Slashdot Mirror

For a moment there I thought you meant QT insead of Qt

We need to do something about the abbreviation confusion.

Qt/Mac runs on Mac OS X. It uses the native Carbon API and does not require any special libraries.

Qt/Mac can be used with Apple's Project Builder and the gcc compiler that is shipped with Mac OS X.

But if you have a complex GUI, do take a look at QT/Mac from trolltech. It isn't FREE but it is quite good and allows your program to be portable between Mac/Linux/Windows.

--jeff++

I am not sure of your position, (because the developer license costs money for Mac OSX) but QT has the advantage of porting to about every platform there is.

TrollTech has a similar distributed build product based on the same principles as distcc. Take a look at the near linear performance graphs when large projects such as Qt and Linux kernel are built on up to 18 machines (see section 4.1 of the document). Admitedly, C code levels out after 7 machines; but C++ code can take advantage of all machines. TrollTech's product also makes use of file compression across the wire.

From the specs (Dragonball EZ + USB) it aught to make a faily decent Linux unit. Perhaps you could even connect an USB kbd to it for proper typing (less portable though...).
By using Qtopia you could have proper hardwriting recognision too.
It's a shame that Palm insists on not letting the screen fill the entire front, but rather waste almost one third of the possible area with a static input area.

"Apple should open up the interface for a bit more customization, expose the API's and maybe work in some kind of X11/Aqua hybrid feature so X11 applications can run on Aqua without extensive modification to the Aqua look and feel."

You should definitely have a look at wxWindows. A C++ environment that makes calls to the X11 architecture on almost every platform out there. Also, we all know about Qt, so I'm not sure about your statement. These development environments couldn't have been implemented without at least some documentation of the API...

I feel that all software houses selling propretary software should allow several installs of their products. If I use a product at work (for example a word processor) and I want to use the same product at home, I do not see the problem. I would never pay $5k for an office suite, but rather use a free alternative or a pirated copy. This would be good for my employer too, since I would gain experience with the software that I'm supposed to use at work. I'd even stretch it to being good for the software house, as I have experience from their product I'd want it at my next work too.
On the other side, I do not see why a company making commersial use of a free alternative should be able to do so without giving back to the community.
As a good example of good licensing I would like to point out trolltech's licensing model (faq here)for Qt. I can play around with it and make GPL'ed software without any fees, but if I want to get some $$$ from selling the software I need to give them some $$$ first.

I feel that all software houses selling propretary software should allow several installs of their products. If I use a product at work (for example a word processor) and I want to use the same product at home, I do not see the problem. I would never pay $5k for an office suite, but rather use a free alternative or a pirated copy. This would be good for my employer too, since I would gain experience with the software that I'm supposed to use at work. I'd even stretch it to being good for the software house, as I have experience from their product I'd want it at my next work too.
On the other side, I do not see why a company making commersial use of a free alternative should be able to do so without giving back to the community.
As a good example of good licensing I would like to point out trolltech's licensing model (faq here)for Qt. I can play around with it and make GPL'ed software without any fees, but if I want to get some $$$ from selling the software I need to give them some $$$ first.

I feel that all software houses selling propretary software should allow several installs of their products. If I use a product at work (for example a word processor) and I want to use the same product at home, I do not see the problem. I would never pay $5k for an office suite, but rather use a free alternative or a pirated copy. This would be good for my employer too, since I would gain experience with the software that I'm supposed to use at work. I'd even stretch it to being good for the software house, as I have experience from their product I'd want it at my next work too.
On the other side, I do not see why a company making commersial use of a free alternative should be able to do so without giving back to the community.
As a good example of good licensing I would like to point out trolltech's licensing model (faq here)for Qt. I can play around with it and make GPL'ed software without any fees, but if I want to get some $$$ from selling the software I need to give them some $$$ first.

IIRC, Trolltech's license is about 1500$ - 3500$ per developer. That shouldn't be a roadblock for a commercial vendor. Microsoft's tools are also not free and people are obviously using them.

Free software zealots won't care one way or the other - indeed they might even prefer the GPL'd Qt rather than Lesser-GPL'd GNOME libraries - but businesses are perhaps more likely to choose GNOME if they decide which desktop to develop for.

Wrong, businesses will choose Qt if they use C++ and GTK if they still use C.

And if they want to do multiplatform, they will choose Qt or Kylix (both KDE-based).

Has anyone tried the SL-A300? I really like its form factor much better then the 5500 (I would miss the keyboard though). I wish I knew someone in Japan who could pick one up for me :-). Anyone know the differences between the two?

FYI, as funny as the name "TrollTech" sounds, if you have ever used KDE then you have used QT which is one of the most widely used gui toolkits around.

For those who weren't aware, the OS shown in the screenshots is Qtopia, by our friends at Trolltech.

> Imagine if there was a really usable language that
> they could code in, that wouldn't hinder their
> abilities and/or speed on Windows, but required
> little more than a cross-compile to target to
> Linux, Mac, Solaris, etc. We'd be up to our
> eyeballs in good apps on all platforms.

This has to be from a TrollTech employee or KDE fan trying to drum up a kudo. I'll oblige:

Check out TrollTech's Qt C++ cross-platform environment. It offers single source apps that compile for Win32, Linux, and Mac OS X. As most of you (probably including EvilSuggestions) know, it's the toolkit with which KDE and all KDE apps are written.

Trolls, please send my endorsement check to ... damn, I forgot! I'm an anonymous coward. What the hell, just send the money to some starving kid in Africa.

And no, I'm not Sally Struthers.

Yes the issues were fixed, no RMS is way not cool with the QPL. The solution was for Trolltech to license Qt under a dual GPL/QPL license. I can't think of anyone out there who actually uses the QPL side of it, but people are certainly happy with the GPL part.

It ain't GPL-compatible, but it is Open.

Yes the issues were fixed, no RMS is way not cool with the QPL. The solution was for Trolltech to license Qt under a dual GPL/QPL license. I can't think of anyone out there who actually uses the QPL side of it, but people are certainly happy with the GPL part.

It ain't GPL-compatible, but it is Open.

Check out their site at Trolltech. Qt 3.0 comes with support for MySQL, Oracle, ODBC, Postrgres and Sybase/MSSQL. The plugin architecture allows you to expand this list

Huh? How is Troll Tech evil? People wanted QT under the GPL, and lo and behold, they released it under the GPL. Seems like a nice bunch of folks to me.

Not quite. People really wanted it under the LGPL or BSD licenses, just like GTK+, FLTK, FOX, wxWindows, etc.

One of the problems (unless you follow Stallman's manifesto) is that although the Free version is free for open-source, their commercial licenses are structured so that if at any point in time your software project is touched by a free (free, non-commercial, acedemic, etc) version of Qt, you may never at any later time buy a commercial license and release your software commercially.

> These are well-known design flaws with both approaches, relating to efficiency, thread safety, etc.

In 3 years of development with Qt, I haven't met any of the problems you describe. Maybe I am not writing the right programs.

> If they wanted an improvement, they should have provided an immutable string class with a suitable set of operations,

You mean a QConstString

> Oh, and being in native Unicode isn't particularly clever.

This is a comparison with MFC. You are telling me that their choice is really stupid and I agree. In comparison, the other choice looks clever.

> As for the graphics, sometimes I want to lay out my dialog controls in exactly the positions

You can do it if you want, even with Qt Designer. But I don't see when you want to do that. Could you give an example ?

Anyway, in the big majority of case, you want things to layout automatically and it is easy to do that with Qt.

> ensuring that your UI can cope with reordered sentences

QString can deal with reordered arguments.

> A simple tr() function is not the silver bullet here, contrary to what the article seems to suggest.

Yes it is. gettext() had it right from years. This approach allow the developer not to worry too much about translation, allow the translator not to cope with compiling stuff and get automatic update, and allow the user to add new language without hassle and to switch easily from one language to another.

Qt uses exactly the gettext() approach, with their own tools.

While Qt falls back to straight C (or possibly even a macro? shudder!) for connecting an event handler to a component, the VCL stays faithfully OO, implementing event handlers as method pointers (exposed as properties) on components.

There are some comments in the Qt documentation why the approach isn't always strictly OO.

while the VCL would read:
button.OnClick = action;

Just curious: if button.OnClick and action are both method pointers, how can you have more than one action in response to a click?

Now, on to Qt -- it is a C++ API, it is clean, very portable and very easy to use. It used to cost money for a development license for anything on windows, but it no longer does. See the Windows non-commercial edition

While it is true that you can get a version of Qt to play with without having to shell out any $$$, there is a catch. If you at any point in time touch your project with any one of their 'no-cost' versions (Non-commercial windows, Free Edition, Academic, etc. ) you can never at any later time buy a commercial Qt license and use your project commercially. As Trolltech says:

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.

So... that first sentence especially might be something to consider. However, if you want to pay for developer seats up front (it's a per-developer licensing scheme, IIRC), there's not a problem. Or if you only ever want to do Open Source work while your're not getting paid to develop. Otherwise, check with a lawyer.

Now, on to Qt -- it is a C++ API, it is clean, very portable and very easy to use. It used to cost money for a development license for anything on windows, but it no longer does. See the Windows non-commercial edition

While it is true that you can get a version of Qt to play with without having to shell out any $$$, there is a catch. If you at any point in time touch your project with any one of their 'no-cost' versions (Non-commercial windows, Free Edition, Academic, etc. ) you can never at any later time buy a commercial Qt license and use your project commercially. As Trolltech says:

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.

So... that first sentence especially might be something to consider. However, if you want to pay for developer seats up front (it's a per-developer licensing scheme, IIRC), there's not a problem. Or if you only ever want to do Open Source work while your're not getting paid to develop. Otherwise, check with a lawyer.

Now, on to Qt -- it is a C++ API, it is clean, very portable and very easy to use. It used to cost money for a development license for anything on windows, but it no longer does. See the Windows non-commercial edition

While it is true that you can get a version of Qt to play with without having to shell out any $$$, there is a catch. If you at any point in time touch your project with any one of their 'no-cost' versions (Non-commercial windows, Free Edition, Academic, etc. ) you can never at any later time buy a commercial Qt license and use your project commercially. As Trolltech says:

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.

So... that first sentence especially might be something to consider. However, if you want to pay for developer seats up front (it's a per-developer licensing scheme, IIRC), there's not a problem. Or if you only ever want to do Open Source work while your're not getting paid to develop. Otherwise, check with a lawyer.

Now, on to Qt -- it is a C++ API, it is clean, very portable and very easy to use. It used to cost money for a development license for anything on windows, but it no longer does. See the Windows non-commercial edition

While it is true that you can get a version of Qt to play with without having to shell out any $$$, there is a catch. If you at any point in time touch your project with any one of their 'no-cost' versions (Non-commercial windows, Free Edition, Academic, etc. ) you can never at any later time buy a commercial Qt license and use your project commercially. As Trolltech says:

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.

So... that first sentence especially might be something to consider. However, if you want to pay for developer seats up front (it's a per-developer licensing scheme, IIRC), there's not a problem. Or if you only ever want to do Open Source work while your're not getting paid to develop. Otherwise, check with a lawyer.

To describe interfaces make mockups of them using two very nice tools:

For GTK/Gnome GUIs

For QT/KDE

I have job experience using MFC. I will not describe it in detail. I will just sum it up and say that it is truly the most un-productive horrid framework I have ever used. Also, Microsoft's new WTL is no better. In short, the class wizard helps you half the time (if it aint broke when you modify some code) and the message maps are a nightmare. This automatic code generation you speak of is not all that glamorous. All that code generation gives you is a cryptic program that comiles to be Notepad. You're on your own after that. The Document/View architecuture is bad and seems to be a perversion of the Model/View/Controller architecture. Doc/View can be good for small scale, but will break down and give you nightmares on large scale projects.

I started using two pieces of technology, Delphi and Qt, and I have never looked back. At work I use Visual C++ to program DLL's (using STL and no MFC classes at all) and I use Delphi to front end, as well as write the back end stuff too! If I had my choice I would ditch Visual C++ altogether, I think it gives C++ a bad name. I wish most companies would not buy Microsoft Visual C++.

I have never used wxWindows, but I can assume that it is better than MFC. As for cross platform needs MFC still is the worst choice. At one of my previous jobs they had a person that programmed a project for both Windows and Mac OS. There is MFC for the Mac platform. However, this programmer was frustrated by the details because what worked on MFC for Windows worked differently (or not at all) for MFC on Mac OS.

For cross platform I would say check out Qt and check out Delphi / C++ Builder. Qt was one of the best C++ libraries I have ever used and I wish I could use it on Windows at work. Delphi kicks ass in all aspects. IMHO Delphi is the only technology I know that can truly claim the title of being a RAD tool. Kylix is Delphi for Linux. C++ Builder should be ported to Linux by Borland soon enough.

SECURITY OF YOUR INFORMATION

MyRealBox supports TLS (Transport Layer Security) and SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) connections. By entering the URL https://www.myrealbox.com to access your mail via the web client or by indicating in your POP or IMAP client configuration that your mail server supports SSL, your E-mail will be secure as it travels across the Internet.

First, having used both MS Visual C++ and Borland's C++ builder, I almost take offence to the statement that Visual C++ has nice GUI building and code generation features. It is strictly a minimal tool. Borland's GUI designer is actually fully featured and well integrated.

Now, on to Qt -- it is a C++ API, it is clean, very portable and very easy to use. It used to cost money for a development license for anything on windows, but it no longer does. See the Windows non-commercial edition. I work on a project which uses Qt for the GUI, and that source builds unmodified on Linux, Win32, SunOS, AIX, IRIX, and (I think) Mac OS X.

In addition, it also has a nice graphical designer with some nice code generation features, and excellent documentation.

Their "pre-processor" is in fact what lets the code REMAIN standard C++ -- it does NOT require language extensions to operate, unlike MS VC++ and Borland C++ Builder.

They've been around for something like 10 years, too. This is a mature product. And no, I don't work for them or own stock (if it exists) -- just a pleased user.

First, having used both MS Visual C++ and Borland's C++ builder, I almost take offence to the statement that Visual C++ has nice GUI building and code generation features. It is strictly a minimal tool. Borland's GUI designer is actually fully featured and well integrated.

Now, on to Qt -- it is a C++ API, it is clean, very portable and very easy to use. It used to cost money for a development license for anything on windows, but it no longer does. See the Windows non-commercial edition. I work on a project which uses Qt for the GUI, and that source builds unmodified on Linux, Win32, SunOS, AIX, IRIX, and (I think) Mac OS X.

In addition, it also has a nice graphical designer with some nice code generation features, and excellent documentation.

Their "pre-processor" is in fact what lets the code REMAIN standard C++ -- it does NOT require language extensions to operate, unlike MS VC++ and Borland C++ Builder.

They've been around for something like 10 years, too. This is a mature product. And no, I don't work for them or own stock (if it exists) -- just a pleased user.

First, having used both MS Visual C++ and Borland's C++ builder, I almost take offence to the statement that Visual C++ has nice GUI building and code generation features. It is strictly a minimal tool. Borland's GUI designer is actually fully featured and well integrated.

Now, on to Qt -- it is a C++ API, it is clean, very portable and very easy to use. It used to cost money for a development license for anything on windows, but it no longer does. See the Windows non-commercial edition. I work on a project which uses Qt for the GUI, and that source builds unmodified on Linux, Win32, SunOS, AIX, IRIX, and (I think) Mac OS X.

In addition, it also has a nice graphical designer with some nice code generation features, and excellent documentation.

Their "pre-processor" is in fact what lets the code REMAIN standard C++ -- it does NOT require language extensions to operate, unlike MS VC++ and Borland C++ Builder.

They've been around for something like 10 years, too. This is a mature product. And no, I don't work for them or own stock (if it exists) -- just a pleased user.

They can make sounds indeed. Check out the docs.

Do the benefits of supposed cross-platformness outweigh the drawbacks of having to learn a new system...

This is a question you can only answer yourself. It's always more work to take more than one platform into consideration, and wxWindows is no panacea in this regard. Only bother with cross platform coding if you really indend for the code to be run across platforms. That said, wxWindows is nicer to use than MFC, although for a Windows-based chess program, I doubt you'll be able to avoid MFC entirely. MFC just does more than wxWindows.

...and not having all the (incredibly wonderful) automatic code generation features Visual C++ provides for MFC programs?

This autogenerated code is so awful, I used to create it just to frighten people: "Look how many lines of code it takes for this dialog box!! Pay me more!!" MFC is the single largest reason I've given up on Windows programming permanently (Winsock is a close second). Since this is clearly a learning experience for you (right?), then go ahead, play with MFC. Nothing teaches like pain. But be warned, MFC plus Visual C++ can make you hate real C++ by warping your mind. __int32 indeed.

Or would it perhaps be better to write it in MFC since I am reasonably familiar with it then port it to wxWindows?

Look into Qt as one of your options. It is very mature, widely used, intuitive, and now supports Mac OS along with MS Windows and X-Windows. From a Free Software perspective, one downside is that you have to purchase a license for Windows development and/or commercial development (upside: it remains free for Free Software). If you have no budget and are set on the Windows platform, then Qt is not the best option.

In any case, I wholeheartedly recommend that you do not use MFC. My argument is that developing software around proprietary APIs is very risky. I've witnessed serious problems arise in long-term projects when API vendors go under or stop supporting their products. The fact that Microsoft is #1, etc., does not reduce the long-term risk, since all companies is mortal (and more than a few people argue that MS' days are numbered). If you want to make sure the long hours you put in now don't go to waste later on, choose your APIs wisely, and, no matter the API, find ways to compartmentalize your program to isolate risks.

You mean something like the KDE Free Qt Foundation? Qt is triple licensed: GPL, QPL, proprietary. If TrollTech discontinues the free edition of Qt, then the last available version will be released under the BSD license. (I'm not sure whether that's with the advertising clause.)

Linux was created since minix changes could *only* be distributed as patches (modified minix source code couldn't be redistributed).

It's the same deal with QPL software such as much of PHP 4.

Sharp's Zaurus has a fatal flaw: they require a licensing fee for every application developed

If you want to write Free (GPL) software you can get a free SDK here.

But isn't the point of having subscriptions to avoid advertisements?

That said, I've certainly worked on products that needed at least 3 hours to build an entire tree. These builds were done regularly around 3 in the morning so that the daily drop was available to QA first thing in the morning. It wasn't really necessary to farm out the compilation across machines because it wasn't a big deal to maximize speed.

As for developers' machines, it wasn't like every change was accompanied by a full build. You recompile the files that changed and link the object files together. Any smart build system should be able to handle this type of logic. Such a local build would take about 2 or 3 minutes (if that. This time could be made even shorter by using dlls instead of a single binary). I guess this Trolltech system could reduce this wait even further, but I'm not sure I see the point.

When else are you going to refill your coffee?

None of these are X11 alternatives on the level of SVGALIB or DirectFB, but a bit higher level. They require a low-level display medium like DirectFB, SDL, or X11 (but you can ignore that option for now).

Squeak Smalltalk: A cool Smalltalk environment. Based on Smalltalk-80, for which first modern WIMP was invented. Has a bunch of little apps, simple web browser, vt100 client, few email clients, web servers, a couple different GUI toolkits and programming paradigms to choose from. Personally, what I use mostly as my OS. I like having my entire environment available to me, to be changed as I like, in a very straightforward way. Rather like Emacs users, I suppose. Except Squeak is more customizable, and has full windowing system. Also can run as the OS, no Linux or X11. DirectFB, SDL, X11, Mac (9/X), Windows, Acorn, WinCE, BeOS and lots of other ports that all run the same binaries.

ETH Oberon: Implementation of the Oberon language - derived from Pascal and Modula, by Nick Wirth. Has it's own entire GUI system, like Squeak does. Can run as an OS, without Linux or X11. Also has a VNC client, so you could still run the X11 app or two that you still needed in a window. :)

PicoGUI: A really cool GUI system especially for PDAs and other embedded applications. Super fast. Bindings for C, Perl, and Python (I think). Linux FB and SDL ports, runs wherever they can. Not much in the way of apps thus far, but it's definitely alive and under pretty active development.

QT/Embedded: You know, like runs on the Zaurus.

GTK+ on Direct FB: Can't say I've used this, but I imagine bindings for regular GTK+ work in this port, which makes for a lot of development options.

MicroWindows/Nano-X: Yet enother embedded GUI option. It's developer seems to be pushing for PDA, set-tops and such. Not many apps, but could be useful especially for custom apps.

Are there any worthwhile just-Java windowing systems out there? There are al ot of Java-OS projects, but none of them seem to have gotten past linking Kaffee with OSKit...

Probably others out there, but this is a good look at some options.

• Berlin Consortium
• QTopia
• PicoGUI
• Relevant Freshmeat Trove
• Google's Linux specific engine results

And then there's the issue of the Qt licensing. I hate to dig out this hoary old chestnut, but it really is a problem. I'm not trying to be ideologically purer than anyone else, but it's just not free software.

From what I've seen of the anti-GPL rhetoric that has come out of MSFT, they are primarily against Richard Stallman's political agenda that comes with the GPL.

They see nothing wrong with altruistically giving away code (which is what the BSD license and its ilk are about) but licenses like the GPL that attempt to devalue the cost of software are anathema to such people. The GPL drives the cost of software to 0 or at worst the cost of distribution media (just take a look at Cheapbytes for a living example of this). This means that any entity that produces GPL software most augment their income in some way be it through moonlighting, consulting, support, selling hardware, etc.

This is not a mere side-effect but was an explicit goal of the GPL which can be garnered by reading Richard Stallman's early writings especially the gunk about software developers should work as waiters so that we can afford to give our software away.

So I looked for another alternative [to writing proprietary software], and there was an obvious one. I could leave the software field, and do something else. Now I had no other special noteworthy skills, but I'm sure I could have become a waiter. [Laughter] Not at a fancy restaurant, they wouldn't hire me, [Laughter] but I could be a waiter somewhere. And many programmers, they say to me "the people who hire programmers demand this, this and this -- If I don't do those things, I'll starve." It's literally the word they use. Well, you know, as a waiter, you're not going to starve. [Laughter] So, really their [sic] in no danger. But -- and this is important, you see -- because sometimes you can justify doing something that hurts other people by saying "otherwise something worse is going to happen to me." You know, if you were really going to starve, you'd be justified in writing proprietary software. [Laughter] If somebody's pointing a gun at you, then I would say it's forgivable. [Laughter] But, I had found a way that I could survive without doing something unethical, so that excuse was not available. So, I realized though that being a waiter would be no fun for me, and it would be wasting my skills as an operating system developer. It would avoid misusing my skills. Developing proprietary software would be misusing my skills. Encouraging other people to live in the world of proprietary software would be misusing my skills. So it's better to waste them than misuse them, but it's still not really good.

Since the GPL makes it near impossible for an entity to simply produce and sell software as its core business,

... it is unsurprising that the world's largest software company would be wary of doing anything that encouraged the spread of this meme. What is surprising is that most observers find it difficult to realize this and instead of applying Occam's Razor, resort to conspiracy theories about how MSFT wants to steal their code.

Trolltech porting Qt to OS X made headines a few months ago. Does this port of gVim to Qt mean that us OS X users will finally have the option of running a GUI Vim?

For those who want to really run Qt apps on the console, id recomend Trolltech's QT Embedded, wich allows you to compile and run various programs in a console framebuffer, I've successfully run Konqueror on a framebuffer. If my memory servers me right, there was a story some time ago about it on /., but i cant seem to find a link for it.

Qt's non commercial edition works on Windows.

Qt's non commercial edition does not work on Mac OS X.

Besides, QT 2.3 non-commercial for Windows works only with Microsoft Visual C++ 6.0, whose MSRP is $550. That's six months' wages for some people I know. It does not work with popular Win32 compilers MinGW (free software based on GCC) or LCC (free as in beer).

I have addressed only the limitations of the current Qt distributions. To answer trolls who may try to poke holes in my argument as it applies to OpenOffice.org: Yes, I already know that the current build processes for OpenOffice.org and Mozilla also require MSVC. Yes, I already know that cheaper versions of MSVC exist, but MSVC Professional is the cheapest available version that performs even minimal optimization. The cheaper versions of MSVC don't optimize the code at all; some don't even permit redistribution of binaries compiled with the software.

world has yet to witness sustainable business model for commercial companies developing GPLed products

Take a look at Trolltech. Their Qt/X11 product is GPL, but they'll sell you a non-GPL version for around $2K. This is the best business model around GPL I've seen yet.

I am constantly finding that i'm being moderated as 'troll'! Most of my comments are NOT INTENDED TO BE TROLL! But moderators have seem to of forgotten what a 'troll post' is!

A 'troll' usually tries to get the first post in a article

Trolls talk about discusting topics such as gay nerds and sex with animals such as goats!

Trolls posts links to vile websites, the most well known one is http://www.goatse.cx. Sometimes they try and discuise it through another website such as AOL.com.

Trolls post anti linux material, trying to prove how windows is superior. which often is moderated as 'flamebait'

Trolls post useless information known as 'crapfloods'.

I AM NOT A TROLL, STOP MODERATING ME AS A TROLL!

If it happens again, you will be SORRY!

Is this a troll? No I don't think so!

What's more, it was written by trolls.

Qt, made by the trolls! as used by Opera and The worlds best open source desktop enviroment KDE! Gtk is a crap tool kit and it only lets you write crappy little applications and silly little image editors (GIMP), but you can see what a fucking mess this is!

As an example let me talk a little about Trolltechs approach with Qt and Borlands approach with JBuilder In both these cases I as an end-user get access to a good product that I can try out and build my own opinion of, not influenced by marketing hype.

If I like the products, I'll be more inclined towards using them in a production enviroment, and I'll gladly buy The Product (pun intended).

On the other hand, if I don't have a chance to try out a companies products before I buy them, or if I am forced to withstand outrageous license agreements, phone-home "features" or Digital Rights Management then that company can forget to have me as a customer. I'll get something else...