Tim Butler knew when he mentioned something negative about the GNU Project’s General Public License (GPL), in his column on KDE last week, he would inevitably be accused of arguing the GPL was a bad license. What did not fit into that piece shall now be dealt with: is the GPL a bad license or is the issue he complained about something else?
MAn the gunsss!!!!! Dig into the trenches!!! Time for yet another pointless flamewar!!
I don’t use GNOME so I don’t understand. In the author’s first article, he alleges that distributions are dropping KDE in favor of GNOME. Is this true, and if so, due to the underlying libraries in GNOME being licensed under the LPGL. I always understood the LPGL to be a compromise between commercial and free. If QT is licensed under the GPL then why would KDE be beholden to Troll Tech like the author alleged?
For commercial applications it is beholden to Trolltech. You cannot write a proprietary application using QT without buying a license from Trolltech. This is not so with Gnome/GTK+. That is what he is talking about. Whether this is good or bad depends on the views of the user/developer.
Not everything in the Linux community is intended to be free. In the Linux community there are applications that are not using the GNU/GPL which are strictly commercial and there are those that do use the license. Most Linux users including developers are aware of that fact so it shouldn’t surprize anyone that the QT creator would want some financial compensation for their work.
As for the comment regarding developers dropping KDE in favor for Gnome I’d like to know where? If anything it’s more likely the reverse. SuSE Linux has always been pro KDE even though it comes with Gnome as an option. The reason I’d say it’s a pro KDE distribution is for two reasons 1. The default installation is KDE, not Gnome. 2. There are no updated YaST Sources available for Gnome but there are several mirrors for KDE. Both points are more likely a Novell decision due to consumer feedback (feedback form on the Novell site). This is similar to Mandriva who also leans more toward KDE and there’s been reports in the past of other developers who had issues with compiling/packaging Gnome for their distribution.
Granade!!! oh… oh… wheres my arm? my arm ……
… my.. it is not my arm… waaaa
You don’t have to understand. It’s just propaganda, it’s not meant to be understood, just accepted.
Perception is reality, and if you can pump out enough stupid propaganda, the drones without brains out there will be more than happy to take it as gospel, and pass it on as “the truth”.
If you are abel to color your competitor with “dying”, or “user hostile”, “bloated” or any other negative adjective it doesn’t matter that your own stuff is inferior. People will never find out for themselves, but rather use what everyone else is using, or what they think everyone else is using, and thus go with the buzz.
Oh that guy continues his flames ? I haven’t read his article but I already have a bad opinion about him.
If you realy realy want your source to stay open, use the GPL/LGPL thats what they are for. They might not be perfect but no license is. If you want to give your source to the comunity and dot give a shit about if somebody closes it, or you don’t want to run down posible licensing violations or plan on making a comertial for youself later uste the MIT. Why not the BSD license? Well when you say the MIT license everybody understands that you use the MIT/X license but when you say the BSD license nobody knows if you are talking about the 4, 3 or 2 clause version.
If you must use the MPL or a derivitive license do us a favor und triple license it under MPL/GPL/LGPL. If you need to add clausls to the LGPL make them optional. So we can all just get along.
P.S.: If you realy realy don’t give a fuck, why not use the “Do what the fuck you want” license, and yes its realy a license.
I typically prefer the BPL (Beer Public Licence):
I don’t give a damn what you do with this code. However, optional compensation for the author should come in the form of beer from a good, beer-producing country.
> You cannot write a proprietary application using QT
> without buying a license from Trolltech. This is
> not so with Gnome/GTK+. That is what he is talking
> about.
Right, if you want to write propritary closed source applications using QT then it’s true. But then again if you look beyond the license only. Then you will see that at the end these companies are saving a lot of money too.
a) QT is C++ thus you can rapidely write applications. This saves you a lot of time for application development. If you can save your time by 1/3 of the overall time that you would require to write the same with C using GTK+ then you already get the money in that you spent for the license.
b) A serious company would pull the license costs down to its customers, no problems with that. Assuming you pay 5 licenses to a fixed price for say 4000 USD (you know that you can deal with TrollTech here) then assuming you may sell 100 copies of that software you may be able to add 40 USD to the customers for license costs and another 55 USD for the product. Usually special software is written which even cost you a couple of thousand dollars. Serious software for science, molecular stuff, military, surgery, car companies, NASA and so on. People who rely on adequate technology.
c) You are getting a lot of support, good documents, guides and other important stuff from Trolltech included while purchasing that license. In case you have issues during programming you can hook up the phone and call up Trolltech who are willing to help you save a lot of time by answering all the questions.
d) You help the IT industry in europe because we depend on companies such as Trolltech. That company, besides some other companies are companies where many of us would really enjoy working for. SUSE, Trolltech, Novell, SUN, IBM and so on. We do these companies and their employees a big favor to help them promoting their products and help the IT industry to stay alive in the US as well as in EUROPE before the last company disappears to india. This should be your own interest. It could be your IT seat that could be reduced one day, because of your extreme views that helps no one.
This should be your own interest. It could be your IT seat that could be reduced one day, because of your extreme views that helps no one.
Lol buddy, chill out. Maybe you should take a second to read the rest of my comment. Or maybe the one I was responding to also. I never commented on which one was better. I was merely answering the question of someone who didn’t understand the licensing issues. Do you have schitzophrenia or something? You seem to be really paranoid?
a) and d) are lame arguments. a) is subjective and can start a whole flamewar in itself, and d) is just illogical given the whole reason behind having developers pay to make closed-source apps. It helps Trolltech, yes, but it would help the developers even more to not have to pay at all to make a closed-source app. That is to say, d) hinges on the betterment of companies so as to help the European economy, but doesn’t it help more when a company doesn’t have to pay for their tools, thereby not needing to pass the cost onto the customer? I’m not saying that it is illegitimate for Trolltech to ask for money, but I think your attempts at playing on patriotism are flawed.
a) QT is C++ thus you can rapidely write applications.
For GNOME we have GTKmm (http://www.gtkmm.org(), an interface to GTK+ with a modern C++ API. It’s written in modern standard C++. QT on the other hand looks as if it was written in pre-standard C++ days. QT even requires extensions to GCC to compile. If you’re going to write C++ why not choose something modern and stable as GTKmm ? It’s a dream for any C++ programmers.
If you want to rapidly write applications you’d be much better off with Haskell (http://haskell.org) and gtk2hs (http://haskell.org/gtk2hs/). That should increase your productivity (once you learn Haskell that is) by 9-10 times.
QT even requires extensions to GCC to compile
This is either not true or all Linux distributions patch their GCC for Qt compatability, because I never had to patch GCC myself and still can compiler Qt and Qt based applications.
Actually I have compiler Qt and Qt based application with other compilers as well, where it is very unlikely that the compiler vendor has added any extension for Qt, for example Intel’s icc and Microsofts cl.
Therefore I can only assume that your claim is not based on facts.
Well, I got it from the GTKmm FAQ. I’ve never compiled QT myself though since I see no need to use QT, the FAQ may of course be out of date:
http://www.gtkmm.org/docs/gtkmm-2.4/docs/FAQ/html/index.html#id2450…
Oh well.. replying to myself here. “Extensions to C++..”. Mixed that up with GCC 🙂
Mixed that up with GCC 🙂
It is still incorrect
If Qt needed extensions to the language, you wouldn’t be able to compile it or code based in it with unpatched compilers.
But Qt and code based on it compile on a lot of platforms using a lot of C++ compilers, even crappy ones like the C++ compiler of VC++ 6.0
The author of the respective FAQ entry might have been misled by the possibility to use tools to generate code for your, for example generating GUI code from an XML file describing that GUI.
Of course this is optionally, but a lot of developers prefer to concentrate on the actual functionality and not on writing code that can easily be auto-generated by a program.
The author of the respective FAQ entry might have been misled by the possibility to use tools to generate code for your, for example generating GUI code from an XML file describing that GUI.
No, all toolkits that are relevant can do this, he is talking about the preprocessor MOC.
Of course it makes it pretty hard to take an argument, based on what someone has read in a FAQ very seriously. MOC does “extend” C++ yes, but it does it in an extremely convenient way. And to me, a big advantage is that all of it is written in C++, so i don’t have to fall back to C when trying to figure out how things work internally.
And frankly, my life is too short for me to care one bit about how C++’ish a library is, but i do care about it being easy to use, and producing programs that look and feel like native programs on windows and mac os. At least the 2nd part rules out gtk*
he is talking about the preprocessor MOC
I know, but it is just another code generator, just like the ones generating code from the XML GUI description.
Code generators are there for the developer’s convenience, they don’t have to be used.
MOC does “extend” C++ yes
No.
Both files, the one which moc takes as input and the one it outputs are C++ files and can be compiled with lots of C++ compilers without needing them to be patched.
I suppose the use of macros nowadays counts as “extending”, but then everyone is using extended C++.
I have seen macros used to enable code in debug mode but disable it in release mode, I have seen macros being used instead of constants, I have seen macros being used to mark functions and classes for DLL export and tons of other use cases, but somehow if you use them in Qt code the become “extending C++”
Both files, the one which moc takes as input and the one it outputs are C++ files and can be compiled with lots of C++ compilers without needing them to be patched.
Yes yes, you are talking how it technically work, but good luck trying to compile your code without using it. It is pretty easy writing a QT program without using any other tools, like the gui designer, but it is darn hard without using MOC, so in all practical senses it does extend the language and provide things that are not built in, if it didn’t you wouldn’t need it. Without it you don’t get signals and slots the way they work now.
but it is darn hard without using MOC
No, it is just unnecessary effort, but not hard as you can work with copy&paste and just replace the class name, slot names and signal names.
if it didn’t you wouldn’t need it
Exactly what I am trying to say. You do not need it, but it is nice having it.
Without it you don’t get signals and slots the way they work now
The way signals and slots work is implemented in the code generated by moc.
As a program cannot invoke some kind of magic, this means that the relevant code could also be written manually (definition of a code generator)
I doubt manually written slot invocation would work any different than generated one.
”
but it is darn hard without using MOC
No, it is just unnecessary effort, but not hard as you can work with copy&paste and just replace the class name, slot names and signal names.
”
Well, saying that the moc preprocessor does not extend C++ is a bit of a stretch. Luckily, moc integrates nicely into the build tool chain.
There is another issue which gets overlooked here however, which is that you do not have to generate Qt style signal/slot code at all, even if you use Qt! You just need it (and therefore need moc), if you declare Qt style signals and slots in your own classes (that is, you do not need it for example if you just connect signals and slots in existing classes). You can do without and use for example libsigc++ for signals/slots.
—
El Pseudonymo
saying that the moc preprocessor does not extend C++ is a bit of a stretch
I guess it depends on ones definition of “extending”.
I don’t consider macros to be language extensions as they are replaced by standard language constructs by the preprocessor.
Of course if a macro definition is considered an extension to the language, then there are language extension introduced by the existance of the compiler’s preprocessor.
So if any program introduces language extensions it is the standard preprocessor.
moc does definitely not change its input files to make it parseable by the C++ compiler, only the preprocessor does this.
> Next week, after casting some doubt on KDE the past
> two weeks, I’ll explain why I am not the GNOME user
> I have been presumed to be.
Tim, but you are. I had quite some conversation with Ed about you and heard that you became a total GNOME zealot. I don’t understand you, you used to be a die hard KDE user and then turned your opinion and became a die hard GNOME user. You need to decide what you are. Do you want to use KDE because of the great technology it has or do you want to be our new george washington and start politics. I doubt anything for you as user will change be it that QT becomes fully LGPL or not, it won’t affect you. All you do is hurting an adequate company in the EU who tries to establish themself in the IT sector. One company that hasn’t decided to move away to India or China because it’s cheaper there. How would you like it if we start attacking your OFB site until you resign because you can’t stand all the complaints and personal attacks anymore. You do the same (or did the same) with your really offensive article last time.
No I’m not, and I’m quite sure Ed would never suggest I’m a zealot, he knows me too well. Now, I’ll leave it to your imagination until next week what I’m really using, but I am not using GNOME.
First, though, let me say this: when I did switch to GNOME I did so for pragmatic reasons. I felt the interface was going in a better direction, that my earlier complaints about it had been solved, that the apps I wanted to use typically where GTK+ based and I was never fond of KDE’s dependence on Trolltech. This is not because I do not like Trolltech, I think they are a fine company, but because I would rather see a desktop environment in a position where Trolltech was providing value added services on top of the basic development, rather than the whole stack of solutions. For example: if I am a Windows developer, I can develop perfectly integrated software without Trolltech’s license (or without any development licenses at all — if I do not mind doing more of the dirty work myself), but I can choose to purchase Qt if I want to take advantage of its power. I wish KDE was in the same position.
I have nothing against KDE. Since I left the KDE community, I’ve found there are some features I simply cannot replicate on other platforms that I miss. But, as a whole it is not the right desktop for me. It is a fine desktop though, and I still insist it has the finest underpinnings of any D.E. I’ve used.
> Do you have schitzophrenia or something? You seem
> to be really paranoid?
I now believe that it was too hard to expect getting an non-insulting comment from a GNOME user like you. Is it possible for you or others to argue normally ?
KDE is a powerful Free Software graphical desktop environment for Linux and Unix workstations. It combines ease of use, contemporary functionality, and outstanding graphical design with the technological superiority of the Unix operating system.
Personally I don’t care much for the license. I have no issue with it since I am able to get the source and compile them on my own. KDE is a pretty nice desktop solution that simply works and where I get my work done and done correctly.
Mod this down. This is the beginning of a flamewar (thanks to Ali, again). Do you go around assuming that everybody who disagrees with you or how you react to a situation is an ‘evil GNOME idiot’? The guy you flamed was on-the-money.
> Do you have schitzophrenia or something? You seem
> to be really paranoid?
I now believe that it was too hard to expect getting an non-insulting comment from a GNOME user like you. Is it possible for you or others to argue normally ?
KDE is a powerful Free Software graphical desktop environment for Linux and Unix workstations. It combines ease of use, contemporary functionality, and outstanding graphical design with the technological superiority of the Unix operating system.
Personally I don’t care much for the license. I have no issue with it since I am able to get the source and compile them on my own. KDE is a pretty nice desktop solution that simply works and where I get my work done and done correctly.
OK, at first I thought maybe u were being a bit paranoid, or misunderstood me, but now I personally think u r downright stupid. Like I said, reread my comments. I never once bashed QT, KDE or Trolltech. Someone asked a question about where these licensing issues were coming from, I told him. That’s all. Now would someone please explain to me what I did wrong?
I applaude Trolltech for what they have done. They never had to GPL their toolkit, they could have kept it closed source, yet they did GPL it. There is a risk to them that if it is forked and the fork is the way KDE goes, their business model could be in jeopardy, yet they put that issue aside for the Open Source community, and I thank them for that, irregardless of whether or not I am a Gnome user. Yes I use Gnome. But guess what, I suggest KDE for anyone I introduce to Linux. I also use K3b, Kalarm, Opera and numerous other KDE and QT applications on my desktop. So saying I am this Gnome zealot that hates KDE and QT doesn’t exactly stick. I use Gnome because I like it. That’s all. It has nothing to do with the underlying toolkit, nor does it have anything to do with licensing.
Perhaps you should take your meds and then reread my comments yet again. Maybe you will see I did nothing wrong this time around, and said nothing bad about kde…or perhaps that point will go flying right over your head again. Just to make it easy on you, I will quote myself here from one of my first comments in this thread :
For commercial applications it is beholden to Trolltech. You cannot write a proprietary application using QT without buying a license from Trolltech. This is not so with Gnome/GTK+. That is what he is talking about. Whether this is good or bad depends on the views of the user/developer.
Apparently not everyone had so much trouble understanding me, like you did, as someone modded that comment up.
It’s clear he was not attacking GPL, but the KDE project. This time, is more evident than ever. KDE is so alive and is doing so well that we must expect more of these kinds of FUD attacks in the future.
Go, KDE!
Article quote: “Next week, after casting some doubt on KDE the past two weeks, I’ll explain why I am not the GNOME user I have been presumed to be.”
I don’t believe the author was intending to attack the KDE community or Trolltech specifically. Though he could of done a better job writing the article by explaining what distributions, developers and companies like the QT license. When I compare the applications written for KDE vs Gnome there appears far more available for KDE users and in some cases better applications (ie: Amarok). Not every Linux developer can afford the QT license but there are a lot that can and do opt for QT over GTK.
The GPL is a REALLY screwed license but ,that said, I really prefer KDE over GNOME any day. The article seems to be attacking Trolltech for finding a way to make moneoy off the GPL limitations. As I see it this is very consistent: KDE is GPL’d so you cannot complain to Trolltech for being consistent.<BR>
Has anyone considered porting KDE to OpenLook’s xview? I don’t so.
Mikah (or Micah), you know that the vast majority of us don’t really care for the licensing issue. The amount of comments I read from people who do seem have an issue with it ended up with my conclusion that those people are simply GNOME fanboys who have nothing better to do with their time to bash about non-existing issues. I already saw in the last OSN Tim Buttler report that most arguments were stirred up by GNOMER’s.
Look not everyone has an issue with it, the majority of people don’t even care. All they want is to use a working functional and good desktop that KDE offers. This is all about politics and is in no way proven to be a real issue or not. At the end it’s not you ordinary users who tell a company what to pay their money for or what not. They decide what’s better for them and not what is better for you.
Go and use GTK+ if you think it’s better. This still don’t give you access to either Acrobat reader, VMWare and whatever. You still end up with propritary binaries that you can’t compile on your own since they don’t permitt you to have the sources. It’s a similar case on both sites. If someone wants to keep their property closed then you can’t avoid it.
Yet another licence flamewar and I have to do some shopping and can’t follow it
Seriously: why is it that “XYZ is a bad licence” articles are always by some non-developer?
Maybe developers can decide for themselves which library they use for whatever merrit?
Well, I consider myself a developer. I’ve been developing minor applications for a couple years now, and I have learned that I would never use a GPL’d library such as Qt. If I write software with its own independant logic, I don’t want to be dictated as to how I release it just because of the GUI toolkit that I use. This is why, when making a GUI application, I predominantly go with Gtk+, while releasing it under a license of my choosing (usually an Open Source license).
GPL is not a bad license for some developers, but I completely understand companies that won’t touch it with a ten foot pole.
Well, I consider myself a developer
You nicely show what I intended to show.
You are a developer, you knew your options, you chose one.
You don’t crawl around writing articles, rants or whatever speculating about other imaginary developers ability to choose for themselves.
GPL is not a bad license for some developers, but I completely understand companies that won’t touch it with a ten foot pole.
Absolutely. The company I am working for woudn’t either, but fortunately there are plenty of options, including in our case the availability of a Qt licence for proprietary development.
I don’t know why people don’t slam VMWare for keeping their software depend on GTK+ and closed. Or Adobe for keeping their Reader depend on GTK+ and closed or any other company that does so (The Nero burner for example). That’s ok for them to have their software closed, nobody seems to care, everything is ok. But on the KDE site the same people keep arguing how evil Trolltech are for charging a small amount of money for those who want to get support.
Micah (youknowmewell), is the only way for you to communicate nicely the way of namecalling others or defamate them in the public ? We all know you are a GNOME user and the author of ClearLooks-Indigo, no need to hide.
No people don’t need to agree with the opinion of one, but please expect that other’s don’t necessarily want to agree with your opinion either.
Just because one don’t agree with you doesn’t mean you have the rights to namecall them. If you want to be a serious and honest person (which you aren’t – because you are insulting them) then be prepared that no one takes you serious either.
Would you two please take your lovers’ quarrel somewhere private? Do you think everyone else wants to read this “no you’re biased,” “no you’re biased,” “stop calling me names” stuff?
Obviously, nobody should pay attention to GNOME users, because clearly we are lower-class citizens and do nothing but start flamewars. Instead, we should all give the prophetic message of Ali Akcaagac, the humble KDE user, our undying attention. His arguments are vastly superior to any GNOME user’s arguments, and we should instead disregard any ‘logical’ arguments comming from the evil GNOME users. Heil Ali! Heil KDE! Bow before Trolltech our IT redeemer and only true hope for the ‘Linux Desktop’!
Obviously, nobody should pay attention to GNOME users
Nobody is saying that, don’t be silly.
It is just funny, as Ali pointed out, that all negative comments about Qt’s licensing model comes from the Gnome camp.
I mean, if Qt’s license was REALLY a problem, the KDE guys would be the FIRST to be worried and to raise their voices. But they don’t do it. Why? Because it’s FAIR.
You want to use other people’s work and contribute back something in the form of source code? That’s GREAT, you can use Qt as long as you wish. You don’t want to contribute anything and want to make money out of it? You have to pay. What’s wrong with that?
Sorry if I sound obvious, but the whole point of free software is ..well.. to encourage development of free software.
Ali pointed something out that wasn’t happening in this thread. Perhaps in the article (which I didn’t read) there is, but not in the thread. He flamed a guy that was simply pointing out that his reaction was a bit knee-jerk and smelled of indirect flames at GNOME users. Let’s look at the sequence here.
rm6990 replies:
For commercial applications it is beholden to Trolltech. You cannot write a proprietary application using QT without buying a license from Trolltech. This is not so with Gnome/GTK+. That is what he is talking about. Whether this is good or bad depends on the views of the user/developer.
He is simply pointing out the difference, nothing more. He is not giving his opinion.
Ali responds:
Right, if you want to write propritary closed source applications using QT then it’s true. But then again if you look beyond the license only. Then you will see that at the end these companies are saving a lot of money too.
Ali agrees completely, except he says something at the end:
This should be your own interest. It could be your IT seat that could be reduced one day, because of your extreme views that helps no one.
Who’s extreme views? He was obviously responding to rm6990, yet rm6990 didn’t express his own point of view. Ali ASSUMED rm6990’s position and based his argument on that. I pointed out a logical deficiency in Ali’s arguments in d).
(My argument here is only relevent to show my position on the whole GPL vs LGPL deal and to show I wasn’t being the big bad GNOME user.
a) and d) are lame arguments. a) is subjective and can start a whole flamewar in itself, and d) is just illogical given the whole reason behind having developers pay to make closed-source apps. It helps Trolltech, yes, but it would help the developers even more to not have to pay at all to make a closed-source app. That is to say, d) hinges on the betterment of companies so as to help the European economy, but doesn’t it help more when a company doesn’t have to pay for their tools, thereby not needing to pass the cost onto the customer? I’m not saying that it is illegitimate for Trolltech to ask for money, but I think your attempts at playing on patriotism are flawed.)
rm6990 responds:
Lol buddy, chill out. Maybe you should take a second to read the rest of my comment. Or maybe the one I was responding to also. I never commented on which one was better. I was merely answering the question of someone who didn’t understand the licensing issues. Do you have schitzophrenia or something? You seem to be really paranoid?
rm6990 is correct, Ali assumed what rm6990’s position was. Rm just pointed out that Ali was making a knee-jerk reaction.
Ali responds:
I now believe that it was too hard to expect getting an non-insulting comment from a GNOME user like you. Is it possible for you or others to argue normally ?
What the hell? Where did he get that from rm’s reply? This sparks an argument between me and Ali.
I respond:
Mod this down. This is the beginning of a flamewar (thanks to Ali, again). Do you go around assuming that everybody who disagrees with you or how you react to a situation is an ‘evil GNOME idiot’? The guy you flamed was on-the-money.
I point out how stupid it was for Ali to bring up the GNOME vs KDE war when there was none, and how he degrades GNOME users in general as being lower-class heathens (because one can’t expect a ‘normal’ argument from us, because we are GNOME users).
Ali replies:
Micah (youknowmewell), is the only way for you to communicate nicely the way of namecalling others or defamate them in the public ? We all know you are a GNOME user and the author of ClearLooks-Indigo, no need to hide.
He continues the GNOME user bashing.
We have 18 comments so far, two known GNOME users
rm6990 and youknowmewell
We have some normal people who raise their voices and opinion and all we get from those two GNOMER’s are inflamatory comments, insulting one (calling someone by name, calling them shizophreniac, paranoid, idiot) and so on.
And then the same two people want to argue about the benefits of GPL or LGPL [ykmw note: This is completely untrue, as shown by past comments.] because “someone didn’t understood it” but then misbehave on their own because one of the elementary key elements of Open Source and said licenses also include free speach. But free speach don’t mean to hand over a free ticket to some twits to act like morons publicly. Just because others (KDE people or people who don’t have any issues with the QT licensing sheme) don’t agree with them make them automatically shizophreniac, paranoid idiots.
Where did he get that?
Ok may GTK+ be free as free whatever, but who wants to spent time messing with a community that is build up on huge inflamatory insulting, where insulting and offensive behavior is the only way for them to publically demonstrate their weakness and inability to communicate nicely and friendly. Now keep your FREE LGPL’ed whatever and stuck it up where the sun never shines. It won’t help any company or user much if all they receive is bad inflamatory crap.
These things luckely don’t exist on the KDE frontier. The people are mainly friendly, helpful and calm persons. You can have nice and friendly conversations with them, they help one, you help them with bugreports and you feel home there. All the license issues by side, but are you willing to work with people like youknowmewell or rm6990 ? There are plenty of them out there. Their way of behavior and the way of some others from the same camp speaks for the entire project they are feeling committed too, one is the same as the other and within the past years I have only found a handful of ‘normal’ people there.
Kind of ironic.
So you see, although there may be thousands of bad comments coming from GNOME users about QT, there were none here and his comments were unjustified.
We have 18 comments so far, two known GNOME users
rm6990 and youknowmewell
We have some normal people who raise their voices and opinion and all we get from those two GNOMER’s are inflamatory comments, insulting one (calling someone by name, calling them shizophreniac, paranoid, idiot) and so on.
And then the same two people want to argue about the benefits of GPL or LGPL because “someone didn’t understood it” but then misbehave on their own because one of the elementary key elements of Open Source and said licenses also include free speach. But free speach don’t mean to hand over a free ticket to some twits to act like morons publicly. Just because others (KDE people or people who don’t have any issues with the QT licensing sheme) don’t agree with them make them automatically shizophreniac, paranoid idiots.
Ok may GTK+ be free as free whatever, but who wants to spent time messing with a community that is build up on huge inflamatory insulting, where insulting and offensive behavior is the only way for them to publically demonstrate their weakness and inability to communicate nicely and friendly. Now keep your FREE LGPL’ed whatever and stuck it up where the sun never shines. It won’t help any company or user much if all they receive is bad inflamatory crap.
These things luckely don’t exist on the KDE frontier. The people are mainly friendly, helpful and calm persons. You can have nice and friendly conversations with them, they help one, you help them with bugreports and you feel home there. All the license issues by side, but are you willing to work with people like youknowmewell or rm6990 ? There are plenty of them out there. Their way of behavior and the way of some others from the same camp speaks for the entire project they are feeling committed too, one is the same as the other and within the past years I have only found a handful of ‘normal’ people there.
Hey Tim Buttler, did you read the past 20 comments ? Is that the community and openess you are talking about ? For what you left the KDE camp for and joined GNOME ? Let me applaude you for the past crap article and this one you given to a brave and fine community.
Maybe you should re-think your position.
Tim, not only LICENSING is an issue, it’s also a thing of good and friendly people you work with, you have fun with, you enjoy your time with, where you feel home and invited, where you feel good while helping them because you feel you did something for everyone.
Have you tried helping those who you put in the bright light with your articles ? I bet they haven’t called you an shizophreniac or paranoid till now.
The author actually makes a powerful case for the GPL, saying that it is a good license…only not for libraries.
I agree with him, though I can’t say it has hurt KDE that much so far. Nonetheless, he is right in saying that libraries should be licensed under the LGPL, while apps should be licensed under the GPL.
(For that matter, I thought most KDE libs were licensed under the LGPL already? Anyone care to confirm/deny?)
For that matter, I thought most KDE libs were licensed under the LGPL already? Anyone care to confirm/deny?
http://developer.kde.org/policies/licensepolicy.html
Thanks for the link…so, in fact, KDE libraries are already licensed under the LGPL…I guess the perceived problem is with the Qt libraries? Am I missing something here?
Am I missing something here?
You are “missing” that the licence discussion is always initiated and followed by people that are not in anyway affected by it.
Developers are the ones affected by library licences and they are usually smart enough to understand technical and legal advantages of available options.
But of course if you need another article by the end of the week or a couple of more site hits, it gets convenient to have a topic that can never by “solved” because by only looks like a problem but isn’t one.
Even though the KDE libraries are a mix of BSD/LGPL/etc, they are effectively GPLd due to Qt being GPL. You still can not develop non-GPL applications using them due to Qt being GPL, unless you buy a commercial license for Qt. That includes using other open source licenses that are not compatible with the GPL. KDE itself is in a grey area on some libraries it uses due to the viral nature of the GPL. For example, KDE uses the openssl libssl library which is not GPL compatible in kded_kssld.so which kded_kssld.so also links with other libraries that are effectively GPL’d.
Qt Licensing scheme is extremely conforting for proprietary developers as:
– You don’t pay royalties: you know how much it is going to cost. You are free to ship as many copies of your
Qt-based app as you wish.
– You get a professional product that just works on many platforms.
– Now starting with Qt4, you get the KDE classes for free (as they are lgpl).
– There is the FreeQt foundation which ensures there will be continuity in the platform
And more recently:
– You get the right to modify the Qt source code, if necessary, in the future, and without paying anything.
For free software developers:
– You get a professional tool, which is free software, the right to for it, the FreeQt foundation, the kde libs, and starting with KDE4, real support for win in addition to Mac and Unix.
There are already free software Qt apps, previously unavailable in natively on windows being released:
http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=25041
KDE apps will follow soon.
Conclusion: Qt is a winner, both for proprietary and (especially) for free software development.
For free software development, it is a no brainer; C++/Qt is much more productive, supported, advanced, and bug free in more platforms than C/Gtk.
Developers choose any license they want and users have no rights to complain. Period.
So developers don’t write software for users then?
Um… whatever happened to “use what you want”? GNOME works for me, but there’s no point in me pushing it on anybody else if they don’t want it. And for the record, I find both the KDE and GNOME communities equally helpful. In fact, the heads of these groups very often work together to help standardize the desktop. It’s the 16 year old zit-faced virgins on this site and a couple of others that rage against one side or the other irrationally. It’s just a desktop, people. Calm down.
Also, just because GTK+ is written in C doesn’t mean it doesn’t have C++/PHP/Python/Ruby bindings. I’ve written little apps for both QT and GTK2 and, although different, both are just as easy to program for.
Why do you think that the flamers are 16 year old zit-faced virgins? It’s just pointles stereotyping and name calling. And no I am not 16 year old or zit-faced.
Other than that good post.
Why do you think that the flamers are 16 year old zit-faced virgins? It’s just pointles stereotyping and name calling. And no I am not 16 year old or zit-faced.
Other than that good post.
15 years old?
lol, jk
For that matter, I thought most KDE libs were licensed under the LGPL already? Anyone care to confirm/deny?)
Most KDE libs are LGPL. This makes it possible to write proprietary apps. Of course you still have to pay Trolltech.
Something that most people might not realize is that the GPL is actually a file based license. Say I have some app composed of a bunch of GPL C files. There’s nothing that prevents me from adding another file under say the BSD license and releasing the app. Now, the FSF will claim that the whole app is now GPL, but your code is still under the license you chose.
For that matter, I thought most KDE libs were licensed under the LGPL already? Anyone care to confirm/deny?)
Most KDE libs are LGPL. This makes it possible to write proprietary apps. Of course you still have to pay Trolltech.
Something that most people might not realize is that the GPL is actually a file based license. Say I have some app composed of a bunch of GPL C files. There’s nothing that prevents me from adding another file under say the BSD license and releasing the app. Now, the FSF will claim that the whole app is now GPL, but your code is still under the license you chose.
If this is the case, then why do you insist on trolling on all of the KDE articles, such as the last one from this same author, on how KDE is not the way to go and how Gnome should be the standard *nix desktop in order to defeat Windows in the marketplace? Or do you just have nothing better to do?
Yes, your code is BSD or w/e you choose, the entire combined app is GPL though. I don’t see that as a problem however. Either pony up the license fees, GPL your app, or use GTK+. Many KDE users use Gnome/GTK apps (such as Gaim), just like many Gnome users, such as myself, use KDE/Qt apps such as K3b.
That’s not correct under the terms of the GPL:
5. You are not required to accept this License, since you have not signed it. However, nothing else grants you permission to modify or distribute the Program or its derivative works. These actions are prohibited by law if you do not accept this License. Therefore, by modifying or distributing the Program (or any work based on the Program), you indicate your acceptance of this License to do so, and all its terms and conditions for copying, distributing or modifying the Program or works based on it.
Since the GPL has yet to lose, or win, in court you seriously can’t just say the license isn’t lawful. There are law professors (Laurence Lessig for one) who believe the GPL is entirely legal; but of course standing up in court will be the true big test. You may find it interesting that no one has tried to beat it in court to this day.
You don’t seem to understand that code is not your property in the same sense as most tangible objects. There are many differences and exceptions that make it very different. Of course, the reasons for this is a whole different discussion on patterns of creative work.
The reason the lgpl was created is because what you advocate is prohibited by the gpl:
b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof, to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License.
Because “derived from the Program” is so generic, and technically completely non-descript, most consider this to mean you probably should avoid linking to gpl’ed code from non-gpl’ed code.
Now, you could use a bsd licensed code, however that code would be gpl once you link it
.
Trust Lumbergh to come bargin in with his obsessive-compulsory anti-gpl stallman-paranoia and try to confuse things… YOUR code is ALWAYS free for YOU to release under ANY license YOU want. It’s YOUR code, YOU have the copyright to it. GPL does NOT take away your copyright..
rm6990, it’s not the problem what you say, it’s the way how you say it. You are the first who called me an shizohreniac and a paranoid, later on you called me an idiot.
You called me that because you aren’t able to accept opinions that differ with yours. Same applies to youknowitall who lengthly replied at reply #32 or so.
If you or that other guy wants to be taken serious then you should clearly distance yourself from using such insulting words like ‘shizophreniac, paranoid or idiot’.
Oh btw. my reply got modded up too (in case it wasn’t that one you mentioned).
You called me that because you aren’t able to accept opinions that differ with yours. Same applies to youknowitall who lengthly replied at reply #32 or so.
Holy crap, this is getting ridiculous. Yes, I tend to get a little pissed when people stick words in my mouth. Will you please answer my question finally, which is, where exactly did I bash KDE??? I have asked you that numerous times and you have yet to answer. Like I have tried to show you numerous times, someone asked a question because they didn’t understand the GPL/LGPL, and I told them the difference. Had you understood that and not immediately thought I was some Gnome zealot bashing KDE, you would see I wasn’t even argueing in the first place.
Despite you sitting there accusing me of all of this shit, I STILL have yet to bash KDE. In fact, read this comment I posted in response to someone else.
Yes, your code is BSD or w/e you choose, the entire combined app is GPL though. I don’t see that as a problem however. Either pony up the license fees, GPL your app, or use GTK+. Many KDE users use Gnome/GTK apps (such as Gaim), just like many Gnome users, such as myself, use KDE/Qt apps such as K3b.
Now I ask you nicely, will you please quit assuming I’m bashing stuff that I have no problem with? And quit putting words in my mouth? Would you not be a little pissed if I turned around and accused you of bashing Gnome and GTK+ when you have done no such thing, like I have not done with KDE and QT.
Like I also said, I recommend KDE to new Linux users over Gnome. If I was this crazed Gnome zealot you claim I am, I not only would not do that, I would purge my harddrive of KDE and QT, which I’m not about to do because I like a lot of their apps.
People, get a grip and please read the article.
The author makes a pretty good case on why he thinks Qt being under the GPL is bad for KDE. Mind you, he doesn’t argue the GPL itself is bad, on the contrary, a large part of the article consists of a very good case in favor of the GPL.
He simply argues that the GPL is not suited for libraries that have to compete against other libraries that do essentially the same but aren’t licensed under the GPL. This, as he rightly points out, was the reason why we have the LGPL.
Now please, agree with him, disagree with him, whatever, but please stop your little troll gettogether.
The author makes a pretty good case on why he thinks Qt being under the GPL is bad for KDE. Mind you, he doesn’t argue the GPL itself is bad, on the contrary, a large part of the article consists of a very good case in favor of the GPL.
KDE fanboys would rather the issue of Qt being GPL just not be discussed in public. In private, and I discussed this with a prominent KDE developer a couple years ago, they do realize that despite the technical superiority of KDE over Gnome, Qt being GPL basically evens out the score. The KDE developer I discussed it with admitted that in the long run the Qt license being GPL might be a problem for KDE.
KDE fanboys tend to be so blinded by their religion that they don’t want to admit that what is in Trolltech’s business interests doesn’t necessarily jibe with what is in KDE’s interest. But what do you expect with people that are so willing to subcumb to groupthink.
License discussions aside, it seems that Tim Butler has absolutely no clue of development and of what is doable and what is not. The suggestion to replace Qt by something else for KDE4(!) is a bad joke.
Qt spent years paying excellent developers fulltime to make Qt the great toolkit it is today.
If KDE would want to do that, the project had to
a) write its own toolkit that is LGPL and as good as Qt (or go for Gtk2)
b) port all KDE applications to the new toolkit. And that’s not only UI, its also strings, containers, etc. pp.
In one year of course I suppose.
Better plan 3-4 years.
No thanks. I don’t want KDE to end up as Enlightenment did. Development should go on in iterations. Rewriting everything from scratch is just not the way to go.
No, I wouldn’t suggest that should be done in a year. I’d delay KDE 4 until it could be done, and concentrate on a ABI compatible (KDE 3) tree until such time as a shift could be made.
(In the interest of making GNU/Linux a better desktop platform, it is preferable that ABI incompatible releases of KDE *and* GNOME are much farther apart then even they are now, in my estimation…)
We could go to the extreme and do as Windows does and maintain compatibility for 15 years, how about that? Problems arrive when we are bogged down by legacy code. “Release early, release often” is the name of the game, the point is to get new things out there faster so that more people can use it so that bugs get found and squashed faster so that the new things become better faster. People complain about bloat, imagine the bloat from the legacy code from 15 years ago! No thanks, rapid-release is for me. Get rid of the old, redundant, code please. I think what both KDE and GNOME are doing regarding ABI compatibility is pretty reasonable.
It is a totally hypothetical thing anyway.
Such a change would require a development team interested in making this happen additionally to the one working on KDE itself.
My estimation is that there are not enough developers out there that want to compete with Trolltech’s team without knowing if your work will be used at all.
They would have to deliver a solution at least as good as Qt and equal further development efforts before the KDE developer team would be even discussing it as an alternative.
Tim Butler has absolutely no clue of development
That sums it up nicely I think.
> Right, if you want to write propritary closed
> source applications using QT then it’s true. But
> then again if you look beyond the license only.
> Then you will see that at the end these companies
> are saving a lot of money too.
Anything wrong with that ?
> Ali agrees completely, except he says something at
> the end:
>
> This should be your own interest. It could be your
> IT seat that could be reduced one day, because of
> your extreme views that helps no one.
>
> Who’s extreme views? He was obviously responding to
> rm6990, yet rm6990 didn’t express his own point of
> view. Ali ASSUMED rm6990’s position and based his
> argument on that. I pointed out a logical
> deficiency in Ali’s arguments in d).
Extreme views as in continous bashing about TrollTechs licensing model. It’s extreme and false to continue saying the same stuff on all kind of purpose. rm6990 and you kept replying on the last OSN article submited by Tim Buttler and people can go there reading the same stuff. And yet the same people impressingly jump on a similar article continuing with the same methods. It’s true that if you talk a company to death that at the end it doesn’t help anyone. The knee-jerk people are those who don’t get that in their heads.
> (My argument here is only relevent to show my
> position on the whole GPL vs LGPL deal and to show
> I wasn’t being the big bad GNOME user.
LGPL vs. GPL are just one or two of many open source approved licensing models. Nobody is forced to be GPL or LGPL compliant and not everyone believes that these licenses are that great ones. There are plenty of people outside who still believe that LGPL as well as GPL are quite limited. Head over to the OSI page and look yourself of the amount of licensing there exist.
> I now believe that it was too hard to expect
> getting an non-insulting comment from a GNOME user
> like you. Is it possible for you or others to argue
> normally ?
>
> What the hell? Where did he get that from rm’s
> reply? This sparks an argument between me and Ali.
From Tim’s last article. It’s so easy to figure out who is zealot of what desktop.
> Mod this down. This is the beginning of a flamewar
> (thanks to Ali, again).
I doubt there was an intention of flamewars, the intention is probably more on your site as we already have been able to read in OSN’s last Tim Buttler bashses QT article.
> Do you go around assuming that everybody who
> disagrees with you or how you react to a situation
> is an ‘evil GNOME idiot’? The guy you flamed was
> on-the-money.
I never said ‘evil GNOME idiot’ I don’t use words like that. I only figure out quickly who a GNOME user can be and the amount of people like you or rm9660 defending GTK+ and GNOME till end makes it clear which sites you are favorisiting. I doubt an KDE user would come up and say ‘hey you, you are an shizophreniac, paranoid idiot.. but hey thanks for defending KDE’.
> I point out how stupid it was for Ali to bring up
> the GNOME vs KDE war when there was none, and how
> he degrades GNOME users in general as being
> lower-class heathens (because one can’t expect a
> ‘normal’ argument from us, because we are GNOME
> users).
a) I’ve been a GNOME user myself for the past 6 years, I still keep supporting GNOME with valuable bugreports and even patches, same apply for KDE and FreeDesktop.org. I still spent a lot of time supporting people with updated versions of CVSGnome to help them test use and install GNOME. But over the past 6 years I got a bad flavor from the behavior of GNOME people towards others, towards people who want to help, towards people who want to participate, towards people who wanted to be part of a community. In case you haven’t figured out on your own, then please let me remind you of people such as ‘Star (one of the main artists that left gnome due to huge offense), Martin Baulig (one of the main gnomelibs people who basicly got pissed out of gnome), dr. frickle (the guy behind gnome’s softwaremap who got pissed off and who got all the mess with the art.gnome.org site), eugenia (who wanted to help gnome), … and countless others. All shitzos ?.
> Just because others (KDE people or people who don’t
> have any issues with the QT licensing sheme) don’t
> agree with them make them automatically
> shizophreniac, paranoid idiots.
>
> Where did he get that?
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=11207&threshold=-5&limit=…
and
http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=11207&threshold=-5&limit=…
> So you see, although there may be thousands of bad
> comments coming from GNOME users about QT, there
> were none here and his comments were unjustified.
Oh and I wasn’t trolling or creating a flamwar or something. It clearly explains that you haven’t spent time reading Tim Buttler’s last article on OFB which was all around GNOME vs. KDE and this article of him is quite similar – to my understanding. Maybe you should spent time reading the articles carefully or follow the reference before namecalling people or write stuff like ‘Ali’s intention is to make a KDE vs. GNOME war’ which is not and in no way true. But I am sick of people like you trying to enforce this by repeating BS in the public.
Alright then, I’ll bite, here are links to every single one of my comments from the last article. Please enlighten me to which one was bashing KDE.
http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=11106&threshold=-5&limit=no#7…
http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=11106&threshold=-5&limit=no#7…
http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=11106&threshold=-5&limit=no#1…
http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=11106&threshold=-5&limit=no#1…
http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=11106&threshold=-5&limit=no#1…
http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=11106&threshold=-5&limit=no#1…
http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=11106&threshold=-5&limit=no#1…
http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=11106&threshold=-5&limit=no#1…
http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=11106&threshold=-5&limit=no#1…
You’ll like this next one :
http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=11106&threshold=-5&limit=no#1…
http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=11106&threshold=-5&limit=no#1…
http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=11106&threshold=-5&limit=no#2…
This one goes and proves my point yet again :
http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=11106&threshold=-5&limit=no#2…
http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=11106&threshold=-5&limit=no#2…
http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=11106&threshold=-5&limit=no#3…
The worst I could be accused of is bashing Trolltech for lying about the GPL conditions kicking in for an in-house app.
So please, I ask yet again (and I’m willing to bet you will not answer this question, despite me making it easy by providing links) to point out where exactly I flamed KDE??? I really would like to know.
I find it funny you accused me of this same thing on the last article and couldn’t provide proof.
The author wrote:
> With Windows, Mac OS X, and GNOME offering complete
> user environments that do not require the developer
> to even think about this, much less pay anything
> additional for the option to develop non-Free code
Of course they to, but this is deliberately ignored because it would look unbelieveable in anti-GPL FUD. You have to pay a Windows license to develop proprietary windows code, you have to pay for OS X (not to mention all the overpriced Apple hardvare OS X is locked in) to develop proprietary OS X apps, so whats all the problems with QT suddendly?
How can a commercial licence to develop proprietary code be worse for Qt than it is for Windows or OS X?
This is really a red herring. I may have to buy a Windows license (although likely not, since most peoples’ Linux boxen probably came with a Windows license), but that’s $199. OS X is $129. That pays for the user end of the system *and* the developer portion of the system (especially in OS X’s case, since you get a IDE with it).
We are also talking about less than 1/10th the price in OS X’s case. This is really irrelevant though: if someone is developing for a platform, they surely already own a computer running that platform. And, most businesses probably do not download free ISO’s of GNU/Linux, but rather purchase site licenses of something like RHEL or one of the Novell offerings, so they pay for their GNU/Linux desktops as well.
As I noted in the article, even the FSF — who would like probably nothing more than for everything to be GPL’ed someday — admits that the LGPL is better in some cases for the reasons I talk about in the article.
This is really a red herring.
No It’s not, as you clearly do not base the discussion on the value of different licenses even if you try to make it sound so. Your last arguent made it more than clear, the base of your argumnet are nothing but price. It’s only haggling.
No, it just shows I can support my argument from multiple directions that are all interconnected.
Believe me, I can totally understand that you get upset by a troll like Ali accusing of things you haven’t done and calling you names.
But please, couldn’t you try to just ignore him? (I know that’s asking much, but if people simply ignored him he’d probably quit his constant trolling.)
Thanks,
Ralph
Believe me, I can totally understand that you get upset by a troll like Ali accusing of things you haven’t done and calling you names.
But please, couldn’t you try to just ignore him? (I know that’s asking much, but if people simply ignored him he’d probably quit his constant trolling.)
Thanks,
Ralph
Point taken, is there a feature on this site where I can block people?
Thanks again. ;-D
And afaik there isn’t such a feature, but having one would certainly be a great idea.
You have the ability to not view any anonymous posts though but I don’t think that’s a really good idea.
@Anonymous (IP: 129.187.26.—)
Very good point.
If you consider the money you have to pay to Trolltech for developing proprietary software as a fee for not writing open source software, the dual license scheme makes a lot of sense for the free software community. The Free Software Foundation calls the LGPL Lesser GPL for a reason and they suggest to also use the GPL for libraries.
Furthermore, the money Trolltech earns from selling Qt licenses ensures that Qt stays a worldclass toolkit. Without this money Trolltech could not pay their developers to work on Qt which would also hurt KDE and other free software depending on Qt. I don’t think that Qt could be developed at the pace it is developed now without full-time developers payed by Trolltech.
KDE immensly benefited from this and there is absolutely no point rewriting KDE using another toolkit. From a technical point of view this would be a huge step back, there is just nothing that compares to Qt.
If you consider the money you have to pay to Trolltech for developing proprietary software as a fee for not writing open source software, the dual license scheme makes a lot of sense for the free software community. The Free Software Foundation calls the LGPL Lesser GPL for a reason and they suggest to also use the GPL for libraries.
Furthermore, the money Trolltech earns from selling Qt licenses ensures that Qt stays a worldclass toolkit. Without this money Trolltech could not pay their developers to work on Qt which would also hurt KDE and other free software depending on Qt. I don’t think that Qt could be developed at the pace it is developed now without full-time developers payed by Trolltech.
KDE immensly benefited from this and there is absolutely no point rewriting KDE using another toolkit. From a technical point of view this would be a huge step back, there is just nothing that compares to Qt.
That is an excellent point. I think dual-licensing is one of the best ways to fund development. I get my great QT apps I use everyday, Debian et al get to redistribute KDE, developers get an awesome toolkit, and Trolltech and employees get to eat.
MOD this comment up.
Then accept my question where I was trolling. Ralph I know you are a GNOME user too, so summed up, how many of you people can we expect to jump on here repeating the same stuff and trying to defamate people ?
At the end it’s your very own community who ends up unbelivable and not one single person. The same way you kept attacking me on pro-linux.de. I feel sorry if you feel insulted the way because I know quite a lot about GNOME and use my knowledge in the public to correct peoples views of what’s really behind GNOME. You can go on and repeat it dozen of times that I am a troll or whatever your goal is, it doesn’t change the fact that I keep on telling everyone what a bad community the GNOME one is (which as we can see here seems to be quite true).
You end up calling me a troll, everyone calls me a troll but you can expect more image damage of the fact that one person tells the others how bad and insulting the GNOME community is and this will manifest as such and it started already with various other people that I know and do feel the same. Maybe, well in say 1-2 upcoming years GNOME will be the community that is known as the most insulting and unfair ones to it’s users.
The remaining question, why are you GNOME people responsing on a QT license related article ? Besides the fact to stirr up trouble ? Because the ‘Ali’ guy may talk out some secrets that better should be kept closed somewhere ? Because you want to spread and emphatic trying to convince everyone how bad Trolltech are with their licensing model and that everything GPL or LGPL is the only right way ? What ?
I know I asked other to simply ignore Ali and now I’m responding to him. I’m sorry, but rest assured, this is my last response.
First off, I think it’s quite funny that you know I’m a Gnome user as you don’t even know me. Not that it matters but just for your information, I’m using both Gnome and KDE and I have also used Xfce and today I played around with E17. How that makes me a Gnome user or why that should even be relevant is beyond me.
I’m not insulted in any way by you knowing more about the inner workings of Gnome than I do. In fact, I’m quite sure you know a lot more about it than I do and I never claimed otherwise. I also don’t have a problem with you critisizing things about Gnome. Feel free to do so.
But you don’t really critsize Gnome, you are on a crusade against people who somehow insulted you and these people happen to be part of the Gnome community. Now you take every opportunity to bash Gnome, not critisize it, flood every topic about Gnome and KDE with your bashing of Gnome and insult everyone who dares to disagree with you. That’s the reason everyone’s calling you a troll.
Take this discussion here as an example. So we have an article here that argues that Qt being under the GPL is bad for KDE. Now you can of course disagree with this article, as I do btw., and many people have done that and argued against it, which is what should happen in a place like this.
You however chose to insult people you percieve to be from the other camp (what a childish notion btw.) and call the author of the article names. That’s all you did. You didn’t provide any argument about why Qt being under the GPL is a good thing, or how what the author proposes is totally impractical, or why his reasoning is flawed, you just went on personal attacks against people.
So if you have something relevant to say to the discussion and contrary to what you might think I’m quite sure you really do, then please say it, but stop your trolling.
> They would have to deliver a solution at least as
> good as Qt and equal further development efforts
> before the KDE developer team would be even
> discussing it as an alternative.
Provided that even a single one of them does see a benefit to KDE in providing proprietary developers a way to develop their proprietary apps without supporting the project itself with either code or money.
Its kinda silly expecting developers commited to free software to modify their licencing so that proprietary development becomes more attractive then free software development.
@ma_d
Understanding all this probably requires contacting a lawyer before putting anything under any of these licenses. I ask myself how many people spent time reading those licenses throughly or who really understands all of it. I think it’s quite illogical to assume that everything should be placed under these licenses, specially then, when people are unsure about it. I saw countless discussions about licensing issues there and here and different opinions being spread everywhere. Personally I do take licenses quite serious as soon as it comes to my very own work. All the OSI approved licenses existing are a story of their own, fully understanding them would require a lawyer with good background and knwoledge, not to mention that some of these licenses are not applicable due to precedence law or something. But then… I am no lawyer
Unfortunately, yes, a full understanding of anything including spitting on the sidewalk requires a lawyer today. However, most of these licenses are written so that ordinary intelligent people can understand them: It only takes 20 minutes to read the GPL, and maybe a few hours to understand its consequences.
I don’t even care to fully understand them. Frankly, I’m not that worried about the majority of my own work: I got mine in the joy of writing it; otherwise there’s no reason I’d give it away.
And I’m in no way advocating a GPL only world. I’m simply trying to defend against people who seem to be anti-gpl. Every license has its place; it’s how often non-OSS licenses have their place that I’d probably get in a big fundamental argument with people over.
But still, there’s no sense trying to force people’s hands into freedom!
Now, you could use a bsd licensed code, however that code would be gpl once you link it
.
Your code would be dual-licensed at that point. The FSF has no legal authority. And you agreed with me your final point so why did you even respond?
I didn’t agree, I clarified your point a lot and then said that you could do it but it wouldn’t have your desired effect.
Having your code licensed under bsd and gpl is pretty pointless. People using it are going to have to comply with both licenses: Which is possible, but since the gpl just reiterates the conditions of bsd and then adds about 10 times more you have changed/gained/lost nothing.
Sayin the FSF has no legal authority is entirely wrong. You, as the author of your code, have legal authority. You, as a citizen of the US, have legal authority. You, as an illegal alien in the US, even have some legal authority. The FSF, as a registered foundation of some type (anyone know?), has legal authority.
The FSF has yet to excercise its legal authority; but it has threatened before and parties have complied.
You say it has no legal authority with such conviction it’s almost as if you believe it’s an anathema.
> You however chose to insult people you percieve to
> be from the other camp (what a childish notion
> btw.) and call the author of the article names.
Ralph, listen.
I am thankful that you confirm my creditibility in terms of GNOME and appreciate that you play fair with my skills and knowledge related to GNOME.
But please also understand that I dislike being called an shizophreniac, paranoid or even idiot. No one has the right to do this, no matter if his name is rm9660 or whatever and no matter if he is right with his ‘other’ (pay attention to other) arguments or not.
He, and this was my main concerns, could have expressed his opinion without using such terms and words. I have no problems being proven wrong or being told that my sights are different than his’ but then I expect people to reply in a normal way.
Sure you can expect me to say that GNOME in general is a bad community. What do you expect me to say if all I get are comments like ‘you are a troll, you are an idiot, you are a shizzophreniac, you are a paranoid’. I ignore every further writings of anyone as soon as I start reading such offending stuff. This is not necessary and wrong.
I am also not on a vendetta or something (I wonder where you get that from) and it’s also not my very personal secret that the behavior of certain GNOME followers/developers/users aren’t really clean or nice towards others. I feel sad to pull everyone over the same comb but do people leave me a choice ? As you can read within the first 20 comments given here, that my replies are quite normal, nonoffensive and noninsulting. And I haven’t called rm6990 by names since I don’t know his name. I do know the one from youknowmewell who did namecalling me in regular basis to discredit me in the public.
You can be sure that I feel not really happy working on GNOME related projects, code, contributions, bugreports – for what ? For people like him who are quite unthankful ?
That’s why I keep saying that the KDE community is quite the oposite to the experience that I made with the GNOME community. If it was really me (the evil person) then by now I would have problems with everyone on this globe which of course isn’t realistic. But I am stuck in problems of course – by the amount of dirt people seem to be carrying towards me and my person.
So what did I do to the youknowmewell guy that I deserve being called by names ? All he did and all I know about him was that he contributed one Clearlooks theme and that was all about it. While I kept working my ass off on GNOME related projects, even talking to the US Gnome-Foundation guy supporting german Gnome E.V. due to problems given by two deams, playing the judge. Even for having done this I got flamed ahead. Not one thank you nothing.
It is my right (even if it’s extreme) to criticise this. Tim Buttler is no unknown and I haven’t called him names to defamate him or something. My comments geared towards him was normal, correct, like hey mr. Tim Buttler, you are supporting a community, do you know what this community is up about ? I didn’t said you are a shizzo or paranoic to him.
Do you see and understand the difference here ? I think at an age of mid 30 you seem to see things with diferent eyes as I am doing it, there are huge differences if some 15y.o. kid is replying to someone calling you a shizzo or if you are trying to have a halfway mature comment.
Personally I have no problems with GNOME nor do I have problems with KDE as Desktop Environment. But then I also believe, that if you want to improve something that you need to be able to say something as well. To change something you need to convince people, to change something you need to be vocal. Without changes nothing will become better. Tim Buttler can write about licensing issues, it’s his good right and on his site that he pays on his own pockets he can write whatever he wants. But then he also should know what he is supporting.
You know licenses are only one part of an movement. Getting people involved and interested is another part of an movement. Getting people to contribute something is an dirty hard work to do. My personal opinion is that a license issue is just a political thing. I don’t care whether QT is licenses BSD, MIT, GPL, LGPL or whatever since I don’t feel affected. Trolltech has been hiring a lot of wonderful KDE developers, really skilled ones, magicans on their own. Matthias Ettrich and Zack Rusin only to name some (and I name them here because I have high opinions about them, not because I want to defamate them – only to clear this up in case it’s put in the wrong throath again).
Those people have a high influense on KDE, Trolltech and they all keep working on cool stuff, cool technology. I have never and in no time gotten any shits from KDE people. They are a funny community, sure the one or other word may be thrown the one or other day because people might been having a stressing day at work etc. But the communities are by far too different.
The only conversation going on here and all the time is GNOME vs. KDE, QPL vs. LGPL, GPL vs. YOURMOM and so on. And people seem to forget that not only the license matters, also the community you want to put in the bright light. What benefits does the LGPL for GNOME have if it’s impossible for any new user to contribute to it. Have you looked at the majority of GNOME modules ChangeLogs for example, you keep seeing the same names over and over which clearly explains that they are not interested for having help, no interested for having other peoples opinion, for making things become better, for changes.
That’s why I felt pissed off about this article saying again “ohhh GNOME is soo GOOD because of it’s license and all companies jump on it”. Nice do so if this is the case, then be it that way. Personally for me humanity and cool community is more important than any license wannabe issues.
Now if this QT vs. GTK+ thing would be a new issues.. but it isn’t I think by now the entire Linux, Open Source world has enough of this bullshit wannabe nonexisting issue. If you nail your desktop experience on the license then something is wrong. I personally nail my desktop experience on the desktop itself and the community around it.
Believe it or not (though, judging by KDE zealotry, probably not), GTK+ is a library that is meant to be multi-language (in addition to cross-platform) due to the underlying GLib/Gobject systems.
Someone wrote:
“a) QT is C++ thus you can rapidely write applications.”
And thus concluded that the price you pay for a QT license is worth the time you’d save over writing in te admittedly verbose pure GTK in C.
But ask Miguel de Icaza, the founder of GNOME, what the point of writing a UI toolkit in C with GLib is, and he’ll tell you: to be able to easily write GTK+ bindings. And the theory worked: at the moment, GTK+ fully supports the following languages:
Python (PyGTK)
C++ (gtkmm)
Java (java-gnome)
Perl (gtk2-perl)
C# (Mono/GTK#)
and even bindings for other smaller languages are floating around (I think I saw Haskell and Smalltalk in places).
Meanwhile, when you search around for bindings for QT (because I personally don’t like C++; if you want a high-level language, might as well use a “really” high level one like Python), you find it coming up short. PerlQT hasn’t been updated in over 2 years. PyQT/PyKDE exist, but don’t have ample documentation. QTJava also doesn’t get updated.
The reason for this makes sense: most QT programmers _are_ C++ programmers, and find C++ suitable for any task. GTK+ programmers can, instead, come from different programming backwards, and still get on with making their desktop application work.
No one expects anyone to write GTK applications (other than those in “Core” GNOME, like gnome-panel) in C anymore. The bindings are completely up to speed and track development nicely.
In a sense, that’s one of the nice things about GTK+. Whereas on Windows GUI programming you’re “expected” to use C++ with MFC, and on Mac OS X you’re expected to use ObjC, in GNOME you aren’t expected to use any language at all: take your pick!
Meanwhile, when you search around for bindings for QT (because I personally don’t like C++; if you want a high-level language, might as well use a “really” high level one like Python), you find it coming up short.
http://developer.kde.org/language-bindings/
So you come pulling the bindings card, well good for you. Since GTK+ is written in C, in some magical way it gets bindings for everything. That’s pure nonsens. And if you look closer, they are not particularly up to date either. Where are the stable Gnome bindings for Python?
And you telling lies about the Qt/KDE bindings does not really make your argument any better. For example the Java bindings for Qt/KDE are very much up to date. They get updated before each release, and have been so since KDE 2.2 or so. For the higher level language it’s even better in the Qt/KDE world, the Python, Perl and Ruby bindings are all kept up to date. And the documentation for Python are more than adequate, since the bindings are made to match the C++ equivalent. Since both Python and C++ are OO languages it’s a nobrainer.
Funny thing really! People claiming Qt/KDE not being suitable for binding to other languages, since it’s C++. And still Qt/KDE have bindings with higher coverage of the toolkits functionality and are kept more up to date.
> PyQT/PyKDE exist, but don’t have ample documentation.
Err… PyQt/PyKDE only need a few pages of documentation because for the most parts, they work just like the C++ equivalents and developers can just refer to the official Qt doc. C++ is OO, Python is OO, so what do you expect?
Of course, if you are going to write an OO language binding for a non-OO toolkit that pretends to be OO, then you will need a lot of documentation.
That’s a pretty lousy statement. The difference between writing in C++ and Python is like the difference between night and day. Your claim that the PyQT bindings does not need adequate documentation because QT has good ones is preposterous. Well, except if writing applications via trial and error, and hunches are your cup of tea.
Lousy statement or not, I have written PyQt/PyKDE apps and found the documentation to be more than adequate. Instead of writing some pointless reply, please state specifically what extra documentation is needed for PyQt/PyKDE.
I meant “programming backrounds.” Programming backwards would be… interesting.
http://developer.kde.org/language-bindings/
So someone responds to my post about language bindings with the above link. Did I NOT mention _three_ of these bindings in my post? Did I not point out that they only implement a subset of features, or are out of maintainence? Christ, KDE zealotry knows no bounds.
Even that site starts out with a preface: “Whilst KDE and most KDE applications are implemented using the C++ programming language…”
C’mon now. The question isn’t how many bindings does KDE/QT have. The question is, how many USABLE, COMPLETE, and DOCUMENTED bindings does it have.
The question is, how many USABLE, COMPLETE, and DOCUMENTED bindings does it have.
At least three: Python, Ruby and Java.
As far as I know all released updated at every KDE release.
Perl seems to be outdate unfortunately
Writing a KDE application has been a suggestion for so sommer fo code project and one student successfully applied for one in Java.
C’mon now. The question isn’t how many bindings does KDE/QT have. The question is, how many USABLE, COMPLETE, and DOCUMENTED bindings does it have.
I gave you that link to judge by yourself. Click on the links.
Personally, I found Python and Ruby full usable and documented.
I also heard that Javascript is also very good and it will be in KDE4 to script Plasma, together with Python.
Qt# is unmantained. Nobody sees the need for that, it seems.
Java is in good shape. One of the Google Summer of Code project is to write a non-C++ application for KDE, and it is being done in Java. So, it appears is usable as well.
Is it enough or do you want more bindings?
> The question is, how many USABLE, COMPLETE, and
> DOCUMENTED bindings does it have.
So how many does GNOME have ? USABLE, COMPLETE and DOCUMENTED ?
I know of bindings who don’t support all objects, are lacking features, lacking other things. I must admit that I never spent much time looking closer to all this but I paid quite some attention to frustrated developers joining #gtk, #gnome etc, complaining that this and that doesn’t really work. I though spent some time messing around with some bindings dependant applications and saw quite some inconsistency between the applications looking (the legendary toolbar issues) as one of the examples.
My other issue with dozens of language bindings are more related to the fact that the more bindings you write the more you animate people to use them, the more languages get involved. I do fear the day where we depend on Ruby, Python, Java, Mono and other things in the main GNOME distribution which makes it quite painful to debug or report issues for. Not to mention the huge amount of resources and memory wasted or diskspace trashed (imagine rescue systems or small sized business solutions such as PDA’s)
KDE does offer bindings too but I find it quite nice that they keep their Desktop depending on one language most which makes it easy to maintain the stuff, the core components. Sometimes having bindings can be an advantage, but then having a mess in the core e.g. core components that require all types of languages and bindings can be a pain as well.
OT:
I’ve spent some time on this article and specially the comments section. I find it quite entertaining that someone spent his time moderating all my comments down on purpose and then some replies done by others which were quite insulting (which used to be -2 and deeper) to become +1 and more. I therefore like to ask what intentions are followed here, besides the fact that it only confirms what I said. There are people here who are enjoying causing problems and doing defamation with purpose – calculated.
I think people should judge on their own.
Having your code licensed under bsd and gpl is pretty pointless. People using it are going to have to comply with both licenses:
Completely wrong. The person could take the BSD file in the GPL’d software and only have to comply with the BSD license.
Sayin the FSF has no legal authority is entirely wrong. You, as the author of your code, have legal authority…
The FSF only has “legal authority” on code they have copyright on. That’s why they are so anxious for you to assign copyright to them.
The FSF has yet to excercise its legal authority; but it has threatened before and parties have complied.
For something they have copyright on and that’s it. Some people have complied, some parties have told the FSF to shove it, and other parties just take the code and haven’t been caught.
You say it has no legal authority with such conviction it’s almost as if you believe it’s an anathema.
The FSF and Stallman would like people to believe they have “legal authority” to decide licensing matters over all GPL code, but they don’t.
Thank you for clarifying your incorrect statement to something that’s true. Blanket statements are never right
.
The FSF also exists as something for poor developers who don’t want to go to court to run to in case of a lawsuit: That’s more what I was referring to rather than any presently active agenda the FSF may have.
I really don’t think you know very much about Stallman. People give the guy such a hard time, and he’s been wrong, but in the end he’s one of the few people in the tech industry who don’t change their minds often. If you didn’t come off as hating him so much you’d have a lot more credibility with a lot of people, including myself, who believe Stallman has done some great things and is a VERY intelligent man. He’s not God, nor is he a god, he’s just a very opinionated smart man whose backed up his ideals with millions of lines of code.
Speaking of credibility, Stallman has none when he compares perjuring cops and murderers to proprietary developers.
http://gnu.open-mirror.com/philosophy/my_doom.html
As can be seen by the article from the OSDL guy stating that Linux needs proprietary apps, you can tell that the open source camp is distancing itself from the FSF people
http://osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=11185
Stallman has deprecated the FSF with his outlandish behavior.
Assuming that BSD code is entirely independent logically: Yes.
The FSF and Stallman would like people to believe they have “legal authority” to decide licensing matters over all GPL code, but they don’t.
Actually, they clearly state they don’t have that authority in the FAQ for the GPL on gnu.org.
> he’s just a very opinionated smart man whose backed
> up his ideals with millions of lines of code.
lol, very good one…. indeed very good…
> I completely understand companies that won’t touch
> it with a ten foot pole.
Which companies are you refering to ? Could you name some companies ?
Excuse me, but don’t the authors of the QT toolkit have the right to choose whichever license benefits them, as opposed to some trolls on osnews?
Looks like some people seem to enjoy flaming others. Gnome seem to be rude fucks. I’ve been following this kind of attacking for quite some time and see how people keep picking on Ali quite regulary. Ali keep your head up, you are not the only one who got flamed like that.
> Ali keep your head up
Don’t worry, thanks for your lines.
> For example, KDE uses the openssl libssl library
> which is not GPL compatible in kded_kssld.so which
> kded_kssld.so also links with other libraries that
> are effectively GPL’d.
You might be right here but don’t forget that the same applies with stuff from GNOME as well. MONO is in the gray area and thus everything build around it. As well as I recall that even GStreamer has problems with codecs and other things (I don’t know the details but recall that there was a bigger discussion about this on gnome-hackers ML some years ago).
Stop spreading lies, you can use any open source license you want when developing KDE applications. The Qt library does not have a dual license, it has tree. The GPL, the commercial and the QPL. The QPL allows you to use any OSS license, as long as you release the source code.
The QPL is not compatible with all licenses (it is, for example, incompatible with the GPL). Now, it could be that between the QPL and GPL all FOSS licenses are somehow compatible with Qt, but I’m pretty certain that that is not the case.
The biggest problem with the GPL is that it does not restrict the use of software for immoral puposes. Hence, we now find GNU/Linux being used by the military and in the arms trade.
A clause excluding these from using the software is needed.
Come up with a clear and succinct definition of “immoral” and you likely could get what you want…
when linux is outlawed only outlaws will use linux
Subject
Source code!
Discussion Thread
Response (Sharmaine) 03/29/2005 09:10 AM
Jake,
Thank you for contacting the Linspire Team. Currently we do not produce a CD of the source code for Linspire. It is available online only.
Best Regards,
The Linspire Team
Customer 03/29/2005 07:17 AM
Hello, I was wondering how I can go about getting a cd of the source code?
Question Reference #050329-000087
Product: Linspire
Sub-Product: Linspire Five-0
Category: Other
Date Created: 03/29/2005 07:17 AM
Last Updated: 03/29/2005 09:10 AM
Status: Waiting
and why are we still arguing about GPL?
How come we never see such licensing arguments about using Windows libs or Solaris or OSX libs?
If GPL causes us to keep having the same arguments we had in 1986, It’s broken and needs to be fixed.
I’m going to use gpl’ed libs in my next proprietary app and if some gpl-jihadi wants the code, he’ll have to agree to get it tattooed on his butt. That constitutes a “reasonable” method of provinding the source.
Ok, I think this was a pretty good article.
He didn’t really say anything new compared to the first article about the matter, but he did so in a more clear and ‘simple’ way this time – maybe some more people ought to understand ‘his issue’ now.
I’m sure some of the comments above alread ytwisted what he was saying – maybe even accusing him of bad-mouthing towards KDE, but it really is quite understandable I think.
An LGPL’ed Qt is not very likely nor would it help Trolltech in it’s current form very much I suppose (though it will be mroe wideley used and you could argue about more support contracts by that), but WHY else would any company like AOL, Yahoo or even VMWare else consider wiritng software with the technically inferior GTK+ ?
Yes, the companies are some cheap bastards for not be willing to pay Trolltech for they great work, but that’s the way it is. What other reason than the cost / license issue could you think of that makes a company full of C++ devs consider GTK+ instead of Qt?
btw. I am a huge fan of KDE. Just i ncase I’m accuse of beeing a Gnome.
> I suppose (though it will be mroe wideley used and
> you could argue about more support contracts by
> that).
I doubt you are right with your assumption here. If you head over to Trolltechs partner site then you see the amount of companies using QT for their products, the list is by far bigger than people may believe.
http://partners.trolltech.com/
http://partners.trolltech.com/partners/training.html
http://partners.trolltech.com/partners/service.html
http://partners.trolltech.com/partners/tech.html
http://partners.trolltech.com/partners/resellers.html
What do you think these companies are ? There are big players amongst them and I doubt that many of them are interested to write Open Source stuff like yet another Acrobat Reader or yet another VMWare. Their audience is probably a total different one like military, space science, natural science, biology, chemistry, car manufacturers, NASA and so on. These companies probably don’t create yet another Linux software that everyone should and must have. They have a different audience and target and they are probably playing with bigger money than most small companies around Linux.
If you don’t see software for QT on your small Linux distro then it doesn’t mean they don’t exist. They most likely play in a different league. With much more money involved than you might expect. But then, there are quite a lot of nice QT depending programs that are propritary and exists for Linux. I bet there are even more commercial QT dependant applications than GTK+ applications.
> but WHY else would any company like AOL, Yahoo or
> even VMWare else consider writng software with the
> technically inferior GTK+ ?
Why should we know ? And I don’t know that AOL or Yahoo uses GTK+ but then they probably have reasons doing so and it’s their right to chose what they think solves their problems.
If you are refering to Mozilla for example then don’t forget that GTK+ is just one subset of GUI element of many GUI elements supported such as Cocoa, Win32 (whatever they use), GTK+, QT, Motif it only depends on the amount of time people spent inproving these interfaces.
For the GNOME community I do understand the necessarity of getting GTK+ pushed into it, there isn’t anything else they can use for browsing (at least that was the case for the past couple of years) for KDE they have khtml (and soon khtml2) they have a working solution and thus ignored Mozilla because they probably wanted to keep everything under one hood, controllable.
I spent some time digging up commercial companies writing QT software.
Julius Framework:
http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=14201
http://www.julius.caesar.de/
PlaaSoft FormularManager:
http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=23453
https://www.plaasoft.de
PlaaSoft BankleitzahlenSuche:
http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=23727
https://www.plaasoft.de
Skype:
http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=14127
http://www.skype.com
VariCAD:
http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=11539
http://www.varicad.com
Syntext Serna:
http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=14728
http://www.syntext.com/
Akeni Enterprise Instant Messaging LDAP:
http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=23072
http://www.akeni.com
Akeni Secure Instant Messaging – Expert:
http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=23701
http://www.akeni.com
Akeni LAN Messenger:
http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=21630
http://www.akeni.com
EAGLE Layout Editor:
http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=14545
http://www.cadsoft.de
Then look at Trolltech’s company success page:
http://www.trolltech.com/success/index.html?cid=16
Firstlogic, JMP, Volvo, Synopsys, Imagineer, European Space Agency, PGS, Duboi, Brain Innovation, Volume Graphics, Raindrop Geomagic, Mainconcept…. to name a few….
Then look at Trolltech’s Cool Applications page:
http://www.trolltech.com/products/hotnew/index.html
(Too many to name them all here)
Then look at Trolltech’s Product overview page:
http://www.trolltech.com/screenshots/index.html
(QTopia to name some stuff, for cellphones etc.)
Then go and read their Testimonials and Awards pages:
http://www.trolltech.com/company/testimonials.html
http://www.trolltech.com/company/awards.html
I mean you people only need to spent some time on Trolltech’s page and from there you find tons of companies using QT. You even find screenshots and if you go from Trolltech’s page to the page of the other companies you find even more screenshots of applications that use QT. The amount of QT commercial applications is big, damn big and the companies involved such as VOLVO or ESA (European Space Agency) seem to be remarkable too. I bet they even play with more money than VMWare or those Nero people.
Trolltech in bad shape ? I doubt so and I have proven this. Also spent time with above links with Trolltech’s partner sites. Well spent time on Trolltech’s page.
Yes, they DO play with more money than VMWare and Nero. Can’t you see?
Of course there are many companies using Qt – Qt is jsut great, period.
Look at it this way: There should not be ANY commercial GTK+ app – again: Qt is superiour. It isn’t used by *some* (actually many…) because of the license. And that sucks for the users.
There hardly any big commercial apps, that integrate well into KDE (decent file-open dialogs and so on) – partly because of the license.
There is no problem for trolltech – and nobody said that (well, not me, nor the article). Only the users mildly (depends on your view) suffer from the license – thats the whole issue.
Could someone translate above comment into understandable phrases and proper english ? I really don’t get what this guy is trying to explain.
There is one great flaw in the article: It is that the author supposes that just because you have to either license your software under a GPL compatible license, or else buy a Qt license, this somehow makes the whole of KDE an inappropriate Desktop default. This is not true. Developers who can not use Qt can just use another toolkit. Their software will run just fine under KDE. Not every Program needs to be integrated into the Desktop. The quality or fitness of KDE as a desktop environment will not deteriorate in any way, just because some proprietary programs use another toolkit.
—
El Pseudonymo
There hardly any big commercial apps, that integrate well into KDE (decent file-open dialogs and so on) – partly because of the license.
No, the license is not the problem here. The problem is, that many companies do not want their software depend on kdelibs because they are not available for e.g. Windows.
>If you consider the money you have to pay to >Trolltech for developing proprietary software as a >fee for not writing open source software, the dual >license scheme makes a lot of sense for the free >software community. The Free Software Foundation >calls the LGPL Lesser GPL for a reason and they >suggest to also use the GPL for libraries.
> Furthermore, the money Trolltech earns from selling >Qt licenses ensures that Qt stays a worldclass >toolkit. Without this money Trolltech could not pay >their developers to work on Qt which would also hurt >KDE and other free software depending on Qt. I don’t >think that Qt could be developed at the pace it is >developed now without full-time developers payed by >Trolltech.
> KDE immensly benefited from this and there is >absolutely no point rewriting KDE using another >toolkit. From a technical point of view this would >be a huge step back, there is just nothing that >compares to Qt.
this is exactly what I think. imho GTK encourages NON-free software development (which is OK) WITHOUT any contribution to the community (which is BAD). Qt forces VERYONE to play it nice. you get something (a great toolkit) you give something back (either GPL your software or pay a fee to fund further development of the library’s).
and most ppl don’t seem to get the purpose of Qt. maybe this helps: Qt is owned (60%) by its employees; and most of them are KDE developers. so, these guys are actually just a bunch of KDE developers getting paid by all the NON-free software developers using their software. isn’t the open source model WONDERFULL???