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Do you even know what vectors are? They are just lines, rectangles, circles, arcs, semi-circles, etc.. This is opposed to pixmaps. Very few KDE styles are pixmap based. There are some hybrids that use both (like keramik). Most are wholly vector based, like the popular plastik theme.

Most Qt/KDE widget styles use the QPainter API for this. On X11, these functions mostly just call the related Xlib functions (s/draw/XDraw) If you want to see the source code to the styles included in KDE, see here and here

KDE's kwin window manager also uses vectors to draw most of it's decorations.

"Restrictions:

--Software created with Qt Free Editions is governed by the terms of the GPL and QPL.

--The Free Edition licenses do not allow the development or distribution of commercial software."

The LGPL allows you to use libraries, as long as you supply the code for those libraries, but your own code can remain closed. There is no such option for the GPL/QPL versions of QT.

The QPicture class implements the load() and save() functions which read/write SVG. Cool!

Now, this is interesting. The canopy group also funds a company called Linux Networx. linuxnetworx.com

They also fund our friends over at TrollTech

Does it make sense for the Canopy group to endorse legal action for one of items in their portfolio that will almost certiantly hurt 2 other in the portfolio. Or are LinuxNetworx and TrollTech allower to use linux?

You tell me, cause I don't know.

This might be possible. But it may be very difficult to define "good specs and APIs", in the same elegant way that the GPL twists copyright inside out.

Oh, and "QPL" is already taken.

The Qt API is independent of X. Stop talking out of your ass

Qt doesn't care about cross-platform? What sort of crack are you smoking? Windows, Macintosh (including great support for OSX, Embedded Linux (for PDA's, etc..), and of course, X11 (including AIX, FreeBSD, HP-UX, IRIX, Linux, Solaris, Tru64, UnixWare 7, OpenUnix 8) are all supported.

Heck, take a look at some of their success stories.. many of them are on non-'nix platforms. Even Adobe uses Qt for cross platform development.

Don't get me wrong, Java is great for write once, run anywhere, but it'll never match the speed of native code. Qt is 'write once, compile and run anywhere', which gives far superiour performance to Java in graphic-intensive jobs (such as modern DE's).

I'm not a trolltech employee, I just think they make a damn good cross-platform gui toolkit.

Qt doesn't care about cross-platform? What sort of crack are you smoking? Windows, Macintosh (including great support for OSX, Embedded Linux (for PDA's, etc..), and of course, X11 (including AIX, FreeBSD, HP-UX, IRIX, Linux, Solaris, Tru64, UnixWare 7, OpenUnix 8) are all supported.

Heck, take a look at some of their success stories.. many of them are on non-'nix platforms. Even Adobe uses Qt for cross platform development.

Don't get me wrong, Java is great for write once, run anywhere, but it'll never match the speed of native code. Qt is 'write once, compile and run anywhere', which gives far superiour performance to Java in graphic-intensive jobs (such as modern DE's).

I'm not a trolltech employee, I just think they make a damn good cross-platform gui toolkit.

Qt doesn't care about cross-platform? What sort of crack are you smoking? Windows, Macintosh (including great support for OSX, Embedded Linux (for PDA's, etc..), and of course, X11 (including AIX, FreeBSD, HP-UX, IRIX, Linux, Solaris, Tru64, UnixWare 7, OpenUnix 8) are all supported.

Heck, take a look at some of their success stories.. many of them are on non-'nix platforms. Even Adobe uses Qt for cross platform development.

Don't get me wrong, Java is great for write once, run anywhere, but it'll never match the speed of native code. Qt is 'write once, compile and run anywhere', which gives far superiour performance to Java in graphic-intensive jobs (such as modern DE's).

I'm not a trolltech employee, I just think they make a damn good cross-platform gui toolkit.

Qt doesn't care about cross-platform? What sort of crack are you smoking? Windows, Macintosh (including great support for OSX, Embedded Linux (for PDA's, etc..), and of course, X11 (including AIX, FreeBSD, HP-UX, IRIX, Linux, Solaris, Tru64, UnixWare 7, OpenUnix 8) are all supported.

Heck, take a look at some of their success stories.. many of them are on non-'nix platforms. Even Adobe uses Qt for cross platform development.

Don't get me wrong, Java is great for write once, run anywhere, but it'll never match the speed of native code. Qt is 'write once, compile and run anywhere', which gives far superiour performance to Java in graphic-intensive jobs (such as modern DE's).

I'm not a trolltech employee, I just think they make a damn good cross-platform gui toolkit.

Qt doesn't care about cross-platform? What sort of crack are you smoking? Windows, Macintosh (including great support for OSX, Embedded Linux (for PDA's, etc..), and of course, X11 (including AIX, FreeBSD, HP-UX, IRIX, Linux, Solaris, Tru64, UnixWare 7, OpenUnix 8) are all supported.

Heck, take a look at some of their success stories.. many of them are on non-'nix platforms. Even Adobe uses Qt for cross platform development.

Don't get me wrong, Java is great for write once, run anywhere, but it'll never match the speed of native code. Qt is 'write once, compile and run anywhere', which gives far superiour performance to Java in graphic-intensive jobs (such as modern DE's).

I'm not a trolltech employee, I just think they make a damn good cross-platform gui toolkit.

Qt doesn't care about cross-platform? What sort of crack are you smoking? Windows, Macintosh (including great support for OSX, Embedded Linux (for PDA's, etc..), and of course, X11 (including AIX, FreeBSD, HP-UX, IRIX, Linux, Solaris, Tru64, UnixWare 7, OpenUnix 8) are all supported.

Heck, take a look at some of their success stories.. many of them are on non-'nix platforms. Even Adobe uses Qt for cross platform development.

Don't get me wrong, Java is great for write once, run anywhere, but it'll never match the speed of native code. Qt is 'write once, compile and run anywhere', which gives far superiour performance to Java in graphic-intensive jobs (such as modern DE's).

I'm not a trolltech employee, I just think they make a damn good cross-platform gui toolkit.

Qt doesn't care about cross-platform? What sort of crack are you smoking? Windows, Macintosh (including great support for OSX, Embedded Linux (for PDA's, etc..), and of course, X11 (including AIX, FreeBSD, HP-UX, IRIX, Linux, Solaris, Tru64, UnixWare 7, OpenUnix 8) are all supported.

Heck, take a look at some of their success stories.. many of them are on non-'nix platforms. Even Adobe uses Qt for cross platform development.

Don't get me wrong, Java is great for write once, run anywhere, but it'll never match the speed of native code. Qt is 'write once, compile and run anywhere', which gives far superiour performance to Java in graphic-intensive jobs (such as modern DE's).

I'm not a trolltech employee, I just think they make a damn good cross-platform gui toolkit.

I don't know why you think that GTK is the only cross platform toolkit, because it's about the crappiest one (no, GTK on Windows isn't any less horrible), but good ones make cross platform programming a breeze. C++ rather than C tends to be the language of choice. I prefer wxWindows, but theres a number of others, including Qt, FLTK, and FOX.

For those of you wondering what this whole SCO vs. Linux thing was about, I can finally reveal the truth.

As chairman and CEO of Canopy I've done a lot for the Open Source community. I've promoted investments in companies like Linux Networx, who make the third fastest supercomputer in the world and use Linux to do it. Companies like Lineo the masters of embedded Linux. Also Trolltech producing the incredible QT widget set used by the KDE project. And of course Caldera, producing the finest Linux distribution and pushing forwards the United Linux initiative.

But one shadow lay over my record of achievements. Despite all I had done for the Linux and Open Source communities, I still had never achieved the triumph I most desperately sought. Not once had an article I submitted been accepted by Slashdot :(

I'm sure my fellow Slashdotters can understand how this gnawed away at my soul.

Together with Darl McBride and David Boies I hatched a master plan, to achieve my dream of an accepted Slashdot article or to destroy Linux trying.

Caldera would purchase IP rights from the Santa Cruz Operation and with funding from Sun and Microsoft would use them as the springboard to launch a devastating legal and PR blitz against Linux. As part of this Darl would write a searing open letter to the Open Source community, drawing responses in return. One of these from Groklaw would give me the opportunity I needed...

As you can see everything has gone exactly to plan. I have my successful Slashdot submission, and I'm sure that looking back on it you can all see it was worth any 'collateral damage' along the way.

Darl, you can call off the dogs now.

God bless you all.

Ralphie

You mention some good points, but there are many companies making a profit off of open source software other than Linux. MySQL, IBM, Trolltech, Intel, and Dell are just a few (yes, I realize some of these companies make money in other ways as well, but they all report their open source-related activities to be profitable).

Counting comment lines, the app I'm currently working on contains approximately 26,000 lines of code. That's counting based on newlines. This is all written in C++ using Qt. It compiles and runs in Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux (though we are not releasing the Linux version). I have approximately 20 lines of code that differ between the three platforms and that is summing up the difference. This means I have approximately six lines of code unique to the Mac, six lines unique to Linux, and seven unique to Windows.

Now, this is a non-trivial client application which uses XML, SOAP, has a functional GUI, etc. etc. It communicates with a server that happens to run on FreeBSD. I'm not counting the lines of code in the server here. The server hooks up to a database. I haven't tried porting that to Windows or Mac OS X but it works with zero changes (no lines of code different) on Linux.

So what I am saying here is that my C++ experience certainly does not match yours. I find it quite easy to develop cross-platform apps (Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Mac OS X) with one code base.

• There is a "standard" API, but it's using the old, limited feature Xlib API.
• Today, there exists two very popular alternative Desktop environments, which in turn are based on two different Widget-toolkits. These are Gnome (uses GTK+) and KDE (uses Qt).
• Developers wishing to develop on Linux will usually pick one of these two Toolkits, as almost all Distributions offer both environments (and associated development libraries).

So the problem isn't a lack of API details (GTK API's and Qt API documentation), but moreso an issue of choice.

• There is a "standard" API, but it's using the old, limited feature Xlib API.
• Today, there exists two very popular alternative Desktop environments, which in turn are based on two different Widget-toolkits. These are Gnome (uses GTK+) and KDE (uses Qt).
• Developers wishing to develop on Linux will usually pick one of these two Toolkits, as almost all Distributions offer both environments (and associated development libraries).

So the problem isn't a lack of API details (GTK API's and Qt API documentation), but moreso an issue of choice.

I know this didn't make it to the front page, but is there really this little interest in embedded Linux, or non-X11 GUI systems?

I for one can't say I've ever really been too excited about MicroWindows or this PIXIL system built on top of it. We've not seen any PDAs that use it, although the Royal Linux PDA was supposed to use PIXIL/MW, it never saw the light of day.

X11 is entrenched. There have been a number of free alternatives for a long time:PicoGUI, MicroWindows (w/ NanoX [X11 API emulation] or PIXIL apps), Qt/Embedded, DirectFB w/ GTK+, Squeak (and on top of it, Dynapad), W Window System, Berlin/Fresco Window System, MGR and others. Many of these have been around for 10 years or more.

Yet, what does almost everyone use on Linux or Unix? X. Relative to the X11 install base, there is a miniscule minority of folks using Qt/Embedded + Qtopia on their PDAs, but even so it still a crappy solution when you consider how poorly Qt/E is suited to PDAs.

About as many Zaurus users are using Squeak as a windowing system. Perhaps more using Squeak, not sure. They may not use it as a X11 replacement, but they're using it all the same.

PicoGUI is the bomb. Although, it sounds like it may be going dormant for a while. One of the most promising of non-X11 windowing systems out there, but still no one uses it.

When will we have a project like this that really goes somewhere? Anyone have any bets?

Did any one happen to look at who some of the Canopy Companies are? I did a quick scan and noticed that one of the companies is Trolltech Great... That is all we need, they'll go after the GPL'ed QT for Linux... :)

Canopy owns 4.1% according to Trolltech. I hardly consider that a significant influence even with one guy on the board.

When using the Q-Toolkit. The commerical licence costs $1,500 per developer. Multiply that by a team of 20 developers and thats $30,000! Thats enough money to employ at least another 3 developers. The GTK+ toolkit may be cheaper, but it lacks a lot of features such as the C++ superset that Qt uses and the lack of the more powerful widgets such as Databases, Advanced File selection dialogs. So you have a choice, you either pay through the nose for the Qtoolkit, Use the less advanced GTK+, or write your own, which will be more expensive anyway.

You fucking troll. Do some research.

On Trolltech's website, they plainly state that SCO Group(technically, it's the Canopy Group) holds 1.6% of Trolltech. The employees quite obviously have a controlling interest in the company.

According to their website Trolltech are involved in more than just their widget set. They're selling themselves as heavily involved in the embedded Linux market which is growing and potentially very lucrative. Pushing people towards alternatives there will probably have more impact than worrying about QT, and will probably sit easier with some factions in the Slashdot crowd.

Wouldn't IBM be happy to invest into companies like Trolltech and LinuxNetworx? Beeing in the same boat as Canopy Group makes your mouth smell unpleasant.

You're either trolling or completely ignorant about the whole situation.

> Qt is made by TrollTech which has considerable participation

The Canopy group/SCO has a 5.5% investment in Trolltech. Trolltech is a small private company and as such, the employees own more than 60% of it's stock. Considering that many of Trolltech's developers have strong open source backgrounds, they have the defacto decision power.

> Considering their stance of "the GPL is invalid", there is still a risk that the rug could be pulled out and leave KDE in a pretty serious quagmire.

Incorrect... this issue was fixed way back in 1998 with the KDE Free Qt foundation (see here) . Qt would be released under the BSD license. This was done to obviously protect KDE's interests.

You're either trolling or completely ignorant about the whole situation.

> Qt is made by TrollTech which has considerable participation

The Canopy group/SCO has a 5.5% investment in Trolltech. Trolltech is a small private company and as such, the employees own more than 60% of it's stock. Considering that many of Trolltech's developers have strong open source backgrounds, they have the defacto decision power.

> Considering their stance of "the GPL is invalid", there is still a risk that the rug could be pulled out and leave KDE in a pretty serious quagmire.

Incorrect... this issue was fixed way back in 1998 with the KDE Free Qt foundation (see here) . Qt would be released under the BSD license. This was done to obviously protect KDE's interests.

HONK!

Thanks for playing - SCO/Canopy own a little over 5% of TrollTech See here

Seraphim

Another kind person posted a link to a List of Trolltech's owners. SCO/Canopy is listed with no more than 6%, whereas the employers of Trolltech own 65%.

Now get off your crack-pipe and stop being paranoid.

Calls to boycott Trolltech were getting scored "Troll" two weeks ago. However, it's getting more respectable.
Here's Trolltech's owner's list. I'm not sure if the "SCO group" is our hated enemy or a similar sounding company name. I'm not sure how many of those "employees" are canopy stooges and I'm not sure if the other Cap Investors are shills for Canopy. It'd also be nice to know who Trolltech owes any debt that they may have to and whether or not Canopy has special rights, like extra board slots or warrants.

Trolltech needs to come clean on this issue.

How about if they buy back the 4.1% of their stock from the Canopy group and the 1.6% of their stock from the SCO group so I don't have to feel dirty about using thier products. I know its a small percentage, and I do like QT, but still, it's unpleasant seeing their logo here.

I'll bet if they could they would buy that 5.7% back. And since its probably expensive to buy back, and Canopy and SCO likely don't want to sell its a pain and a source of fustration to TrollTech.

How about if they buy back the 4.1% of their stock from the Canopy group and the 1.6% of their stock from the SCO group so I don't have to feel dirty about using thier products. I know its a small percentage, and I do like QT, but still, it's unpleasant seeing their logo here.

I'll bet if they could they would buy that 5.7% back. And since its probably expensive to buy back, and Canopy and SCO likely don't want to sell its a pain and a source of fustration to TrollTech.

This argument gets put forth a lot -- that even though the contested code was released under a liberal free software license, it still cannot be included in the kernel because it is "incompatible" with the kernel's license.

The thing to remember is that when the Free Software Foundation states their opinion about a license, this is in their interpretation of the license, and, more importantly, how this relates to the inclusion of other software into GNU software. When the FSF speaks about something, they are usually referring to how the issue relates to them and the software they distribute.

Linus and the other copyright holders of Linux may decide that code covered by the BSD+Advertising license is not incompatible wth the GPL, and release the combination. Remember, too, that some people release software under two licenses, one the GPL, one which the FSF considers incompatible with the GPL. Of course, such combinations may not be legally valid, and may not hold up in court, but that question is for if and when it becomes an actual legal matter.

These are not the software licenses you are looking for. Move along. Move along.

Just to get the facts right, the 2.3.0 version of Qt for Win32 is most definitely NOT GPL. The source code is not available and the use of the binaries is restricted to "non-commercial" activities. Incidentally this apparently also excludes the use of that version of Qt for academic research, since Trolltech considers research to be "commercial activity". See the FAQ.

That isn't even a valid point. Qt 2.3 for Win32, free.

Well this is probably a bit off topic, but the Qt Non Commercial Edition for Microsoft Windows is covered by the license called Qt NON-COMMERCIAL LICENSE version 1.0. It specifically states that you are allowed to develop software using QT "in a non-commercial setting". Though the definition of "non-commercial" is not found in the license itself, another page says that:

"A non-commercial setting means that you must not use the package in the course of your employment or whilst engaged in activities that will be compensated. A non-commercial application is an application that cannot be sold, leased, rented or otherwise distributed for recompense."

My question is, why another license? I actually like QT. I use KDE every day and I write for QT for my private purpose. And I don't care if they charge billion dollars for Windows version. But why did they HAVE TO create yet another license that pose such a strong restriction like "you cannot earn even 1 cent using this software" when it seems (at least to me) that the GPL would have sufficed (and less restrictive)? Would somebody please enlighten?

That isn't even a valid point. Qt 2.3 for Win32, free.

Well this is probably a bit off topic, but the Qt Non Commercial Edition for Microsoft Windows is covered by the license called Qt NON-COMMERCIAL LICENSE version 1.0. It specifically states that you are allowed to develop software using QT "in a non-commercial setting". Though the definition of "non-commercial" is not found in the license itself, another page says that:

"A non-commercial setting means that you must not use the package in the course of your employment or whilst engaged in activities that will be compensated. A non-commercial application is an application that cannot be sold, leased, rented or otherwise distributed for recompense."

My question is, why another license? I actually like QT. I use KDE every day and I write for QT for my private purpose. And I don't care if they charge billion dollars for Windows version. But why did they HAVE TO create yet another license that pose such a strong restriction like "you cannot earn even 1 cent using this software" when it seems (at least to me) that the GPL would have sufficed (and less restrictive)? Would somebody please enlighten?

I don't see how Qt's "business like homepage" should have anything to do with how good a toolkit Qt is.

Considering that Trolltech is a business, I think it does reflect the quality of Qt. If Trolltech was a business, and their website looked like half the other OSS projects out there, nobody would take them seriously.

The "free for linux not for w32" is of course a valid point, but it's the only one.

That isn't even a valid point. Qt 2.3 for Win32, free.

"According to http://www.trolltech.com/newsroom/investors.html the Canopy Group only has 5.7% shares of Trolltech while 64.7% are in posession of Trolltech employees with an additional 5% controlled by the Trolltech founders. One can hardly say that the Canopy Group owns or controls Trolltech." (Text from here)

They will probably use Qt, since Adobe has already used it for their Adobe Photoshop Album software. They will likely already have some programmers experienced in using it.

If Photoshop gets switched to the Qt toolkit, I don't imagine porting between Win32/Linux/MacOSX/Solaris/etc. would be much of an issue at all.

This is a bit unrelated, but also interesting. It appears that Adobe used Qt on their album product, Adobe Photoshop Album. I imagine that moving a behemoth like Photoshop to a different widget set would be a massive undertaking, so I'm not holding my breath..

For the full list of investors, see
http://www.trolltech.com/newsroom/investors.html

SCO Group 1.6%

From Trolltech

Roughly 6% isn't significant. Now that we've settled that, You can go back to drooling all over yourself, or whatever it is that you do.

Yeah, cuz it's really hard to look it up:

SCO Group - 1.6%

> My guess it's closer to 25%

Where did you pull that arbitrary number from? Me thinks you are spreading FUD.

When are they dumping the Meta Object Compiler (moc) and switch over to Boost.Signals?

This means I can't develop any non-free apps at all, since QT is GPL and that's the only thing you can run on Qtopia.

From the SCO website:

"Caldera Systems, Inc. is a Canopy Group holding under the Ray Noorda/Canopy Group Investment Company. Ray Noorda is the former CEO of Novell, Inc. (NASDAQ:NOVL)"

And from the TrollTech site, you can see Canopy, along with SCO group own about 6% of trolltech too.

Take a look at the Canopy group main website and be sure to not patronize any of their other 20 or so "Portfolio Companies" like me.

Go to heck SCO and the VC you rode in on too.

6. Each time you redistribute the Program (or any work based on the Program), the recipient automatically receives a license from the original licensor to copy, distribute or modify the Program subject to these terms and conditions. You may not impose any further restrictions on the recipients' exercise of the rights granted herein. You are not responsible for enforcing compliance by third parties to this License.

c. If the items are not available to the general public, and the initial developer of the Software requests a copy of the items, then you must supply one.

LyX makes LaTeX almost useable. The latest development version (1.3.2) supports MacOS X, Windoze (via cygwin), and can use either an xforms gui or Qt. For technical writing, it really can't be beat.

Whoops. My bad. I was thinking of Duboi.