Slashdot Mirror

Because Trolltech cooperated with Caldera and Canopy wanted to support/ensure Trolltech to be able to continue the work?

a Qtopia commercial developers license is only $195 (USD).
Qtopia Developer Licensing

You mean something running this?
Qtopia Phone Edition

You may be interested to know that Trolltech seems to be letting the Q Public License die, in favor the GNU GPL. The following is from the GPL Qt/Mac FAQ:

Q: Why isn't Qt/Mac released under QPL?

A: Fewer licenses make for easier understanding with the community and our customers.

The problem is with GPL libs, ie. Qt

And of course nobody makes commercial software with Qt either...

This is exactly what MS will do. How freaking naive can MS weeines be? MS is all about dominating a market. Big deal if C# the language is a standard. The platform is what matters and MS controls their .Net platform. People/Companies will code to that MS .Net platform and leave all other platforms out of the game.

If you want a cross-platform framework, use Java. If you want a cross-platform application, use wxWindows or QT

In the most recent Linux Magazie or Linux Journal (I don't recall which since I get both), I just read that many analysts are predicting that Linux will have at a minimum 45% of the server market share by 2007, only three years away. If Linux gets that kind of market share within 3 years, don't you think MS will continue to do whatever they can to continue to lock customers into their platform? Why do you think MS ported their C# compiler to FreeBSD over Linux?

Again, C# the language is open and you or anyone else can create a compiler. Big deal, you can now compile your first Hello World! C# applications. The commercial C# applications will be built on .Net and limited to MS Only.

Is there anyone out there that actaully thinks MS would develop a true cross-platform solution? Can their be a human that is that naive?

The monolithic versions (all chapters in one single document) are easier to download and/or work with offline. The tempting alternative is getting wacky with wget which may frustrate Trolltech's server.

Canopy currently owns 4.1% of TrollTech. SCO Group owns 1.6%.

http://www.trolltech.com/newsroom/investors.html

This doesn't make them evil, and that's not why I was pointing out the Canopy affiliation. If fact, my post was pro-Trolltech, in that it promoted QTopia, a Trolltech product.

You got your Karma points, though. Be happy.

That other Canopy company has a very nice small-system interface an application toolkit available for Linux. In fact, a certain top-selling Japanese PDA is based on it.

Linux + QTopia would certainly be better than, say, BREW. I hope it takes off.

The jump from assembly to C gave you a 10x boost in productivity, while the jump from C++ to Java gives you 0.1x boost. In reality, it gives you nothing, if the libraries you use are well written(Qt for example). Have you worked with Qt ? it is the best library ever written

I differe here, because I think library support is one of Java strengths, and one in which I find a boost in productivity.

I haven't used Qt, so I checked in teh feature list and it seems impresive, covering DB, XML, networking and graphics. I just would like to point that is not part of the standard, and I understand that you have to pay a licence for commercial closed source apps. I just mentioned it because other people think is free, not because I'm against it.
Java has an even more functionality in is standard libs.

Java makes it very very easy to reuse third party, and there are lots of excelent ones, like those from Jakarta. Because the base types are standard, portable ABI and no need to recompile your program (no #include nonsense) you can just use without adapting or recompiling as many C/C++ libs. You don't have problems linking libs compiled from different compilers or platforms (for example: linking in C/C++ from two different compilers won't work because of different runtime libs, or C++ name decoring). So you have a lot of functionality in libs that can be reused as is that helps productivity a lot.

It's good to see they have identified this and quickly moved into the Smartphones to gain a greater marketreach.

Trolltech has made a similar move, offering QTopia which operates in Mobile Phones and PDAs.

The future is bright!

Q: When Qt Free Edition is Open Source and GPL, can I use it to make commercial (proprietary/closed-source) software?

A: No.

You will still need to purchase the Professional or Enterprise Edition to make commercial (proprietary/closed-source) software with Qt.

You say "costing $3000* for every developer", it's 1550$. You say "10 developers: $30,000", true is $14100. You say "If you want to develop for the Mac, Linux and Windows the amount reaches a staggering $6000 per developer.", true is $3320.

> and every point raised has been addressed.

Let's test it with some random points: Proof for City of Largo switching to (rather than evaluating) GNOME? Or let's pick "Nat Friedman is currently in charge of desktop development at Novell/Ximian/SUSE" - http://dot.kde.org/1076022020/ lists recent SUSE press releases telling the opposite.

The Qt version 3.3 series is binary compatible with the 3.2.x series - applications compiled for 3.2 will continue to run with 3.3.

The Qt Free Editions contain the same code as our Commercial Editions, but are governed by licensing terms that are entirely different.

Released under the open-source licenses GPL (GNU Public License) or QPL (Qt Public License), these licenses are for developers who want to build free software for Unix/Linux.

From doc.trolltech.com/3.3/license.html

The Qt Free Edition is distributed under the Q Public License (QPL). It allows free use of Qt Free Edition for running software developed by others, and free use of Qt Free Edition for development of free/Open Source software. There is more information about the QPL at the Trolltech web site.

Note that the Qt/Embedded Free Edition is not distributed under the QPL, but under the GNU General Public License (GPL).

For development non-free/proprietary software, the Qt Professional Edition is available. It has a normal commercial library license, with none of the special restrictions of the QPL or the GPL.

Your comment is interesting

but totally bogus.

So, you'd rather have written :
Qtopia:Embeddix :: Qt:GNU/Linux

Embedix is nothing else than a GNU/Linux (currently 2.4) port for ARM32 embedded devices.

I was under the impression that Linux was at 2.4, and that GNU/Linux designates the combination of GNU apps running on a Linux kernel. Let's just say we're both wrong about the analogy here. I think what I should have written was Qtopia:Embedix :: KDE:GNU/Linux.

Now, Qtopia is based upon Qt/Embedded, so if Qt version is increased, so is Qtopia API, hence my question.

It's not because 2 morons modded me as a flamer and a troll that I am.

So why are you a flamer and a troll?

:)

Your comment is interesting

but totally bogus.

So, you'd rather have written :
Qtopia:Embeddix :: Qt:GNU/Linux

Embedix is nothing else than a GNU/Linux (currently 2.4) port for ARM32 embedded devices.

I was under the impression that Linux was at 2.4, and that GNU/Linux designates the combination of GNU apps running on a Linux kernel. Let's just say we're both wrong about the analogy here. I think what I should have written was Qtopia:Embedix :: KDE:GNU/Linux.

Now, Qtopia is based upon Qt/Embedded, so if Qt version is increased, so is Qtopia API, hence my question.

It's not because 2 morons modded me as a flamer and a troll that I am.

So why are you a flamer and a troll?

:)

QTopia is QT for embedded devices. It contains all of qt, but can be run in cut-down profiles. The main difference between QTopia and "regular" QT is that it bypasses X and writes directly to framebuffer devices.

Well then somebody clear this up for me, because I just don't understand. My impression was that the software stack was this:

• Qtopia - analagous to a window manger, apps, user-level graphical stuff.
• Qt/Embedded - approximately analagous to the X Window system with QT built in.
• Embedix - the Linux kernel and (maybe?) non-gui user apps.

  It just seems to me that if Qtopia was the widget set, Opie wouldn't exist, because (AFAICT) Opie is about open PIM apps and synchronization, not replacing QT widgets.

  I'd love to be pointed in the correct direction, because I'd love to be able to get GNUton in a useable state.

QTopia is QT for embedded devices. It contains all of qt, but can be run in cut-down profiles. The main difference between QTopia and "regular" QT is that it bypasses X and writes directly to framebuffer devices.

Well then somebody clear this up for me, because I just don't understand. My impression was that the software stack was this:

• Qtopia - analagous to a window manger, apps, user-level graphical stuff.
• Qt/Embedded - approximately analagous to the X Window system with QT built in.
• Embedix - the Linux kernel and (maybe?) non-gui user apps.

  It just seems to me that if Qtopia was the widget set, Opie wouldn't exist, because (AFAICT) Opie is about open PIM apps and synchronization, not replacing QT widgets.

  I'd love to be pointed in the correct direction, because I'd love to be able to get GNUton in a useable state.

"But if you want to see Adobe Photoshop on Linux, expect your stupid QT license issues to matter, because Photoshop will not be sold with QT"

Don't be too sure. Read this:

Trolltech(r), a leader in single source, multiplatform software development tools, today announced that Adobe System's innovative new product, Adobe(r) Photoshop(r) Album, was developed using Trolltech's flagship product, Qt(r), a multiplatform C++ development framework.

"Trolltech has provided us with an intuitive, powerful tool. Qt simplified our task of developing Photoshop Album by providing high-level tools that we could customize to meet our needs," said Mike DePaoli, Photoshop Album Engineering Manager. "The product is excellent, the support was outstanding and we are extremely pleased with our decision to go with Qt."

That was from 2003-02-26.

Adobe would never base a product on Qt? Keep on dreaming.

That type of niche sftware is exactly the sort of thing I associate with something like QT. Not the prettiest thing in the world, but it'll run almost anything.

The whole objective of GPL is deliberately and explicitly to prevent commercial exploitation. If you think differently then you have never met RMS in person and listened to him for more than 30 minutes.

On Linux, you would have to implement every one of those things yourself

That sounds about right to me. Obviously, the actual Commercial license text has a lot more to it than two lines, including what I described in my previous post. In any case, this URL doesn't say that you can't sell software developed by the Free edition.

I think you were looking for this page, which states: "The Free Edition licenses do not allow the development or distribution of commercial software." This sounds confusing, but I think it is because the entire Trolltech website seems to confuse Commercial with Closed-source. What I believe they mean is that you can't use the Free edition for Closed-source software, which makes sense and is consistent with the actual license of the Free edition.

some of the proposed changes in Qt4 seem interesting, especially the introduction of model/view architecture for the table, list, and tree view widgets.

I certainly hope so. The design of the QTable class in particular is quite bad. Each cell takes up ~ 40 bytes of memory - which makes it a pig for large tables. Why TrollTech did not use an abstract base class (with no data members!!) with pure virtual functions for the QTableItem class - we'll never know. The alternative to paint your own cells is far too much work and is not elegant.

Take a look here. Though they no longer support it, or provide easy links to it, it is still available.

Then what do you call this ?

It's not libre free, but beer free. And it's old as hell. But the poster was correct that there is a "non-commercial" version for windows that's freely available. Be warned though that Trolltech's definition of "non-commercial" is rather peculiar.

I'm wondering if they'll make this new non-comm 3.2 edition similarly available.

In the meantime I continue to happily use FOX.

The old 2.3 non-com version for windows is still on Trolltech.com. Just search for "non-commercial" in the little search box at the top of the page,
And you'll get this link as the top hit.

That is "non-commercial", though, and not "free". Which means according to Trolltech you can't use it for "any activities for which you are compensated," and that covers academic research too.

So is Non-commercial Windows Qt 3.2 going to be available for free download eventually, too (like the old one is)?

I'm not familiar with Qt. Could anyone sketch to what extent [Qt's signals and slots model] is like or unlike Cocoa's "outlets" and "connections"?

Just now I checked their website I see no free Windows version at all.

You recall wrong. There is no free Windows QT, even for non-commercial purposes.

I complained about this years ago to TrollTech, and the response was "Why the hell would anyone want to create free Windows software?"

A non-commercial, free license for Windows QT is not forthcoming.

This is not entirely true. If you're a developer on the X11 platform you get it "free" via a dual license under the GPL. For those of us on other platforms this is not the case (AFAIK). Plus if you do develop code with Qt using the GPL version, as I understand it, there are issues should you then choose to make it a commercial application. "The Free Edition licenses do not allow the development or distribution of commercial software." That said, Qt is a really nice framework. However if you're curious, I'd humbly reccomend you take a look at the Visual Component Framework, a new C++ framework that is being actively worked on by your truly.

Doesn't linux combined with something like Qtopia provide something similar to what Symbian/Windows provide. Granted, Qtopia is not open source (as far as I can tell) but at least companies don't have to build everything from scratch.

QT's license is GPL, while GNOME uses LGPL

As you most certainly know, but fail to mention is that QT is only licensed under the GPL for non commersial, non Windows use. Otherwise, you have to buy a commersial, non GPL compatible license.

I'm a QT fan, but that doesn't mean we should start hiding the truth just to make it look better.

QT's license is GPL, while GNOME uses LGPL

As you most certainly know, but fail to mention is that QT is only licensed under the GPL for non commersial, non Windows use. Otherwise, you have to buy a commersial, non GPL compatible license.

I'm a QT fan, but that doesn't mean we should start hiding the truth just to make it look better.

The Gaim developers have done a fantastic job of splitting the Gaim core from the user interface, which has already resulted in a PDA client for the QTopia environment called QPE-Gaim. But porting Gaim to PalmOS I assume is a much bigger task.

I don't believe you will ever see photoshop ported or anything else similar untill this is resolved.

I don't know whether we will se Photoshop ported to Linux soon (Imaybe not), but the QT licence (or rather the commercial license of Qt which you can use under Windows as well as Linux) is surely not holding back Adobe...

"Not true. It was sometimes,"

It still is. We're talkling about people writing applications. Trolltech has a large list of customers, which includes many major companies. More importantly, not a single company has come forth and said they used GNOME for licensing reasons. Sun's choice of GNOME had much more to do with the fact that:
a) Since GNOME 2.x was a total rewrite, they got to play a huge role in shaping it. Much of the HIG and the usability and accessibility work on GNOME was thanks to Sun.
b) KDE wouldn't compile with Forte C++ (Sun's C++ compiler), which meant that no KDE apps would be developed with Forte C++, and Sun's engineers were much more comfortable with C.
c) Sun's engineers were much more comfortable with existing standard technologies like CORBA, as opposed to KDE's new ones like DCOP. CORBA turned out to be more or less a failure on GNOME, but Sun didn't know that at the time.

"Sun-Gnome, IBM-Gnome(at least based on assumption that Suse and RH are it's distros), RH-Gnome, Novell-Gnome, Suse the major KDE player - Gnome"

Whoa. Neither SuSE nor Novell have comitted to GNOME. And neither has IBM. Its just Sun and RedHat. IBM is a mix of GNOME and KDE (because of RH and SuSE). And to this day, most of the major Linux desktop rollouts that have actually happend (the China rollout hasn't, yet) have been KDE.

"KDE is loosing ground in this field. Not gaining."

This is probably true. But its *very* early in the game, and it is these sorts of initiatives that could stem the tide.

"Phoenix and Thunderbird - GTK"

Neither are GTK+ apps. They use GDK to handle drawing and do fonts. They don't use any GTK+ dialogs, widgets, or any GNOME technologies.

"OpenOffice.org - Now native GTK planned for next release"

No, a GUI-independent framework is planned for next release.

"KDE release, well project is open but no one want's to do it"

I have yet to see any indication that "no one want's to do it." Hell, KDE's already ahead on this front. There is already a release that adopts OpenOffice to the native KDE theme. That's one step, anyway, ahead of OpenOffice's GTK+ support.

"Evolution - I can't remember any serious KDE mail client sorry (please no kmail)"

Kontact? KMail is a very seriousl mail client, and you provide no evidence to the contrary.

"Gimp - not Gnome but GTK it is"

This is probably the standard one. However, 2.0 has the GUI and core seperated, and a Kimp would not be out of the question.

"xmms - GTK"

XMMS is a GTK-1 app! It looks and feels nothing like a GNOME app! And KDE has many excellent media players, notably JuK and AmaroK.

"Time to smell the future, distro maybe but commercial apps are poping up"

And so far, very few of them have been based on either GTK+ *or* Qt. Most are Motif ports. And of the commercial apps that do use a modern toolkit, most of them have chosen Qt.

"btw. all this **look** hacks KDE producess, GTK look, OpenOffice look, KDE dialogs in GTK are just dust in your eyes."

Well, apparently dust works. Because GNOME has managed to convience a whole bunch of people that Mozilla and OpenOffice are GNOME apps! KDE should have done these hacks a long time ago. And note, Windows is entirely based on such **look** hacks, to make the many Windows toolkits look cohesive. Its a crappy solution, technically, but the market doesn't seem to care.

Since the GTK license allows keeping the source closed and the QT doesn't I desired to know if this could be used in closed source apps. How is that a troll?

That depends on what license you pick for Qt. Qt is available under a number of different licenses. For Free Software, you need to follow either the GPL or the QPL.

GNU site? Aren't we talking about Qt?

http://www.trolltech.com/developer/faqs/free.htm l
Refer to 'Can I make software with the Qt Free Edition and release it under the GPL, BSD, or Artistic license?'

KDE would be so much more fun without all those clueless people spreading nonsense.

The compiler and SDK on Windows wasn't free until recently. And many companies, including major ones like Boeing, Adobe, and Sharp, seem to be fine with depending on TrollTech for their toolkit.

As for .NET: I prefer PyKDE, but there are C# Qt bindings, and C# KDE bindings are on the way. There are also bindings for a number of other languages.

- GTK's poor resize performance compared to Qt.
- GTK's poor expose handling compared to Qt.
- For practical purposes, lack of component technology. Bonobo is there, but almost no apps use it. Meanwhile, tons of KDE apps use KParts.
- For practical purposes, lack of a network-transparent filesystem. gnome-vfs is there, but not many apps use it, and its not supported through the standard file dialog. Meanwhile, every KDE app uses KIO.
- Nothing comparable to DCOP (until D-BUS comes out).
- Lower-level UI framework, compared to KDE's higher-level framework. GNOME's button Ok/Cancel button order is dictated by the HIG, while in KDE, its dictated by the framework, and would take a single line of code in kdelibs to change for all KDE apps.
- Lack of UI integration at the technology level. KDE apps use XML-GUI to define their layout. GUI layout can be change without touching a single line of code. KDE apps support customizable toolbars at the framework level, so all apps get it for free. The HIG is great, and GNOME's UI is very polished compared to KDE, but it would be nice if GNOME did like KDE and enforced a lot of those things in the code framework level.

Let's look at some of the upcoming GTK+ 2.4's features that Qt/KDE already has.

File selector (#29087)
------
KDE has it.

Combo widget (#50554)
------
Qt has it.

New action-based menu API (#55393)
-------
KDE has it.

Toolbar improvements (#55393)
--------
If you click on the feature request number and look at the proposed features, you'll see that Qt/KDE has a lot of these already, like customizable toolbars.

Autocompletion and history for GtkEntry (#69613)
--------
KDE already has this.

XCursor support for GDK. (#69436)
---------
Yep, this too. And they even mention Qt right in the first post of the feature-request thread, how nice!

Need to check your facts, last time I looked QT was not GPL you cant do anything you want..
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>&g t;

When was the last time you looked? Qt was GPL'ed more than three years ago, starting with version 2.2

Give me examples of companies which make money primarily by developing and selling open source software. Companies that derive most of their income by selling hardware don't count. Companies that derive most of their income selling support services for OSS don't count. Companies which sell open source software that others developed don't count. Show me companies that developed open source software and then made money selling the same software for which the source is freely available.

Sheesh, you don't ask for much, do you? Sure you don't want to add any more special conditions to that list? :-)

Trolltech is probably the best example, and should be well known to Slashdotters.

Sleepycat Software has been around for quite a while. Someone mentioned it above, but I notice you didn't mention it in your response.

Sendmail - whether you bless it or curse it, it's still the biggest mailserver on the Net. The sheer complexity of the product is probably a big factor in Sendmail Inc.'s success in selling "commercial" versions (for which they also provide support). And yes, the original developer of Sendmail (Eric Allman?) owns/runs Sendmail Inc.

Thought it may be with Sendmail that they make more money out of their support contracts. And if you are a troll (possibly even if you're not), your next move may be to add an extra condition along the lines of "Companies that charge for commercial licensing of their product don't count," which would rule out Trolltech and Sleepycat, as well as probably quite a few others that I can't remember right now.

Though I'd probably think that the Trolltech/Sleepycat business model is the best option for an open-source-software company. At least when you're talking about software libraries that potential customers can only use by linking to - thus invoking either the "free" license (usually GPL-like) or the "commercial" license.

Now if there were a GPL-like license that came into effect when you just used the software... something like that might open a wider scope for a company developing open-source software that could have both a commercial (ie. pay-for) and a "free" license. Hmmm. Interesting.

Pete.

check your facts [canopy.com]

Did you notice the link from there to "TrollTech"?

Just a thought.

[Note that this does not include most "enterprise" software development, which is typically for internal use only. In this case, they can simply use the Free Edition of Qt. As long as they never distribute the code, they don't have to abide by the GPL.]

TrollTech doesn't believe so, according to TrollTech's own FAQ.

Note that last sentence: "Consequently we recommend using commercial licenses for all internal software development."

Jay (=