Slashdot Mirror

GPL'ing a product has NEVER been successful for the company or person owning it.

Surely, you may want to talk to the CEOs of MySQL and Qt developers Trolltech, who release their projects under the GPL and do turn a profit. In the case of Sun, as others already have mentioned, they make money on the hardware, and commoditising software is only good for them.

Of course, these are corporations. Speaking of private persons, what about a certain Linus Torvalds, who is now fairly well-off?

QT is an application development toolkit. It is used by (among many others) KDE and the Opera web browser.

I really hope they're not considering releasing it under the GPL. That'll make it pretty much unusable for most embedded applications. If I link against some GPL'd code, I'm obligated to release mine under the GPL as well. Speaking as an embedded guy myself, I've worked at very few companies which would even consider releasing their own source code.

There's more to open source than the GPL, though. "Open source" could just mean that you give the source code to your paying customers, not to anyone else, and licensed such that they're not free to redistribute the source. I can't really imagine using embedded code which is completely closed, anyway. Most embedded systems are reasonably unique; it's impossible to deliver a pre-compiled binary. Usually the only way to use third-party embedded code is to get the source, modify it for your hardware, compile, and link. Actually, the GPL isn't too bad for this model -- you're only obligated to give the source to anyone you give the binary to. No others. The downside is that you can't prevent your customers from redistributing that source code. In fact, they'd have to redistribute it to their customers. But, as I said before, most embedded shops won't touch the GPL with a 10-foot pole.

That said, a dual license could work. Release the code under the GPL (or similar license) and let people download it for free. Then sell the commercial license. This gives you the best of both worlds. People can use your code if they make their own code available, or they can use it in a proprietary application if they cough up some money for the commercial license. This expands your userbase into the small hobbyist and garage shops and gets people familiar with your stuff. Later, if they end up working for a larger GPL-phobic company, they'll be more likely to purchase your commercial license because they're already familiar with your product. Trolltech uses this sort of licensing scheme for their products.

Talk to these these guys.

I happen to use Linux, OSX and Windows, and the number one annoyance for me is a lack of clear "native-looking" GUI

QT with python bindings PyQt will give you native looking GUI on all three platforms you are interested i.e windows, linux and OSX. Now QT4 is available as GPL even on windows, so its truly "free". QT also comes with QT-designer which IMHO is the best rapid GUI designer app.

It doesn't need to be a law, it can be a license.

Anyway, tiered pricing does make good economic sense. Universities do it with tuition; many content providers do it with licensing (individual vs. institutional licenses, e.g. libraries pay 10x as much per magazine subscription as individuals do, and even Microsoft does it for schools). It allows the seller to capitalize along more of the demand curve. Obviously there's no need to codify this as law, but the practice shouldn't be viewed with suspicion, either.

Considering Microsoft's recent price bumps for Office products, alongside WGA and this odd threat against China, I'm almost beginning to think that Microsoft no longer wants to be a monopoly. Maybe they've decided there's a higher margin in it for them if they can shake off the EU's restrictions and claim there's a viable competitor, e.g. if China jumps aboard Linux. That seems unlikely given their history, though.

Then again, maybe Mr. Tipson is just talking out of his ass.

Licensing FAQs

the exact situation you described

And yes, I am slightly offended that you obviously put absolutely no effort into find this for yourself.

Licensing FAQs

the exact situation you described

And yes, I am slightly offended that you obviously put absolutely no effort into find this for yourself.

Yes, but that 10400 EUR is for ONLY 4 SEATS(!). That pricing is sky-high outrageous, considering a team of 12 developers would be over 30,000 EUR. FOR A BLOODY WINDOWING SYSTEM ONLY. WTF? In previous commercial projects we've intentionally avoided QT for just this reason.

If we were talking about, say, 15,000 EUR for a 50 user SITE LICENSE, then maybe, but the current pricing is exorbitant.

Now to be fair, there is a 'small buisness pricing plan' http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/licenses/pric ing/licensing/smallbusiness which reduces the price 65%, but I sure wouldn't want my licensing to hinge on this.

So, if someone likes spending that kind of money, that's fine. I'm just saying that I'm one user who will never ever use it so long as this pricing is in place, in business or otherwise. I will never promote its use on any project of which I'm in charge. I'm just one man, and I guarantee there are hundreds like me out there - those who would otherwise be paying to use trolltech's products for commercial applications, if it weren't such a financial albatross sucking down your project's bottom line.

Well, anyway, one man's opinion...

I want to know how to do something. In such cases I dont really know what the code itself would be (i.e. the reason why I'm searching) so this wouldn't help at all. I suppose if you were looking for specific code it could be useful, but why would you be doing that?

The fact that Google engineers are using it internally is a good sign. They've written one or two programs, you know. :-)

It's great if you know what library to use. For example, let's say I know I want to use a QCheckTableItem. The API docs are OK, but not great. The Qt docs have examples for many things, but not everything (and I'm not sure if there's an example for this or not; it's not linked from that page).

So I type "QCheckTableItem" in the box, hit return, and presto, I've got 200 examples of this class being used in real-life code. Since I'm using Python, I can add "lang:py" to only see Python code -- something that's hard to do with a normal Google search, and impossible with the Qt examples (which are all C++).

If you don't even know what function/class/module you need, it's less useful, granted. Perhaps this will finally convince some people to comment their code. I'm so sick of programmers writing code without documentation. (Yeah yeah, you claim it's "self-documenting" but you also use variable names that look like your cat walked across the keyboard. crlWdLn, my ass.)

"Our startup honestly wanted to use OSS products. We do not want to spend time for any OSS bug fixing so our main requirement was -official support for all OSS products-"

Fud #1: Use OSS and you spend all you time fixing bugs. According to this, the Trolltech Qt Open Source Edition is available under the GPL license. And if you subscribe to one of the support groups you won't have to spend all your time hunting down bugs. Also if your company sells any OSS product, you won't have to pay any upstream 'licenses'. Did you factor in licensing costs in your figures for the C# IDE, WinCE and Vxworks?

From the same page: "Trolltech Qt License Pricing One Platform Console Edition, 1420, Desktop Light Edition, 1590, Desktop Edition, 2630"

You didn't state what business your startup is in, but if you are selling down stream solutions use GPL er ,, OSS solutions. You did say you rewrote everything to C# so you must have pretty intelligent developers. If you are an end user get a support contract. You know something as I reread your post I get a strong wiff of trolleri.

You state that Qt is $3300. That is for desktop edition for one platform. The main selling point of Qt is that it is cross-platform. Sure it is a great API, even to be used for one platform, but if your product is just for one platform, is Qt really the best choice for you? I don't know the specifics of your situation but its just something to think about. And $3300 is pretty expensive, I do agree, but considering Qt is basically the best thing to come since sliced bread (ok I am exegarating but it really is really really ridicilously good), their prices are managable for companies that do require an excellend cross-platform solution.

Additionally, you mentioned that you are a small startup. Trolltech does have a special pricing option for startup/small business users. Maybe you qualify?

I agree, unfortunately Trolltech do not:

You must purchase a Qt Commercial License from Trolltech or from any of its authorized resellers before you start developing proprietary software. The Commercial license does not allow the incorporation of code developed with the Open Source Edition of Qt into a proprietary product.

So what do you do if you've developed a lot of code using the Qt Open Source edition and now want to distribute it in binary form without source code? Fucks me. I guess you call Trolltech and beg for a license. Maybe they'll give you one if you tell them when you started developing and pay the backdated licensing fees.

Qt vs C#: Sure, C# is cheaper, but the price you quoted for Qt is for triple-platform licenses, and C# doesn't get you that much cross-platform support. Yes, Mono gives you support for other platforms, but it differs in many respects from the Windows version, whereas Qt is very consistent across all of them. Documentation and support for Qt is vastly better than the comparable C# support for non-Windows environments, (and somewhat better than for Windows as well)

QT is cross-platform - but you need to buy separate licenses for each platform you need to support. QT desktop edition costs USD 3300/- per platform. And this license is tied to a named developer. That is if you buy this license for a developer Joe, and if Joe decides to packup and take a vacation for a couple of weeks, you can't bring in Bill into the project to work on QT unless you buy a separate license for him as well.

And as stated before, if you really need to support more than one platform, you need to buy additional licenses for each such platform for each developer.

So yes, it is very expensive. Support is available for a single year after which you can purchase support for the next year - this is again very expensive.

http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/licenses/pric ing/

As for embedded platforms, most embedded platforms are expensive - OSS or not.

Startups get up to 65% discount for Qt licenses, see http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/licenses/pric ing/licensing/smallbusiness . So you either didn't even ask Trolltech for licensing options or you are just FUDding. *sigh*

Is anyone familiar with the Qtopia Greenphone? I wonder how this compares spec and feature-wise?

Using the Qt Open Source Edition, can I make non-opensource software for internal use in my company/organization?

Yes, that's right, they actually refer the GPL as "viral" and they're not trolling (pardon the irony). It's their FAQ, so fair enough that they're gunna try to encourage people to buy as many commercial licenses as possible, but this is just out and out lying.

The problem is your inability to do a small amount of research on your own. From their FAQ:


Can we use the Open Source Edition while developing our non-opensource application and then purchase commercial licenses when we start to sell it?

Answer:
No. Our commercial license agreements only apply to software that was developed with Qt under the commercial license agreement. They do not apply to code that was developed with the Qt Open Source Edition prior to the agreement. Any software developed with Qt without a commercial license agreement must be released as Open Source software.


So say I develop a nice open source app. Someone comes to me and wants a commercial license so they can distribute it without source. I go to Trolltech and ask for a commercial license for their library and they spring this shit on me. There goes my opportunity to fund my open source development. Moral of the story: don't use Qt for open source development if you ever want to be self funding by dual licensing.

If you're suggesting that wxWidgets even approaches the capabilities or ease of development of Qt, then you've probably never used Qt to develop software or seen what it can do. Just take a look at some of the new features in Qt 4.2 alone. Qt's strength is in its capabilities, quality, and the saving of development time. Trolltech's claim is that as a commercial developer using Qt you'll save more money than you'll spend on licensing, and I think it's not an unreasonable claim to make.

When you pay a bucket of bucks to TrollTech, you're not paying for something that's open source. You're paying for the right to use their code in a product that you will distribute as proprietary. When you license code like that, it can be very expensive. There are lots of cases where you pay a license based on each individual embedded gizmo that ships out your door. Depending on how much product you sell, QT might be a huge bargain.
http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/licenses/lice nsing

Bottom line: 1 - What you're talking about isn't really FOSS. 2 - Contrary to the misconception that most posters seem to have, support isn't the expensive part of what you're paying (leaving Red Hat aside). You're mostly paying for a license to use someone's code in your product in a proprietary way.

How is this superior to the Qtopia Greenphone?

The Qt4 does not support all previous Qt3 widgets

I think he was trying to tell you that Qt is not the same as QT (QuickTime). The QT in the application name is a reference to the latter.

Actually, that's the primary widget I was thinking about when I said that Qt is a PITA to work with. Up through Qt3 (last year!), you couldn't have a tree ("list", in Qt terms, even though it *is* a tree) with items unless you created QListViewItems for each one. In order to write a tree that doesn't need to be filled on startup (like the files in a filesystem), you need to go through a funky dance of adding dummy nodes, and removing them on expansion events ... it's a big mess. Gtk+ has, since 2.0, supported custom tree models.

Well, then you did something wrong. I used Qt3 Treeviews for a long time, and I found them MUCH easier to use than the Gtk thing. Simply add Listviewitems to other Listviewitems, and you have your subnodes of the tree. Makes SENSE, doesn't it? Also, I don't have to remove nodes for expanding/contracting....

GtkTreeView, OTOH, is a HUGE mess. I have to write TONS of code just for a simple listview, it is bloated, error-prone, and as unintuitive as a treeview can get (the docs didn't help much in this regard).

GTK+ binds events by a string: their event name. Qt binds by a string also: the C++ signature. There are a few memory-management issues that bindings inherit from C++ as well. This means, even if you're using bindings for Qt, you're seeing C++ all day. I've never gotten PyGTK to segfault, but it's a common occurrence with PyQt.

Again, I don't know about the Python ports, BUT in C++ I never managed to crash Qt (and sometimes I made mistakes I was amazed that they didn't caused Qt to crash). Gtk+, however, crashed often.

First of all, GTK+ seems fully documented to me. If there's any part that isn't documented, I haven't run across it, nor can I seem to find it today.

Perfect example: try to write a textview with autoscroll enabled (for example, for a chat client). This turns out to be quite difficult, because there is NO documentation as how to achieve this. There are Cursors, Markers, nothing makes sense (what whas that about Gtk being intuitive again?). I got away with a strange hack that sometimes works, sometimes doesn't. Ah, and the Gtk folks at GIMPnet didn't know a solution either.

While searching for a solution, I stumbled upon many functions that are present in the reference, but have NO description whatsoever. Kinda bad, isn't it? In the Qt docs I have example usages for many widgets at the beginning of the widget documentation page (example: http://doc.trolltech.com/4.0/qtabwidget.html ). I have yet to find something comparable in the Gtk docs.

That seems to be their excuse for a lot of things. And their answer to a lot of things is "well just use C++ like us".

Yeah, well, I would like to see them frop moc and use either Glib signals, libsigc++ ones or (preferably) the boost ones.

Use Simple DirectMedia Layer or Qt.

Hmmm...I've always wanted a PDA I can program for and directly on. All the ones I looked at seem to either require Windows for programming or were using some completely closed system--I think you had to pay a bunch of money just to get the developer kit. Maybe with more Linux PDAs, my dream will come true? Is Qtopia free to develop? Hmmm... Open source downloads? Maybe so...

Hmmm...I've always wanted a PDA I can program for and directly on. All the ones I looked at seem to either require Windows for programming or were using some completely closed system--I think you had to pay a bunch of money just to get the developer kit. Maybe with more Linux PDAs, my dream will come true? Is Qtopia free to develop? Hmmm... Open source downloads? Maybe so...

Since it's using Trolltech's Qtopia, it has a pretty good chance...

The Qtopia Desktop has versions for Windows, Linux and MacOSX.

And there is also a good chance that this Phone will be compatible with Zaurus PDA applications too!

Since it's using Trolltech's Qtopia, it has a pretty good chance...

The Qtopia Desktop has versions for Windows, Linux and MacOSX.

And there is also a good chance that this Phone will be compatible with Zaurus PDA applications too!

Connectivity Qtopia Phone Edition supports a full range of wireless connection options including AT-command modem integration, 802.11 with dynamic discovery, Bluetooth OPP, and IrDA.

• Qtopia Phone Edition 4.1.4
• Linux kernel 2.4.19

• Touch-screen and keypad UI
• QVGA® LCD color screen
• Intel® XScale® 312 mHz PXA270
• 64MB RAM & 128MB Flash
• Mini-SD(TM) card slot
• Broadcom® BCM2121 GSM/GPRS baseband processor
• Bluetooth® equipped
• Mini-USB port

Trolltech is sort of a "green" company...

Greenphone Virtual Press office

Greenphone Fact Sheet

Greenphone Specs

Greenphone Virtual Press office

Greenphone Fact Sheet

Greenphone Specs

Greenphone Virtual Press office

Greenphone Fact Sheet

Greenphone Specs

Look at the homepage of trolltech. Look at the choice of color.
So...ask again...why green? ;-)

Someone that is just starting to work as a freelancer in the 3rd world would never be able to afford for QT

Well, in this situation there is another option provided by TrollTech:
http://www.trolltech.com/trolltech/products/qt/lic enses/licensing/smallbusiness

I dont see much sense in releasing free software and then complain that people are freeloading it.

This "freeloading" I speak of is against the spirit of the GPL, which is designed to encourage community contribution.

Actually by default there is no race condition present due to calling QFileInfo::isFile() followed by QFileInfo::size(). This is because by default QFileInfo caches info about a file.

http://doc.trolltech.com/4.1/qfileinfo.html:

"To speed up performance, QFileInfo caches information about the file. Because files can be changed by other users or programs, or even by other parts of the same program, there is a function that refreshes the file information: refresh(). If you want to switch off a QFileInfo's caching and force it to access the file system every time you request information from it call setCaching(false)."

I wouldn't be surprised if on *nix based platforms a QFileInfo object simply calls fstat on construction.

Almost every part of GTK+, from the colors to widget shapes, can be changed in user themes. Qt has no way to do either of these without linking in bloated external libraries.

Until Qt 4, there was no way to load .ui files at run time.

Qt still has no support for "recent documents", requiring the user to keep track of and build this list himself.

Have a nice day :-)

Almost every part of GTK+, from the colors to widget shapes, can be changed in user themes. Qt has no way to do either of these without linking in bloated external libraries.

Until Qt 4, there was no way to load .ui files at run time.

Qt still has no support for "recent documents", requiring the user to keep track of and build this list himself.

Have a nice day :-)

Almost every part of GTK+, from the colors to widget shapes, can be changed in user themes. Qt has no way to do either of these without linking in bloated external libraries.

Until Qt 4, there was no way to load .ui files at run time.

Qt still has no support for "recent documents", requiring the user to keep track of and build this list himself.

Have a nice day :-)

imagine trolltech stop licensing it

http://www.trolltech.com/developer/knowledgebase/1 89/

or if the distros just fork it

"The distros" could just as easily fork Gtk. Why is this issue specific to Qt?

I haven't looked into Qt themes, but regarding SVG...

>> The addition of a Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) icon engine enables icons to be created from pictures in this vector graphics format.

http://doc.trolltech.com/4.2/qt4-2-intro.html

And of course, resizable dialog windows are possible in Qt since the dawn of time. Not only that, they work wonderfully. Trolltech has done quite a good job with its layout managers.

The truth is Qt 4 and specially Qt 4.2 are far, far ahead of GTK, like it or not.

The trouble with drag-and-drop UI designers is that the layout tends to break horribly when the window is resized or the font size changed. (I'm talking about VB, Delphi, and MFC here - there may be other frameworks that have found a way around this problem.) Designers who try to solve the problem by making their forms non-resizable should be taken outside and shot...

Hi,

    Sorry for posting Anonymously, but I've always been more of a lurker.
    Hopefully someone will read this, think it's worthy of discussion, and mod it up.

    Anyway -

    As an embedded developer, I'm stuck with the OS that my company has historically used (AMX).
    We've used PEG for our UI work, thus far.

    I see this: http://www.trolltech.com/products/qtopia, but it seems very Linux-specific.

    I'd like to evaluate Qt for use in an embedded device, but I won't be able to run it on Linux.
    Is it portable? How difficult would it be to get it running on another (non-Windows) OS?

Thanks!

Returns the file size in bytes, or 0 if the file does not exist or if the size is 0 or if the size cannot be fetched.

It is too bad that this book couldn't have been based on version 4.2 coming out soon. There are some major new features in the upcoming release, most importantly (IMHO), QGraphicsView, the new canvas. http://doc.trolltech.com/4.2/qt4-2-intro.html

It also looks like they'll try to squeeze in some cool SVG related stuff. http://zrusin.blogspot.com/

Man, Qt simply pwns GTK

Has anyone using the QT API noticed that its behavior when it hits an error isn't well-defined or easily detectable by the user of the library? For instance, look at QFileInfo's size member function.

Returns the file size in bytes, or 0 if the file does not exist or if the size is 0 or if the size cannot be fetched.

So, if it returns a zero, that could mean that there is a problem that your application may need to do something about or report, or the file does not exist, or the file exists but is zero bytes. How incredibly uninformative. But at least that member function documents its behavior it something bad happens. As I glanced through the other member functions, it became apparent that most of them do not bother to say what happens when the shit hits the fan. No return codes, no exceptions, no nothing.

Sadly, many of the classes in the library are like this. Sure, I could write an application using QT, but I wouldn't know how to handle failures simply because QT doesn't document the behavior in those cases. This is surprising, considering that QT is considered a quality library that is worthy of use in commercial applications. Granted, most of the time, we'll only execute the "happy path", and there will be no problems with this lack of documentation. However, we shouldn't throw caution to the wind and assume everything will be OK.

I can't help but think that this could have been avoided if QT would have embraced exceptions. Then, the API could avoid using C-like return codes and maintain its elegance but still report errors in a manner that is convenient for handling and documentation. QFileInfo::size() could be documented to throw QFileNotFoundException and QIOException, for example, making it easy for the user of the class to tell what happened. But they would have to rethink some of their code if they did this, because the naked-pointer-filled code that they have now would not be exception safe at all. I doubt that they will make the switch any time soon because everyone seems to be so happy with it the way it is today.

This is probably the kind of thing you can ask about on their feedback list, as mentioned at the bottom of this page:

http://www.trolltech.com/developer/downloads/qt/qt jambi-techpreview