, be sure to listen in as its quite interesting. They also talk a bit about why they choose GTK and GNOME technologies instead of going with qtopia for instance, which was already there. The freedom that the LGPL gives, used by GTK+ was an important factor for them and I think going forward we will see how important this is in many situations.
One thing that struck me for instance, who work on multimedia stuff, is that we might not be able to do opensource Qt based applications using GStreamer (or any other multimedia framework for that matter) that ships with non-free plugins. The reason for this is that the Qt license (and I think this applies to both the GPL and the QPL) demands that all software linked to it is under a compatible license. So what we have been doing for instance with sponsoring Totem development, in order to make it work better both with free software plugins, but also of course with closed source plugins we are making, is simply not viable with Qt based software. In the sense that even if the Qt-based player where under the BSD license it would still put demands on the license of GStreamer plugins. I did try to get Markey to LGPL or GPL+exception Amarok some time ago, but maybe getting him to do so wouldn’t really help, as Qt licensing would kill the issue anyway. Could be that the QPL (as opposed to the GPL) would allow this in some form, which I will have to investigate at some point, my current memory of it is that its like the GPL but allows linking to OSI approved licensed software. Anyway, it just underscores why I feel core libraries like GUI toolkits etc., should be under licenses which puts no demands on other parts of the system.”
http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/planet/
The freedom that the LGPL gives, used by GTK+ was an important factor for them
You mean that Nokia, one of the biggest European companies, couldn’t afford to buy a Trolltech license?
Sorry, I don’t believe it. That’s just Gnome marketing at its worst.
Compare Qt to MFC or .NET (or Borland’s VCL, or Java, etc) and you will see two very different ecosystems. In the Microsoft/Borland/Java world there are many third-party developers. In the Trolltech world, there are essentially none.
Well, by that rational Trolltech should have went out of business years ago. They haven’t, so there must be third-party developers. Have a look at their customers.
No, Qt is not as popular as Java out in the world but for KDE, in terms of what is required, it’s just the best overall choice. Choosing Java or Mono is not going to make Gnome perform better, be faster or do all the things necessary for it to succeed.
There are a few customers for Qt. It is hard to say how many of them ship real software vs. developed something in Qt some time ago.
But most importantly, there is no developer ecosystem. There are no third party components. There is no one developing for the Qt platform vs. developing using Qt.
Perhaps the real reason for the increase in prices for Qt is because the market is shrinking. That would make perfect sense.
> Perhaps the real reason for the increase in prices for Qt is because the market is shrinking.
You can only raise your price in a market which allows that.
Choosing Java or Mono is not going to make Gnome perform better, be faster or do all the things necessary for it to succeed.
Is you release that with GTK gets better every version and computers are getting faster and cheaper I would say GTK will be the king of the hill in a couple of years.
> I would say GTK will be the king of the hill in a couple of years.
Great, meanwhile we gonna use QT now because it’s already there where you want to see GTK+ in a couple of years.
Great, meanwhile we gonna use QT now because it’s already there where you want to see GTK+ in a couple of years.
If you have 2000 dls in your pocket go ahead, everyone else may use GTK+.
RedHat, Novell, Sun, and Ubuntu….all the major players have decided on Gnome/Gtk+ because of the license issue.
> RedHat, Novell, Sun, and Ubuntu….all the major
> players have decided on Gnome/Gtk+ because of the
> license issue.
Yes, repeat it many times, until it becomes true. Or not?
Ubuntu ships KDE (KUbuntu). Novell have not decided on GTK. Sun is going to ship KDE with OpenSolaris.
We will see KDE apps take a lot of the market share when they access the Win and Mac markets, with KDE 4. After that, nobody will be able to avoid shipping at least the kdelibs.
And I don’t care about what is the default desktop. KDE apps work fine under GNOME and vice versa.
Heh, these trolls are getting desperate.
RedHat, Novell, Sun, and Ubuntu….all the major players have decided on Gnome/Gtk+ because of the license issue.
Ubuntu has a very popular KDE version, Novell has SuSE. Mandriva, Linspire, XandrOS, Knoppix – these all use KDE as their primary DE.
The “market” has spoken, eh? Then why is KDE the most popular desktop of the two? AFAIK what the market wants is determined by customers/users, not suppliers/distro makers.
Not only that, but you are unable to link RH, Novell and Sun’s GNOME preference on license issues. Until you can provide clear evidence, I would suggest that you stop trolling (thankfully, the new moderation system has taken care of most of your inflammatory posts…)
[/i]Perhaps the real reason for the increase in prices for Qt is because the market is shrinking. That would make perfect sense.[/i]
Im down with that theory, I suppose TrollTech cost are to hight and they need to sell expensive licenses to get revenues, maybe they should consider hiring developers in India.
Microsoft got where it is by making good development tools available at an affordable price. Trolltech is 20 years away from even comprehending this concept.
And those development tools depend on copies of Office, Windows etc. How much do you think that costs?
I can see that Microsoft has blinkered you nicely with how much they do actually cost.
Microsoft got where it is by making good development tools available at an affordable price. Trolltech is 20 years away from even comprehending this concept.
And those development tools depend on copies of Office, Windows etc. How much do you think that costs?
I can see that Microsoft has blinkered you nicely with how much they do actually cost.
Windows and Linux are about the same price. If anything, Windows is cheaper (compare Windows XP vs. Redhat Enterprise Linux Workstation). And we know MSDN + workstation is cheaper than one commercial license of Qt.
I cannot see how anyone in their right mind would develop on Linux. The OS is the dark ages for software development. Lots of clutzy tools, clutzy make systems, clutzy install scripts, etc. It is a giant waste of time.
Yes, repeat it many times, until it becomes true. Or not?
Ubuntu ships KDE (KUbuntu). Novell have not decided on GTK. Sun is going to ship KDE with OpenSolaris.
We will see KDE apps take a lot of the market share when they access the Win and Mac markets, with KDE 4. After that, nobody will be able to avoid shipping at least the kdelibs.
And I don’t care about what is the default desktop. KDE apps work fine under GNOME and vice versa.
Heh, these trolls are getting desperate.
He is talking about defaults my friend, no what are they shiping.
> He is talking about defaults my friend, no what
> are they shiping.
Then again, it is not true. Novell does not default to GNOME, and SUSE defaults to KDE. Ubuntu offers both, with the Ubuntu and KUbuntu install disks.
People are getting desperate because the technical solution provided by KDE and Qt is so much better, that they have to find another reason to FUD it.
KDE4 and Qt4 offer so much, it is an incredible platform for free softwate apps: windows, mac, linux, bsd, you name it. Why cairo? They offer Arthur now. It works, and it rocks. Comercial apps now have the possibility to use the incredible KDE libs too, as now they will be available on all platformas too.
GPL is bad. Yeah, right.
While “KDE is a great Desktop.” by Anonymous seems to be an ok comment overall, stuff like the following jsut makes me mad:
“Companies can easily focus and write propritary applications and money don’t seem to be an big issue either as we have recently seen. Nokia and Google spent 50.000 USD and more to the GNOME Foundation for basicly nothing. So the big money issue is absurd.”
This is heard ever so often – people telling such things seem to live in a world where you are either an OSS developer or a really huge corporation. Do you even *think* of the smaller companies? They don’t even have to be a fully fledged software company – for the smaller shops, where there are maybe 3 to 5 programmers, QT IS expensive. It’s a lot more expensive than “getting the OS” as the previous comment suggests.
> > The freedom that the LGPL gives, used by GTK+ was
> > an important factor for them
> >
> You mean that Nokia, one of the biggest European
> companies, couldn’t afford to buy a Trolltech
> license? Sorry, I don’t believe it. That’s just
> Gnome marketing at its worst.
>
Pathetic ain’t it ?
http://2005.guadec.org/press/releases/nokia_donation.html
No money to buy a shabby license but money to make donations.
Admins, how does it come that not a single one of Lumberghs one line trolls got moderated down?
He isn’t contributing to the discussion at all, he just repeats his annoying flaming one liners over and over and over.
> Admins, how does it come that not a single one of Lumberghs one line trolls got moderated down
There are no admins for that, the scoring/voting is done by registered users/trolls.
I dont like KDE especially, but all those trolls that rally around every fucking single article can be nothing else than an indication what potential the toolkit and this DE has, and especially what possibilities will be unleashed with KDE4.
Flaming KDE is no different than all the anti-GPL trolls we see lately:
Embittered because they see all that great technology lying next to their feet, but cannot make it proprietary, so they spend hours and hours flaming forums and breathing fire and brimstone, desperately traing to spoil the fun for everybody else. Lame.
Unless they change their license, which would be impossible, I could still develop applications for Gnome in Python, C, C++, Java or whatever I wanted.
Uh, and why couldn’t you do the same for KDE? Ever heard of kde bindings?
before it went GPL back in ’98 it haunted them and it sitll haunts them. You can’t have a desktop with that license.
Oh, sorry, I didn’t know that. I have it already and it’s called KDE.
Isn’t it funny, that all this KDE bashing happens when Vienna chooses KDE?
Flamebait Without End: On KDE and Qt Licensing.
That was my take on the article. KDE is fine and I have no problems with its licensing.
You buy a windows licence for being able to develop Windows apps, and you pay an even higher price for developing Mac apps.
Why such an hatred against an norwegian mini company, who fully supports the Free Software movement, and entirely survives selling those proprietary licences? What are they doing wrong what MS and Apple arent?
As there is an odd chance that someone actually believes pravda in that there are no third-party tools/components around Qt, here is evidence that destroys his argument:
http://www.scl.com/qt/
http://www.froglogic.com/
http://www.klaralvdalens-datakonsult.se/?page=products
All these are commercial packages.
On http://www.thekompany.com there are some commercial tools for Qt too.
—
El Pseudonymo
No, believe pravda; pravda is truth.
As I did mention earlier, there are a couple musty testing kits for Qt. And some sort of mainframe-style table widget. You could probably dig up some crufty stuff from Qt 1.0 and tell people about that too.
As Trolltech says themselves on their website, there is indeed nothing for Qt4.
If you look at the URL’s for .net, java, mfc, etc., you will see that Qt effectively has *zero* support compared to other platforms. The lack of third-party support for Qt is shocking.
A corporate developer who considers cost and time to market would never pick Qt as Qt is the ultimate example of forcing the developer to reinvent the wheel.
It is a shame Trolltech never got on the ball to create a vibrant developer community around Qt. It is just a small little pond of Qt clubbers who can afford licensing fees that make Microsoft look like a bargain.
3rd party support? There are literally mountains of high quality OSS 3rd party libraries, testing frameworks, etc, which work perfectly fine with Qt and are licesed under BSD, MIT, X11, Lgpl, MPL, yadda yadda. In short, there is a dearth of 3rd party commercial offerings for Qt for precisely the same reason that there are a dearth of such offerings for GTK; it’s not license, but be abundance of “good enough” solutions available under an OSS license.
”
One thing that struck me for instance, who work on multimedia stuff, is that we might not be able to do opensource Qt based applications using GStreamer (or any other multimedia framework for that matter) that ships with non-free plugins. The reason for this is that the Qt license (and I think this applies to both the GPL and the QPL) demands that all software linked to it is under a compatible license. […]
”
What is said in that citation is true, but it misses that frameworks like Gstreamer should not in turn be dependant on other frameworks like Glib/Gtk or Qt. There should only be a dependency on some (preferably small) “glue” components. These components should be reasonably standardized and have implementations which are licensed suitably for a broad range of development and business needs.
If it would be so hard to get rid of qt in kde. why bother removing it? Should the developers waste a year or two of time removing it when they could be spending that time on improving the kde desktop? If its such a big deal, they should just stop working on kde and start working on gnome. Its that simple. Kde and gnome are not very different. If KDE is not going to be used by hardly anyone and its future hangs on a proprietary library, why even program for it? KDE could turn out to be a giant waste of time.
What is this GNOME you speak about ? You are not refering to that utterly broken Desktop where half of the tools work and the other half crash away due to halfassed code ? I doubt anyone wants to use something that barely works for regular users. You gonna embarras yourself and the whole open source movement if you really plan to sell that junk to customers, companies, administration or government. Sorry but it’s not cutting anything. KDE is the right choice as Wienna as proven these days, they clearly set on the indesputable winner KDE.
“You are not refering to that utterly broken Desktop where half of the tools work and the other half crash away due to halfassed code ?”
i use gnome everyday. all the tools work, and it doesn’t crash.
It comes down to Qt originally having a license not acceptable to certain people and thus Gnome was born. So if KDE has chosen a toolkit with a good liberal license Gnome would not have been started and we would have one dominant desktop standard.
Oh well, all the major linux players are using Gnome anyway.
> Oh well, all the major linux players are using Gnome anyway.
And what are companies and corporate using ? As Wienna has shown serious business is recommending and prefering KDE.
> Well, not everybody is a developer – the author of
> the article isn’t – so he does NOT want to use QT
> to develop apps. He merely “whines” about the
> license isssue preventing _others_ from writing QT
> apps.
So why does that guy care what _others_ choose to write their apps in ?
> In fact that’s a legitimate ‘fear’ anyone who
> really likes KDE may have. It all depends on what
> you want or need. KDE could be ‘the thing’ for him,
> but because others can’t use it (license) it COULD
> be better… well, you ge the idea.
Everyone can USE it. Trolltech even offers it for you to download so please people stop making wrong allegations. Trolltech is a fine company, their product speaks for itself and I honestly wonder why Trolltech hasn’t sued that ass of Tim because of his moronic behavior. If I was running a venture I would shut everyone down who spreads BS about my venture and business.
> The Qt license kind of limits this. Simple enough?
Limits what ?
http://www.apps-kde.org/
Offers more tools and stuff based upon KDE and QT than GNOMEFILES.
> Gnome people still has to decide if they are going
> to use Java, Mono, or stick with C (which they
> won’t get them anywhere)
Don’t forget to add Python and Ruby here.
are you kidding me; 50K is nothing; it barely covers the servers and the traffic on gnome many websites.
$1500 for QT license is very steep. the author of the article is spot on the fact that KDE/QT is losing comercial small business devlopers to GTK or MSVS.