“RealSoftware’s REALBasic 2005 – the popular cross-platform interactive development environment for Mac OS X and Windows – is scheduled to debut for the Linux platform later this month, perhaps as early as the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo in San Francisco. For the past couple of weeks, I’ve been falling asleep each night to the glow of beta versions of REALBasic 2005 running happily on SUSE Pro 9.3 on my monitor.”
And a major one, I think. This is a good IDE for small proprietary shops and OSS developers alike – free as in beer in Standard version, $499 for Professional one. I think the era of questions “who uses GTK+ in commercial software” has gone 😉
You can do the same thing with Lazarus for free.
http://www.lazarus.freepascal.org/
The simple examples the reviewer did can be created exactly the same with Lazarus in a few minutes.
also because Lazarus is fairly compatible with Delphi there are many more third party components availble or will be available.
for instance Zeos datbase components work with Lazarus:
http://www.zeoslib.net
and the Virtual Treeview: http://www.delphi-gems.com
And pascal is a far more powerful language that Basic and is just as easy if not easier to learn.
As a C++ programmer I have a love-hate relationship with RB2005. But it is mostly love. As a RAD tool it is very good, as a Cross-platform development solution it is unmatched. The truth is that if it were REALC++ it would be perfect. The BASIC is the best BASIC that has ever existed. It is very object oriented, so much so that I have had a developer tell me that the language is superior to C++. However, I am an old school programmer who loves my pointers (I see them as blessing not a curse) especially function pointers and member function pointers. I like my old fashond structs for storing data that needs to be arranged in a particular fashoin in memory. REALBasic is much more purist in their arangement and these types of arrangements can be problematic from an OO view point as well as from a cross platform stand point.
However, the loves win out. Every new project that I create is in REALBasic unless there is an overiding reason not use RB. The bottom line is that the RAD capabilities are great and the cross-platform is an example of how modern development should be. For most applications you need only check a box to make it support the other platforms – though conditional compilation directives are provieded for other cases.
Each version gets more clean as now most features are truely cross-platform in an invisible way. There is a glaring eception – no cross-platform toolbar control (The included toolbar is Mac only). You can build your own, but Real Software has been very resposive to fix things, so you can just remind them and I bet that will be included in RB2006 (or maybe RB2005.3).
All in all it is a great tool, and you should down load and try it. If you are like me you will be hooked.
Another alternative way to do cross platform development is Runtime Revolution (http://www.runrev.com). It’s a mature product with libraries for database access (mysql, sqlite, postgresql, oracle…) media framework (alpha manipulation, video grabbing) and cool networked stuff. The language is pretty easy to learn and very powerfull.
It is not FREE, it’s payware but worth every dollar. I am making a living out of it, developing on my mac and deploying to Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Irix and more…
Why would anyone want us proprietary software?
If you want to program in basic under Linux, then use Gambas.
Because OSS!=superior by definition, troll!
A wise person uses what fulfills their business and functionality requirements best: a zealot uses what an emotional ideology leads them to use. It is apparent where you fit in
Why would anyone want us proprietary software?
In the real world, people buy tools to get things done and don’t get religious about software.
In the real world, developers get screwed when their tools get EOLed.
That’s a mesurable risk, which may become irrelevant in the big picture
Sorry, I forgot to quote..the answer above refers to the sentence “In the real world, developers get screwed when their tools get EOLed.”
Gambas is nice but it’s far, far from RealBasic in terms of functionality, portability etc
Don’t be a zealot. Companies need the job done, if they can save 100 hours developing something using RealBasic instead of Gambas, that’s thousands of times the 400 dollares they gotta pay for it.
> Why would anyone want us proprietary software?
> If you want to program in basic under Linux, then use
> Gambas.
Why would anyone want to use proprietary software?
If you want to be less productive, spend more time on worse results and forget portability, then use Gambas.
=> Stop OSS zealots!
Why would anyone want to use proprietary software?
If you want to be less productive, spend more time on worse results and forget portability, then use Gambas.
=> Stop OSS zealots!
Its not the OSS zealots, its the FSF zealots. Stallman and his cronies are becoming more and more marginalized everyday.
The CEO of OSDL (where Linux works) was welcoming and hoping for more proprietary software. The LSB Desktop working group rejects Qt because of its prejudice against proprietary developers.
The FSF religious crowd are laughed at no longer taken seriously
Try them both – you will go with RB.
Lazerous creates X-Windows applications not cross platform applications in the sense that RB does. RB applications run using the native Mac and windows GUI’s and GTK for linux. The result is an application that truely fits in the environment.
As far as Pascal vs. BASIC. In the past I would have said that Pascal was superior, but this is not the BASIC I used on my old TRS-80. It is a truely OO-BASIC. I have not used delphi in years, so I will not pretend to be an expert, but this BASIC is the best language I have used other than C++ or Objective-C++. I have not used Delphi since rev 3, but I prefer the REALBasic language to that.
I know a lot of Linux users view commercial software as bad, but if you want the best cross-platform RAD development tool, buy REALBasic. If you want to write applications that look at home only on Linux then look elsewhere.
Try them both and compare the results – nothing else has made cross-platform development even close to as productive as RB. I will keep using it till REALC++ or the equivlent exists (or Apple releases Cocoa for Windows … Hell does seem to be operating at lower tempatures recently).
Is it gtk+ 1.x or 2.x?
> The BASIC is the best BASIC that has ever existed.
Not for games… that belongs to Blitz.
I tried this several years ago, I preferred REALBasic at the time. However as I remmbered if produced comparable results back then, I thought the RB at the time was a little better.
What I want is the best path to produce code for Mac and Windows (Linux too, but i usually see this as a bonus rather than a requirement.
RB is the best I have found, but I still try nearly everything new that comes out. I think everyone should evaluate all the tools at their disposal.
Looks interesting. I think cross-platform development is becoming more and more relevant and important today, so this is cool. Personally I just really dislike Basic syntax, and prefer C++. Hence, I love Qt. I think Trolltech has done a wonderfull job with it. Now they may actually have some competition, which may result in some price reduction. I don’t know we’ll see. Some people do say that Qt prices are high, but demand drives these prices, and currently there is no serious alternative to Qt. I know there is WxWidgets, and GTK+, but I think many would agree that currently Qt is just unrivaled in terms of features, quality, architecture, documentation and support, when it comes to cross-platform development. I guess you can use Java, but don’t get me started on Java…
So I think this could potentially be good competition for Qt. Especially it is welcoming and appealing to n00bies who can’t do C++. But I guess that will be the difference between the two. A lot of people still prefer C++ due to it’s performance and other advantages. Also, look at the minimum requirements for REALBasic’s Linux compiled applications, ouch.
Agreed. There is a differance between free tools and less expensive tools. Like you said the savings in development time dwarf the small amout spent on the tool.
However, much of the Linux market has a moral objection to pay software. (GNU has fostored this) For them, using a tool that is much more expensive to use is more important because that tool is built according to their world view.
I do not understand this mindset, but is their and should be considered. However it is a large reason for Linux’s slow acceptance on the desktop – most companies do not consider marketing to linux because they do not see a potential paying market for their products. until the midset that paying for software is objectionable is overcome, the market will remain small. I applaud Real Software (and Runtime revolution for that matter) for putting in a lot of development time to bring these quality products to Linux.
When I last tried Qt, years ago, it was not stable on the Mac (my preffered platform) and was prohibitivly expensive. Also the applications did not have a native “look and feel.” Has this changed? I do commercial software, so their free for open source change did not even entice me to try it again.
I have never used Qt under Mac, so I cannot comment on it’s stability. Regarding look and feel, Qt doesn’t use native widgets, but more or less “emulates” them. So the look may not be 100% perfect, although I think it’s close enough. This is not an issue on Linux, since KDE is built with Qt, so Qt apps integrate quite nicely there.
Although there is still some issues with integration even under Linux, with Qt, such as a Qt “open file” dialog being different (more like Windows) than a KDE one, etc… These type of things ccould be (probably are) an issue under Mac. I am not sure how important this is, since it’s being kind of picky.
I am not sure what version of Qt you have tried. If it was from 2.x line, than there have been major improvements since than, in Qt 3 line, and the current Qt 4.
There are lots of screenshots from real world applications (commerical and open soruce) on Qt’s website. Furthermore, since free/os version of Qt is available for Mac, I’d advise you to give it a try if you want, and take a look at examples to evaluate it. Or download and check out some of Qt applications, such as Skype.
You might checkout APPX http://www.appx.com a free (beer) version for Linux can be found here http://www.appx.com/assets/asp/linuxreg.asp.
To the poster that sez that Real Basic’s crossplatform capabilities are “unmatched” — try APPX. Your applications run on Linux, AIX, Solaris, HP/UX, Windows, Mac OSX and maybe some others that I can’t remember off the top of my head. It has something like a 20 year development history to boot. I’ve been developing biz applications with it since 1993, and have been very happy with it. They are a good company and very responsive to their user/developer base.
Thanks for the tip! Just checked them out and am downloading a free copy of APPX now.
It looks like they will be at Linux World (San Fransico) http://www.linuxworldexpo.com/live/12/events/12SFO05A/exposition/ex…
This tool looks to be exactly what the Dr. ordered.
I checked out the site and stand by by statement. There is no Mac support, that alone eliminated it for me. When they do support the mac, I will give them a try, but until then there is no reason to look into them.
There is a Mac client right here:
http://www.appx.com/assets/asp/dynamic_generator.asp?pageid=209
I’m a mac user, if you are a mac user, and want a copy of software to run on Mac, you must let the developer know.
If I was a programmer and wanted a copy of APPX on Mac, I think I’d let APPX know that. But that’s just me.
/not a programmer, but the promise of APPX sounds cool.
Wasn’t on their supported hardware page. But when I to that download and discovered that it was Java based. I have tried Java and have not been happy with the results on many levels. But I will give it a try.
FYI: Only the thin user interface client is written in java. The core code is all C and C++. Word is the R&D department has the core compiled and running on OS X. I think they are not releasing it is because of lack of demand and the inablility to find willing beta testers.
Because RB is a hundred times better than Gambas.
:=)
This is not true, Lazarus creates native exes for each platform. You don’t need X on windows to run Lazarus apps. Lazarus uses GTK to create apps for Linux.
Not sure what it does for the Mac, but as far as I know a Xserver is not required.
For further info I suggest checking out the Lazarus web page.
Lazarus is also fully object oriented and you can still use pointers if you like, Yes you can use pointers in Object Pascal.
“Lazerous creates X-Windows applications not cross platform applications in the sense that RB does. RB applications run using the native Mac and windows GUI’s and GTK for linux. The result is an application that truely fits in the environment.”
I was just looking at their screenshots showing it looking just like X-Windows – if it is native then they go out of their way to break the rules and look like X Windows.
No need to try Qt from what you said. I am assuming they addressed the stability, but the emulated controls would be unacceptable. You view them as “good enough,” and for many that may be true. But I believe that following the look and feel is critical – especially in the Mac market where it is simply expected. Though a few programmers such as myself my except some deviations most Mac users will not. It is part of the Mac way of doing things. Programs are supposed to be consistand (though apple is actually hurting this with their current love affair with metal windows).
When I used Qt the stability was an issue but i was sure it would be addressed, but the poor look of the controls was unacceptable. Besides even if they like it am not going to pay $6000 to get commercial support for all three major platforms, so it would be even worse if they have fixed things, because I can’t use it.
Qt is so not worth the money. At the most, Qt should cost $499 per platform including Enterprise/Solutions and all the other hidden price add-ons.
At $499, Qt would be a lot of money, but not too much money. And the value would be reasonable.
With the current price at somewhere around $2500+ per platform, it is just not worth it. That is a developer machine and developer tools from another vendor.
The people at Trolltech are very stupid for getting venture capital and then pissing it away by raising prices and reducing their market share. It is clear that without the VC they recently got, Trolltech would be bankrupt. And in many ways, if Trolltech went bankrupt and some how Qt became 100% GPL it would be best damn thing that ever happened for Qt. One might call it karmic justice.
And in many ways, if Trolltech went bankrupt and some how Qt became 100% GPL it would be best damn thing that ever happened for Qt. One might call it karmic justice.
You got it backwards. Qt is 100% GPL now (At least for *NIX systems… Not sure about the Win32 version). What would happen in case of TrollTech getting bankrupt is that Qt would automatically be relicensed to a BSD-like license.
I would like to see such version of Qt as much as the next guy, but I don´t think that this is really fair as TrollTech has put so much effort to produce it, which is by some accounts, the best toolkit ever created specially when you look to things like documentation and features. Their developers have family to feed on a regular basis, ya know? I don´t think that they would be able to do it based merely on donations from the OSS community.
And lets face it: GTK is no match to Qt. No matter how you look at it. Qt beats GTK hands down on every aspect but even if it didn´t, I would take it any day because of its speed improvements alone. KDE gets faster and faster at each release.
But I agree that TT could review those prices. They´re a bit unrealistic. Something along the lines of the RealBASIC Pro would be more reasonable.
Qt is not 100% GPL. That is wrong. It is a lie spread by Trolltech and they should be taken to court and fined.
For all of Qt’s existence up to 4.0, the Qt commercial license did not even permit you to modify the Qt source. Needless to say, that is not GPL.
Trolltech’s super high-end pricing of the commercial editions of Qt are keeping the Qt ecosystem small.
Qt and Linux would be far better off if Qt was sponsored by some of the larger companies and shared amongst the entire Linux community. Or perhaps partially sponsored.
Instead we have a company trying to make money on a fundamental building block of a major piece of many Linux editions (KDE).
And the company is trying to make money by charging more money than for virtually any other development tool on the planet. It is out of line with the platform they are most related to and it just doesn’t make sense.
Ultimately all I am saying is lower the price so that more people can play. With the current insane pricing, Trolltech has shut out 95% or more of the market. It is just plain stupid. If Trolltech embraced some other funding model other than “screw commercial developers” then there would be the possibility of a much larger Qt ecosystem, a vibrant component market, and more Linux distros that utilize Qt.
Otherwise all the good work for Qt will disappear into Qtopia over time.
Having good technology is one thing. Making it available to use is another thing. You need both to succeed, not just one.
Qt is not 100% GPL. That is wrong. It is a lie spread by Trolltech and they should be taken to court and fined.
*sigh* As I expected. You’re just a troll. Look here:
http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/opensource.html
“The Qt Open Source Edition is available for the development of Open Source Software for Windows, Linux, Unix, and Mac OS X under the GPL license.”
This has been the case since at least Qt3, maybe even earlier.
For all of Qt’s existence up to 4.0, the Qt commercial license did not even permit you to modify the Qt source. Needless to say, that is not GPL.
Duh.. The keyword here is “commercial”. Of course the commercial license is not the GPL. If you want the GPL you would get the absolutely FREE GPL version. Why the hell would you pay for the commercial version if you wanted the GPL?? The whole point of the commercial version is so you don’t have the GPL.
Instead we have a company trying to make money on a fundamental building block of a major piece of many Linux editions (KDE).
And that’s bad? Anyway, Qt existed before KDE. KDE chose Qt because it was a better toolkit, this has nothing to do with Trolltech.
And the company is trying to make money by charging more money than for virtually any other development tool on the planet. It is out of line with the platform they are most related to and it just doesn’t make sense.
Do you really think they haven’t considered this? Do you really think a company that has been around that long hasn’t done some market research to evaluate the price point of their software? They have determined that that the high price point maximizes their profits, just like every company does.
I can’t believe the arrogance that lets you believe that you know better than all the people that think about this kind of stuff for a living.
Having good technology is one thing. Making it available to use is another thing. You need both to succeed, not just one.
And this is why Trolltech is such a dismal failure and never makes any money. OH WAIT. NO.
You can cut and paste and parrot the Trolltech party line, but you still have not yet learned to read:
“The Qt Open Source Edition is available for the development of Open Source Software for Windows, Linux, Unix, and Mac OS X under the GPL license.”
That is NOT the same as the commercial edition. Therefore Qt being GPL is a lousy half-truth at best.
There are many restrictions on how the licenses can be used. For example, you CANNOT develop a program with the GPL version and then decide later to make it closed source or dual license. There are many other examples of the licensing problems with Trolltech and why it is wrong in many ways for Trolltech to even use the word “GPL” in its advertising.
The bottom line here is that you will blindly support an outrageous pricing scheme that prohibits many developers from participating. There are no economically viable component/widget ecosystems based on open source. Yet most component/widget makers cannot afford Qt “bend over edition” to make components or widgets. So using the pricing model you are so enamored of, you are consigned to a small ecosystem. Without a broad set of deeply functional components, there will never be many developers for Qt.
There are simple economic principles at work and not many people without extensive experience in developer tools at a top company are going to understand this. Your blind allegience to a little company that has not grown its market share in any significant manner in 11 years is a case in point. The company I used to work for had a major falling out with Trolltech but still owns part of them. You can look this up and decide who knows more about development tools.
For now, it is time to stop wasting time on someone who simply does not have the experience to understand.
That is NOT the same as the commercial edition. Therefore Qt being GPL is a lousy half-truth at best.
Look. This isn’t hard to understand. The open source edition is GPL. No argument about that. The Commercial edition is NOT GPL and was never meant to be. Trolltech has NEVER said that their commercial edition is GPL. The whole point of the commercial edition is to _not_ be GPL, so of course it is not.
The two products are basically identical, except for the license (Qt commercial has some extra visual studio integration).
If you want the GPL version, get it for free. If you want the commercial version, pay for it. I guarantee that you do not want a commercial version that is also GPL. That doesn’t make any sense.
There are many restrictions on how the licenses can be used. For example, you CANNOT develop a program with the GPL version and then decide later to make it closed source or dual license.
If you’ve already released it as open source, then of course not. Why should you be able to?
There are many other examples of the licensing problems with Trolltech and why it is wrong in many ways for Trolltech to even use the word “GPL” in its advertising.
No. There aren’t any examples. Trolltech states that their open-source version is GPL, which is true. In no case do they claim that their commercial version is GPL. I have no idea why you continue to spout this nonsense.
The bottom line here is that you will blindly support an outrageous pricing scheme that prohibits many developers from participating.
If it means I get a superior product (and I believe I do) then yes, I support that. This is the real world and things cost money. If you don’t want to pay, use something else and get over it.
Your blind allegience to a little company that has not grown its market share in any significant manner in 11 years is a case in point.
Look, if you don’t have numbers to back up your claim, then why bother making it? Of course they’ve increased their market share in the past 11 years. They wouldn’t have been able to afford the growth if they weren’t making money.
You can look this up and decide who knows more about development tools.
Uh yeah.. I’ll look this up.. Never mind that I have zero information about what company you’re talking about or who you are. Sounds more like you have a personal grudge.
I have a question for the editors. pravda is unquestionably a repeat offender with respect to trolling, and obviously site moderation by parties associated with OSNews has been used to slap his posts to -5 more than once. Is there a point where you tell him to take his ball of wax and go home?
Well if I’d known pravda was an OSNews troll from the beginning, I wouldn’t have replied
Well ya got me pravda.
OSNews editors are pretty lenient with trolls. I think Lumbergh just about got banned when Eugenia was still at the helm but it doesn’t happen often.. Only the really obvious filth spewing or spamming trolls get banned.
The purpose of forums is to state ideas, opinions, have discussions, etc.
Branding someone a “troll” because he or she does not have the same opinion as the group is something that would happen in a police state. It is an instrument of tyranny to repress any opinion that does not agree with that of the state.
From the OSNews terms:
“If you hate Microsoft, or Apple, or Linux, you may still talk about your hatred at OSNews, but please do so with a reasoned, on-topic argument.”
I believe most of the time I talk about things in reasonable terms.
Perhaps you should be banned from an American website for being un-American? Perhaps anyone who doesn’t 100% support freedom of speech perhaps should go to some other country’s version of OSNews and express his desire for censorship, mind control, and tyranny in that forum instead of here?
If OSNews were brave enough to enforce mandatory corporate identification and vote audits, there would be no calls for censorship. There would be less bias and better discussions. Microsoft’s vote rigging would be obvious as would that by other corporations.
It is interesting to see who calls to exclude people from a public forum. History tells us that these are always the people up to no good.
Lastly, I’ll leave you with this thought from someone who believes in civil liberties:
“If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for
people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.” –Noam Chomsky
No, you don’t talk about things in reasonable terms. You spread misinformation and add to anything that is a reasonable opinion a kernel of insane flamebait. This is private property, and any rambling about free speech issues is completely irrelevant. If you want to be insane, go post on Noam Chomsky’s web forum.
It seems that you are the person who cannot stand a little bit of open discourse about contentious issues.
Perhaps you will push for legislation to make criticism of illegal monopolies a hate crime?
Or maybe if you can’t handle freedom of speech, you should try sedatives?
Given the quality of your posts I certainly think one of us requires sedatives.
And the company is trying to make money by charging more money than for virtually any other development tool on the planet
You mean more expensive than those really cheap Rational tools?
Trolltech has been around for 11 years, and have been growing all this time. They are pretty successful, and now have over a hundred employees. All this while selling their products for comparatively steep prices.
You know what this means? It means that their product is so exceptional that companies will pay a premium for it. All those companies obviously believe that they are saving money by spending a bit more on the toolkit but then saving tons of development time because the toolkit is simply better. Do you really think they are all wrong? Please….
Qt’s market share for development tools is so low it rounds down to zero.
For 11 years, I would expect something more.
Trolltech’s growth has largely come via Qtopia. The C++ frameworks are not growing rapidly and cannot grow rapidly given the pricing model. Note I am talking paying customers not semi-crippled GPL-edition downloads or some other rubbish.
I agree Trolltech’s Qt product is exceptional. It is esoteric. Cross-platform is always esoteric. But cross-platform is not a platform. Unless Trolltech takes steps to build out their platform and make it more accessible to more players, it will be left behind and it will wither and die. Its ecosystem will not be large enough to support life other than a few small fish. Which is where it is today. There is no substantial Qt ecosystem.
Anyhow, if the company were doing so well they would not have needed all those millions of VC. We will see in 2-3 years what happens. My bet is that Trolltech is still a small company and that 90%+ of their business is focused on mobiles.
Qt’s market share for development tools is so low it rounds down to zero.
When the market is huge, you don’t need a high percentage to make a lot of money.
Trolltech’s growth has largely come via Qtopia. The C++ frameworks are not growing rapidly and cannot grow rapidly given the pricing model.
Do you have any numbers or are you just trolling? I would guess the latter. Trolltech is not dumb, if they thought they would make more money at a lower pricepoint, they’d lower the pricepoint. They have 11 years of experience in the field for christs sake. I’m guessing you have much less.
Note I am talking paying customers not semi-crippled GPL-edition downloads or some other rubbish.
GPL edition is fully functional. Of course you can only create GPL apps with it. Which is more than fair.
Unless Trolltech takes steps to build out their platform and make it more accessible to more players, it will be left behind and it will wither and die.
Got anything other than bullshit and unsubstantiated claims?
Its ecosystem will not be large enough to support life other than a few small fish. Which is where it is today. There is no substantial Qt ecosystem.
Hmm.. KDE? That’s a pretty huge project and there are tons of apps built around it. You’ll also see on their list of customers that a bunch of big names have bought licenses. Ever heard of Skype? Adobe Photoshop Album perhaps? Also, mainstream software is a small market compared to custom software. And custom software is ridiculously expensive.. If a company can save on development time they will jump at the chance.
Anyhow, if the company were doing so well they would not have needed all those millions of VC.
Uhh.. That money was to finance expansions into the embedded market, not to bail them out of bankruptcy. Almost every company uses VC money at some point to get into new markets. Not surprising really.
My bet is that Trolltech is still a small company and that 90%+ of their business is focused on mobiles.
I’m sure they won’t have explosive growth or anything. They’ll probably continue to steadly grow as they have for the past 10 years. Why this is a bad thing is beyond me. As for their core business, your numbers are obviously pure speculation, and I don’t have anything better, so its not worth commenting on.
Qt’s market share for development tools is so low it rounds down to zero.
When the market is huge, you don’t need a high percentage to make a lot of money.
Trolltech is not making a lot of money. If they were making so much money they would not have needed to dilute the company ownership with the additional VC money.
And share is important for longevity. There are very few low market share companies that offer general purpose frameworks that stay around for long.
Trolltech’s growth has largely come via Qtopia. The C++ frameworks are not growing rapidly and cannot grow rapidly given the pricing model.
Do you have any numbers or are you just trolling? I would guess the latter. Trolltech is not dumb, if they thought they would make more money at a lower pricepoint, they’d lower the pricepoint. They have 11 years of experience in the field for christs sake. I’m guessing you have much less.
I’m going on the data Trolltech presented to its customers. If you want to make problems with what Trolltech is saying, go ahead and make problems with them.
One of the companies I’ve worked for in the past owns part of Trolltech. I have a pretty damn good idea of what goes on at Trolltech.
The products I’ve personally worked on will have been used by more developers than Trolltech will ever have.
By the way, your dumb little personal attacks are the mark of a weak fearful person.
Note I am talking paying customers not semi-crippled GPL-edition downloads or some other rubbish.
GPL edition is fully functional. Of course you can only create GPL apps with it. Which is more than fair.
This is bullshit. The GPL edition of the Windows framework does not include many features and does not include “solutions”.
What is not fair is the “screw commercial developers” pricing. I would rather have a pricing schedule based more around the midpoint of the pricing curve, not “screw the commercial developers” and “give away the semi-crippled one for free … as long as you make GPL apps”. That is just plain stupid.
Unless Trolltech takes steps to build out their platform and make it more accessible to more players, it will be left behind and it will wither and die.
Got anything other than bullshit and unsubstantiated claims?
Only the history of software. I suggest you read up on the graveyard of small framework players who have come and gone.
Its ecosystem will not be large enough to support life other than a few small fish. Which is where it is today. There is no substantial Qt ecosystem.
Hmm.. KDE? That’s a pretty huge project and there are tons of apps built around it. You’ll also see on their list of customers that a bunch of big names have bought licenses. Ever heard of Skype? Adobe Photoshop Album perhaps? Also, mainstream software is a small market compared to custom software. And custom software is ridiculously expensive.. If a company can save on development time they will jump at the chance.
The more successful framework players can list more than two known companies that use their framework. KDE hardly as “apps” unless you consider a motley collection of half-finished crud to be real apps.
Pulling some dipshit argument about “custom software” into the mix only displays the weakness of your argument. So Qt is good enough really only for “custom software” and not “commercial software”??
Anyhow, if the company were doing so well they would not have needed all those millions of VC.
Uhh.. That money was to finance expansions into the embedded market, not to bail them out of bankruptcy. Almost every company uses VC money at some point to get into new markets. Not surprising really.
Again you underscore my points, unknowingly. As I stated, the growth is in embedded/mobile. There is no substantial growth in desktop framework revenue.
My bet is that Trolltech is still a small company and that 90%+ of their business is focused on mobiles.
I’m sure they won’t have explosive growth or anything. They’ll probably continue to steadly grow as they have for the past 10 years. Why this is a bad thing is beyond me. As for their core business, your numbers are obviously pure speculation, and I don’t have anything better, so its not worth commenting on.
You didn’t have much anyway, but it didn’t keep you from spouting off a bunch of make-believe nonsense.
I hope Trolltech gets wise and lowers prices. Many of Trolltech’s problems would be fixed by having more customers and more market share. But I am not going to hold my breath.
I think that is because Lazarus for now uses GTK1 not the newer GTK2. You could find out for sure by visting the Lazarus home page and looking around the forums.
“I was just looking at their screenshots showing it looking just like X-Windows – if it is native then they go out of their way to break the rules and look like X Windows.”
This is great news for Linux and should produce a whole new set of applications for the platform. Just wondering how they will maintain compatibility with Linux being fractured into so many distros and the way it changes so quickly. I haven’t checked the site to see which distros they will support out of the box.
They support Glibc 2.3+ and GTK 2.0+ 😉 Any modern distro has that…
The RealBASIC site needs a feature list for the language on the various platforms.
It is near impossible to make heads or tails of what RealBASIC is from reading the website.
How is RealBASIC for Windows programming? How does it compare to .NET? Does it have transparent and easy COM programming? Does the VB converter just convert VB6 or also VB.NET to RB?
Examples of some Windows programs would be useful. I don’t want to download and install a 20MB installer just to see an example.
Anyhow, I did download it and will check it out. It may help us get a few things running better on Linux without as much pain as going from Visual C++ to g++.
Either something is GPL’d or it is not GPL’d. Saying not 100% GPL’d is saying it is NOT GPL.
Qt is GPL’d.
You have this from ‘the man’ himself :
‘If you want something like Qt, use Qt.’
http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT3236151590.html
Where does it says its free for non comercial apps ? On the site i just see a reference to a trial key…
The page below contains most of the relevant information.
You can see the licenses for closed source development must be commercial licenses. Which means incredibly expensive — unaffordable to many small developers.
Also note how you in effect give up some of your code ownership rights (copyright rights) if you start making a GPL app and then wish to dual-license it. Under the Qt license, this is not allowed.
—
Open Source Downloads
Here you will find the Open Source downloads Trolltech has made available, including the newly released Open Source Edition of Qt for Windows. Please make sure that you know when it is appropriate to use these Editions and when you or your employer should buy a commercial license.
When can I use these files?
These versions of Qt and the add-on product Qt Script for Applications (QSA) can only be used to produce Open Source software and/or run programs legally developed by others. By using this version of Qt/QSA, you agree to
Make the complete source code of your program available to all end users
Allow all users to re-use, modify and re-distribute the code
Give up your right to demand compensation for re-use and re-distribution
Add a notice to your program that it is GPL licensed when it runs
This is because the Open Source versions of our software are governed by the terms of the GNU GPL license. Using the Open Source Edition means you agree that the source of the software you write also will be published according to this license.
If you are working in a commercial environment and are required to keep the source code of your product closed, you must use the commercial version instead. Trolltech’s commercial license terms do not allow you to start developing proprietary software using the Open Source edition.
Can I use the Open Source Edition to write commercial software?
Only if you plan to publish the software exclusively under the GPL.
If you plan to release a commercial product either using closed source or a mix of closed and open source licensing, you must use the commercially licensed version of Qt.
We offer a full evaluation version of Qt, including 30 days of support, to commercial evaluators. Using the evaluation version allows you to try out Qt commercially without any exposure to the GPL license.
We also offer an evaluation version of Qt Script for Applications (QSA) on the same page. Please go to the Qt Evaluation Page to apply for it.
I am still unsure. Which license should I use?
If you are unsure of what license you need, then follow this simple rule of thumb:
If you’re Open Source, Qt is Open Source. If you’re commercial, Qt is commercial. Feel free to contact us at [email protected] with questions.
http://www.trolltech.com/download/opensource.html
Also note how you in effect give up some of your code ownership rights (copyright rights) if you start making a GPL app and then wish to dual-license it. Under the Qt license, this is not allowed.
The situation you describe in no way involves you giving up some of your “code ownership rights.” You, the developer, would retain full claim to the code you possess the copyright to.
Insofar as Qt is licensed under the terms of the GPL, no you cannot “start making a GPL app and then wish to dual-license it.” Well, actually, you can wish all you want, but code licensed under the GPL, which you do not own the copyright to, has no provisions at all for dual licensing. So if you wish to act upon that desire to dual license your code, you’ll need rewrite all those dependencies which are licensed under the GPL. This is no different than for any other code base licensed under the GPL and can hardly be claimed to exist only in the case of Qt.
>>There are many restrictions on how the licenses can be
>>used. For example, you CANNOT develop a program with the
>>GPL version and then decide later to make it closed
>>source or dual license.
>If you’ve already released it as open source, then of
>course not. Why should you be able to?
Because YOU have copyright on the program. If you develop a program and release it under GPL, you can afterwards release the same code under ANY proprietary licence – because it’s YOUR code. That’s why we can have dual- and multi-licensing. And that’s, by the way, precisely what Trolltech does with Qt.
Now to the prohibitive clause that Pravda mentions. It does not have anything to do with GPL, it’s in the commercial license, therefore Pravda got it wrong. But it does effectively prevent you from dual-licensing your code, which is questionable to me. It’s a problematic part of their license and I don’t think it’s right, but IANAL, and still they managed to get away with this to date…
The point I am trying to present is that the statement “Qt is GPL” is not the entire picture.
One might say “There is a GPL license available for Qt; however it is encumbered with other licensing terms that are not part of the GPL.”
And add, “The GPL license for Qt does not include access to useful Qt add-ons that are part of the commercial-license only ‘Qt Solutions’ program that is available at extra cost to commercial license holders.”
Hence the semi-GPL license is available only for a subset of Qt.
Because the commercial license of Qt has its own restrictions and is currently the only license from Qt that would allow a Qt developer to dual license their code, there is in effect no 100% pure GPL license.
Beyond licensing there are serious pricing issues that have to date stunted the growth and development of the Qt add-on market. There is no third-party component or widget market of any substantial size. There are no components or widgets from leading component/widget vendors. Beyond components/widgets, many other libraries have never been made compatible with Qt because of the significant economic and licensing barriers to entry.
Having worked at a company that used to own part of Trolltech and heard the many frustrations that the company had with Trolltech, I am not surprised that the Qt ecosystem is nearly barren. The company according to my own experiences and the experiences of people I trust is a nightmare to work with.
It is part of the wild west of OSNews that any statement that is not bland has a risk of drawing gunfire. I’ve been around here for a while, I know this. But would never call for someone to be run out of town just because his or her idea is contrary to mine.
I find it disappointing that corporations will field people who are essentially undercover operatives to influence public forums. Didn’t Sony just get fined $1.5M for doing the same sort of thing. For OSNews to flourish in the future, I believe positive identification is needed along with mandatory and verifiable corporate affiliation and voting audits.
In many ways this is the same way of saying “what works for a town meeting would work for a forum”. Or to draw on history, it is more like how the Athenian assembly worked. Not exactly like it, but more like it than what we have today.
You may not be a troll, but you do have a problem with elementary logic, and you’re prone to equivocation as well. To wit:
One might say “There is a GPL license available for Qt; however it is encumbered with other licensing terms that are not part of the GPL.”
One might say that, but then again one might say “Snow is red, elephants have wings, and London is the capital of France.” Saying it doesn’t make it so.
The Qt Free Edition is available under the GPL without any further encumbrances whatsoever. Qt Free Edition is also available to be licensed under the terms of the QPL license. In addition to the Qt Free Edition, Troll Tech also makes available a commercial version of their Qt libraries in X11, Windows, and Mac editions. The X11 commercial edition is identical to the X11 release of the Qt Free Edition and represents the code base which is held in common by all versions of Qt on all platforms. The commercial versions of Qt on Windows and Mac also include additional platform specific integration features which are not part of the Qt Free Edition on any platform; they are technically supersets of the common codebase found in the Qt Free Edition.
Because the commercial license of Qt has its own restrictions and is currently the only license from Qt that would allow a Qt developer to dual license their code, there is in effect no 100% pure GPL license.
You seem to believe that because TT makes Qt available under licenses other than the GPL, the terms of those other licenses somehow affect the terms of Qt when licensed under the GPL. This is patently false as both a matter of law and of elementary logic. Each license is wholly independent of the other. TT could well decide, the laws of the civilized world not withstanding, to play Pharoah and make Qt available under the First Born Son license without having any affect whatsoever on the Qt Free Edition.
The code base called the Qt Free Edition is available for the X11, Windows, and Mac platforms under the terms of the GPL. Any additional encumbrances are attached not the code when licensed under the GPL, but when licensed under terms of TT’s commercial license. Those encumbrances you speak of are all terms of Qt’s commercial license, which alters not at all the GPL license.
Trolltech’s commercial license terms do not allow you to start developing proTprietary software using the Open Source edition.
That is a bunch of crap and pretty much unenforcable. Trolltech needs to ditch that bogus opinion in their license.
The currently available beta of RB for Linux would not convince me to buy the final product; Gambas is faster (in other words, RB is sluggish), translated to German (which matters to me) and simple things like code completion in the editor work better in Gambas than in RB. Gambas saves plain source files (like most IDEs do) but RB seems to save in a proprietary binary format.
Of course, if you need the features only available in RB, such as cross-plattform-development, you have little choice, but if a task could be done with both systems, I can hardly see a reason why anyone should prefer the ugly, sluggish, expensive, proprietary RB over Gambas.
(Disclaimer: I’m not a OSS zealot. For example, I use fully paid versions of Textmaker and Slickedit for Linux.)
I don’t know where people are getting the idea that TT is a small company, and make no money, and have no market share. According to their website, over 4000 companies have used TT products. That’s not small. Qt is probably the best cross-platform C++ toolkit around. People also somehow conveniently forget or ignore the basic laws of demand and pricing. True, Qt prices are pretty big. I agree, and it would be very difficult for a small developer with good ideas and talent to afford their prices. It is sad and it sucks. But these prices are driven by the demand for Qt, and it’s quality and reputation in the industry. Bigger companies who need good, cross-platform toolkits happily dish out the cash for it, cuz it’s good business in the long run.
Finally, TT is a major supporter and player in the OS and Linux community. Not only have they provided Qt under GPL (100% GPL, I don’t understand how can anyone claim something can be “half-GPL” ??), it is the building block of KDE. They activly support development of KDE and X.org. Some of their employers are directly involved in the development of these projects. The founder and original developer of KDE is a TT employee. They also sponcor a few KDE developers to work on KDE; and they also sponcor other open source projects, initiatives, and conferences.