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From the point of view of the manufacturer, they will have to go to the owner of the copyright of the code in question, and negotiate a seperate license.

For example:
http://www.sleepycat.com/company/licensing.html
http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/licenses/lice nsing/licensingoverview
http://www.artifex.com/licensing/index.htm

On OS X some of the best performing multi platform software is written using QT. They have great reviews from ordinary mac users too. I see Mono guys shipped .NET for OS X but I haven't seen a single software requires it.

QT programs are complete commercial success. A good example is Skype. If you are against QT because they require money from closed source developers who sell commercial software please say it openly.

If they will be crushed, I won't believe until one of these guys who actually codes real life, billion dollar stuff switch to .NET
http://www.trolltech.com/customers

As we speak about Apple here, these guys gave up PowerPC because they see future as portable. Guess who already has a working product which works on every portable device out there? Trolltech.

I see c# people speaks about how great thing it will be and how excellent it performs but in reality I got Opera Mini on my phone, a free application which uses 107kb of space. It is the J2ME 2.0 version with all bells and whistles. I got Skype which gets good reviews from the most OS X community.

Where is the .NET for OS X or Linux? I mean the usage. I see there is .NET for OS X true, downloadable, perfectly packaged. Where is the software using it?

Perhaps people got their own reservations because of stories like this?
http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/0 9/17/226241

*chuckles* grab anything with the new qtopia 4 when it comes out on devices. I know for a fact we have SIP in the base phone-package. (Not qtopia core tho, so dodge them if you want SIP).

Please provide a link to the well-documented free toolkit from a big company that runs on Linux.

Qt from Trolltech is Free, extremely well-documented, and runs on Linux and several Unix flavours as well as Mac OS X and Windows.

Please provide a link to the well-documented free toolkit from a big company that runs on Linux.

Qt from Trolltech is Free, extremely well-documented, and runs on Linux and several Unix flavours as well as Mac OS X and Windows.

Please provide a link to the well-documented free toolkit from a big company that runs on Linux.

Qt from Trolltech is Free, extremely well-documented, and runs on Linux and several Unix flavours as well as Mac OS X and Windows.

Please provide a link to the well-documented free toolkit from a big company that runs on Linux.

Qt from Trolltech is Free, extremely well-documented, and runs on Linux and several Unix flavours as well as Mac OS X and Windows.

Please provide a link to the well-documented free toolkit from a big company that runs on Linux.

Qt from Trolltech is Free, extremely well-documented, and runs on Linux and several Unix flavours as well as Mac OS X and Windows.

Do you *NEED* .NET? Can you learn something else? Something cross platform, maybe? Surely there's something out there that will do the job?

For about 7 years now, Red Hat has been badmouthing the Free & Open Source K Desktop Environment and the Qt framework that KDE is built on. Both KDE and Qt are licensed under the GPL, the Free Software license with the strongest copyleft/forced sharing protections that ensure the users' rights to control their own computers.

I know for a fact that Red Hat employees have embarked on a FUD campaign against KDE by spreading outright lies about its licensing. One such lie that they've been perpetuating is that thrid-party companies can't write proprietary software using Qt and KDE: this is plain wrong, because a company that wants to write proprietary software based on Qt can simply play by the proprietary rules and buy a proprietary license from Trolltech (the makers of Qt). This arrangement is only fair, and it provides a financial incentive for companies to write open source software. Furthermore, revenues from prorietary development go directly into improving the Free & Open Source Qt framework. This dual-licensing arrangement is a WIN-WIN situations for ordinary users like you and me.

Now, I'd understand if Microsoft were spreading this FUD, but for a company like Red Hat that pretends to be 100% for open source to be doing this is downright hypocritical.

For about 7 years now, Red Hat has been badmouthing the Free & Open Source K Desktop Environment and the Qt framework that KDE is built on. Both KDE and Qt are licensed under the GPL, the Free Software license with the strongest copyleft/forced sharing protections that ensure the users' rights to control their own computers.

I know for a fact that Red Hat employees have embarked on a FUD campaign against KDE by spreading outright lies about its licensing. One such lie that they've been perpetuating is that thrid-party companies can't write proprietary software using Qt and KDE: this is plain wrong, because a company that wants to write proprietary software based on Qt can simply play by the proprietary rules and buy a proprietary license from Trolltech (the makers of Qt). This arrangement is only fair, and it provides a financial incentive for companies to write open source software. Furthermore, revenues from prorietary development go directly into improving the Free & Open Source Qt framework. This dual-licensing arrangement is a WIN-WIN situations for ordinary users like you and me.

Now, I'd understand if Microsoft were spreading this FUD, but for a company like Red Hat that pretends to be 100% for open source to be doing this is downright hypocritical.

How's Wine doing on OS X PPC, AIX, HP-UX, IRIX, Solaris, or non-Intel Linux these days? QT is directly supported on all those latforms, but I doubt any other cross-platform toolkit handles all (if any) of them.

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

You can't even make a prototype of a program with out paying TT - they require you to destroy all code and start from scratch. No code developed using the free version may be used in a for profit project.

" * Build commercial software and software whose source code you wish to keep private.

        * Freely choose licensing for the software you are writing (Proprietary, Open Source or both).
        * Get commercial support from Trolltech
        * Be able to gain access to Qt Solutions and commercial-only Qt components such as commercial database drivers and the Visual Studio Integration on Windows.

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.

For desktop applications, there are no royalties, runtime licenses, or other additional costs.

The license is sold on a per-developer basis and assigned to an individual. It may be transferred, but only every six months and within the same organization. To transfer a license, or if you need a more flexible licensing agreement, please contact sales@trolltech.com.

"

are the employees dancing with joy again ?

Let's do the QT4 Dance to celebrate!

Furthermore, we could not port our C++ code to the umpteen platforms that marketing wanted to target.

See, here you have a requirement that was fulfilled by Java. That's a good reason. Also, you don't mention whether the system was completely rearchitected or not. Anyway, from the reasons given for this guy's question, I don't see a clear requirement, just somehow they think things will magically work better in Java. With many of the new libraries and frameworks like Boost and Qt there isn't the disparity as there once was, perhaps. I'd suggest they define their requirements, goals, develop a prototype (keeping in mind Alexander Cockburn's excellent advice on prototypes - if the prototype doesn't work, don't assume everything will magically work once it's in production!), and also, as you did, reuse the libraries as much as possible, using CORBA or some similar solution, until they can switch over completely.

The Eclipse IDE boosted our productivity considerably, and the product is very successful. So I guess it makes sense.

So what were you using before, vi? Emacs? Maybe if you had switched to Visual Studio (and Eclipse supports C++ too) you could've save alot of trouble ;)

Sorry Eugenia, you will have to wait for Qtopia 4 and it's Safe Execution Environment (SXE) to have native applications on a Linux phone.

Sorry Eugenia, you will have to wait for Qtopia 4 and it's Safe Execution Environment (SXE) to have native applications on a Linux phone.

For those who are wondering about Mac OS X and how it will look -- http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/mac.html

Natively, through QT4. No X server, but not on Aqua.

The Qt Gui toolkit by Trolltech has the best documentation I've ever seen.

It's even good!

The Qt Gui toolkit by Trolltech has the best documentation I've ever seen.

It's even good!

In other news, Trolltech has just released the Qtopia platform for mobile embedded Linux I don't think the guys at TrollTech haven't done a market study before investing in the development of this new platform.

How does the GPL help when you need money?

You can dual-licence code with GPL for open development and other agreements for people who want to develop closed source. That's what Trolltech does, and I never heard them whining for money—in fact they boast successes. If Apple had to pay up for using BSD as a basis for their Mac OS X, say one little dollar per sold copy, now that would be some cash flow.

How does the GPL help when you need money?

You can dual-licence code with GPL for open development and other agreements for people who want to develop closed source. That's what Trolltech does, and I never heard them whining for money—in fact they boast successes. If Apple had to pay up for using BSD as a basis for their Mac OS X, say one little dollar per sold copy, now that would be some cash flow.

I don't know anticipated release dates for KDE 4.0, but I don't believe it's too far away (compared the the Vista release), and certainly promises to be impressive.

Well, I'll see it when it happens. I've been working on upgrading things from Qt3 -> Qt4 and the new features are great (when they work, 4.0.0 was buggggggy) but the Qt3Support library is a joke. Things look like shit, things break. You can read a good example here (no, not my project I'm not that self-centered). So... I expect KDE4 to be a major major major rewrite of well.... pretty much everything. I know I've had to spend quite some time just to make some things be on par with Qt3. Though I've gotten rid of some really bad kludges too...

Ever since a company called Fluendo joined the GNOME Foundation's Advisory Board, GNOME is obligated to use GStreamer (a software product sponsored by Fluendo) as its audio and video backend. This wouldn't be bad, if it weren't for the fact that GStreamer uses Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) to handcuff users and leave them at the mercy of the entertainment cartel. In order to do this, GStreamer is denying its developers the right to license their constribution under the GPL, so that Fluendo can sell closed-source, proprietary DRM plugins that let the MPAA and RIAA control the users' viewing habits.

GStreamer has hurt the multimedia effort on Linux and the Free Desktop because they stole talented developers from mature mutimedia projects such as Xine, MPlayer, and VideoLAN, all of which were started before GStreamer and all of which have strong copyleft protection by being licensed under the GPL. In other words, GStreamer further fragmented the Linux multimedia developer base purely for the selfish, immoral purpose of ramming DRM down Linux users' throats.

Ximian, a company instrumental in founding GNOME, sold out to big business in 2002 by switching Mono's license from the GPL to the weaker MIT X11 license. Instead of helping out the myriad of established multimedia apps such as Kaffeine, AmaroK, and KMPlayer, Ximian started a whole new app called Banshee, whose only claim to fame is that its license (MIT X11) allows linking to proprietary DRM plugins.

These are just some example of an increasing problem GNOME is experiencing: it is pandering (and in some cases outright selling out) to companies that don't necessarily have the users' best interest in mind. One can say that the whole reason GNOME was started was to allow proprietary software (including draconian DRM) to use the hard work of open source developers.

KDE, on the other hand, is licensed solely under the GPL because the toolkit it is based on (Qt) is also GPL. KDE is also committed to preventing DRM from infesting their user's computers: for KDE4, they are building a multimedia framework called Phonon that does not depend on GStreamer, but which can use any number of backends, including DRM-free ones.

ncorrect. time_t is always signed

Unfortunately. that depends on where you look. Let me point you do the latest QDateTime class in qt. The relevant bits:

void setTime_t ( uint seconds )
uint toTime_t () const

Now this may be due to limitations on other platforms, but in any case you can't assume that everyone using "time_t", or that think they do, can handle signed integers.

I think the main issue with .NET right now is the radical changes in the codebase, so it's actually something to consider especially if you are interested in backwards compatibility, to use the Win32 API. You probably have a better chance of that working across the windows versions (WinNT, Win9x, WinXp, etc), and further you are not subject to the rapidly changing .NET framework. Obviously if you really want true cross-platform, i.e. the ability to run on various operating systems besides Win* such as *nix, then a better option would be a toolkit like Qt

Vendor Lock-in is real and painful. If you use Microsoft's .Net it can be excruciating. The IDE is irrelavant to this topic. His points were that he shells out cash for an ide that is useless in as little as 18 months.

My apps have a little longer lifetime than that. And if it it executes today it should damn well execute tomorrow. There is no way around that problem using the .Net Framework, Hell you have to first decide which version (if any) the customer has. Very cumbersome for the support group. Not worth my time, maybe Enterprise apps where "standard clients" have assumed configurations I wouldn't have this problem, but my customers are across the spectrum. I swear, if I hear "How are we going to port this to the mac/linux?" concerning another .net app I am going to lose it. You just want to shake someone higher up and say if you want to be cross platform then you DO NOT BUY MS tools.MS=MSonly now and always.

Someone else metioned Java, not a bad idea for the webapps. But not the only cross-platform solution, especially for executables. I'm digging qt-opensource-windows a-lot right now. Check it out http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/ Admittedly not the a webapp tool but a good app toolkit/framework. Great thing is if they increase their versions the old ones still work. Version 4 is current and I still develop in 3, being open source has the advantage of not ever disappearing.

One big reason Qt is GPL'd is that it allows them to sell licenses to those who want to develop proprietary Qt applications. This, using your reasoning, makes them no better than Fluendo.

By licensing Qt as Free and Open Source Software under the GPL, Trolltech is encouraging developers to also release derivative work to the community as Free Software.

If a third-party wants to develop proprietary apps on the Qt framework, then they are not sharing back to the community and it is only fair that they compensate Trolltech. Share and share alike, but if you don't want to share, pay up. Qt licensing makes perfect sense, and it is how Free Software was designed to work and be self-funding.

This is in stark contrast with how Fluendo operates -- its business model is based on handcuffing users and denying them the right to use, study, modify, redistribute, and improve the source code of GStreamer's DRM, proprietary plugins. Not only that, Fluendo actually pays patent licensing fees to the RIAA and MPAA, making those monopolies even richer and more powerful than they already are.

So if you're Fluendo customer, you can be sure part of your money goes into the pockets of the media barons. And if you're a GStreamer developer, you can be sure that your code will be used by the same entertainment moguls to rip off and spy on their users through DRM.

I think you just won the award for the craziest question ever asked on Slashdot. Motif widgets are NOT interchangeable with Qt/Gtk.

Not as crazy as you think. If you need to migrate a large Xt and Motif application to a modern toolkit, that's the most sensible solution. And the exact reason why the TT has developed the Qt Motif Extension. The Qt Motif Extension provides a complete and working solution for incremental migration. http://doc.trolltech.com/3.3/motif-walkthrough.htm l

Gstreamer is GPL

Wrong, GStreamer is LGPL only. The GStreamer website is adamant about denying developers the right to license contributed code under the GPL:
We require that all code going into our core package is LGPL. For the plugin code, we require the use of the LGPL for all plugins written from scratch or linking to external libraries.

Fluendo, the company that controls GStreamer, wants to link their DRM plugins to LGPL code contributed by the naive independent developers, who don't realize that by writing LGPL multimedia code, they might as well be working for the RIAA and MPAA.

Xine on the other hand is GPL, and any code that links to Xine must also be GPL. So even if someone decides to make DRM plugins or apps for Xine, they will have to give users the source code to those plugins. There will inevitably be some users who know how to extract the useful part of the codec while leaving out the DRM restrictions. As the KDE developer Aaron Seigo eloquently put it:
DRM + source code = no DRM

Now I realize why Richard Stallman warned against using LGPL for any code, including libraries. Too bad the makes of GTK and GNOME didn't listen. But thank God the makers of Qt and KDE did!

Isn't Google Earth using Qt (and OpenGL, of course)? It would make the Wine step completely useless, since Qt works natively on Linux. And so does OpenGL.

I believe it's using Qt, at least in its OS X version, because when Google Earth beta for Mac was issued a few months ago, there were lots of complains that it just didn't "feel" like a Mac app, and the reason for this was it was using Qt instead of one of Apple's toolkits.

Platform: Console Edition, Desktop Light Edition, Desktop Edition
One Platform: $1780, $1990, $3300
Two Platforms: $2670, $2990, $4950
Three Platforms: $3560, $3980, $6600

Sorry; I wasn't all that clear. I was writing about how things stood when Microsoft lost the anti-trust suit and became a "convicted monopoly". Now things are changing some, and I've not had too many compatibility problems with OO.o

If developers wanted to create platform independant applications it sure isn't Microsoft that's stopping them: http://www.trolltech.com/, http://www.cygwin.com/. Platform independance is just very pricy, a problem that's no being caused by Microsoft.

The problem isn't that Microsoft has/had a monopoly. That's fine and not nessecarily a bad thing. The problem was abuse of the monopoly, using their monoply in one market to push themselves into another and strongarm OEMs to keep them from providing the products of potential competitors.

They said: "If you start carring other operating systems, we won't sell you ours anymore". Sure, not the best thing to happen from the consumer point of view, but illegal or immoral? Hardly. My girlfriend tells me "sleep with an other woman and you'll never see me nacked again". Is she abusing her monopoly? See, there are no close substitutes, as she is just really very fine and all. One could say her body is my de-facto standard when it comes to sex. Also, market entry for other girls is prohibitivly expensive, I just don't know how to deal with them. Should I sue her because she reserves the right to sleep with me on her own terms?

This is a bit silly, but interpersonal communication and sex are governed by open standards. There are likely many potential partners which speak the same language as you and are physically compatible. As of 1999, there were no other programs that could reliably read and write the MS Office formats. So while one could say that "her body is my de-facto standard when it comes to sex", one would be using a different sense of "standard". Your girlfriend doesn't really have a monopoly.

KDE apps seem a lot more responsive, unfortunately due to the licences under which QT is available, a lot of people opt for GTK instead.

Crap. I'm sorry: www.openoffice.org - reads and writes all microsoft office formats. If developers wanted to create platform independant applications it sure isn't Microsoft that's stopping them: http://www.trolltech.com/, http://www.cygwin.com/. Platform independance is just very pricy, a problem that's no being caused by Microsoft.

>As for barriers to entry, Microsoft's illegal "monopoly abusing" deals for OEMs give one

They said: "If you start carring other operating systems, we won't sell you ours anymore". Sure, not the best thing to happen from the consumer point of view, but illegal or immoral? Hardly. My girlfriend tells me "sleep with an other woman and you'll never see me nacked again". Is she abusing her monopoly? See, there are no close substitutes, as she is just really very fine and all. One could say her body is my de-facto standard when it comes to sex. Also, market entry for other girls is prohibitivly expensive, I just don't know how to deal with them. Should I sue her because she reserves the right to sleep with me on her own terms?

I would recommend QT because:
1. You might as well write cross platform code if you can.
2. You might as well use open source tools whenever possible.
3. If you write it in C++ your application will be fast and responsive.

You can either use the commercial or the GPL versions, and you can develop on your favourite platform (Solaris/BSD/Linux/various other *nix/Win32/Mac), and the resulting application will actually look nice and friendly, unlike many other GUI toolkits which produce slightly alien-looking results.

http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/

If you prefer C, you could use GTK+ instead: http://www.gtk.org/

It is extremely satisfying to develop a GUI application on your GNU/Linux box and later see it running on a Mac and a Windows box, looking just like a native application on each platform, and performing well. Happy customers.

Then explain how Trolltech makes money off of selling proprietary licenses for GPL software? Legitly might I add.

Now remove it and install the various Debian packages which make up Qt. Notice how everything is different---binaries are in /usr/bin, libraries are in /usr/share/qt3/lib, headers are in /usr/include/qt3. Try accessing /usr/local/qt/include/qt.h: you can't.

I've administered systems of different ages and for different purposes, and yes, it is frustrating. But that's because package authors tend to choose poor interfaces, and system integrators then modify these interfaces, making things worse. The FHS is not a solution because it mandates different interfaces for the same package, depending on whether it is ``local'' or part of ``the system.'' I'd love it if all packages used a consistent interface which provided global names that don't change, but that's a decision for package authors, not system integrators.

Perhaps you are right that some distributions change things more than Debian. But my main point is that Debian mandates these types of changes in their policy.

There are other api's that are truly cross-platform (Windows, Linux, Mac, Embedded) and don't just "run on top of X http://www.gnustep.org/information/aboutGNUstep.ht ml (and no offense, they look prettier too)

-everphilski-

How do you explain how TrollTech makes money with a GPL'd program (Qt and its official frameworks)? Or how CodeWeavers makes money off of CrossOver Office when WINE is Free in both ways? Or how RedHat makes money off of providing a Linux distro + support when there is Fedora Core, their fully Free distro of RedHat?

Old business models die hard, and the new methods are proving to be a success. Even Novell, IBM, Apple, Sun, and others are benefitting financially from Free software.

I will be unhappy with *every* GUI toolkit until I find one where you can express an entire dialog box in a SINGLE LINE (I don't care how Perl-like the syntax!) and get on with your life.

if ( QFile::exists( filename ) && QMessageBox::question( this, tr("Overwrite File? -- Application Name"), tr("A file called %1 already exists." "Do you want to overwrite it?") .arg( filename ), tr("&Yes"), tr("&No"), QString::null, 0, 1 ) ) return false;

I'd argue that you can probably do this with just about any toolkit if you completely disregard whitespace.

You have QT Designer that is part of the QT Toolkit.

It's free software with a liberal open source license.

Use Qt and STFU. Qt is available on all major platforms natively and that includes MAC. It makes C++ development completely pain free and if your idea is that of hating C++, there are python bindings available and there will be supported Java bindings available soon. (Q1 2006).

Plus, Java has been an alternative option that doesn't suck on only one platform - MAC. The UI looks native, the development tools are good (XCode, Eclipse, NetBeans ...). What else do you want - .NET? If so, there is Mono for ya on OSX.

So what else does Jobs need to do and believe in?

When targeting the linux and MacOSX platforms I believe the ideal framewrok will be Qt4 (http://www.trolltech.com./
This framework supprts everything you will ever need, right from GUI classes to network and database classes.

And everything through the lovely language C++

The thing is, you use the qmake tool to create your project and then it simply compiles and runs on both OSs (and windows for that matter).

The Qt4 framework has been released under the GPL, with an alternative license which makes it possible to redistribute closedsource (this latter costs money of cause).

Editor: Hmm.. I personally use emacs and an xterm, QDesigner (included with the framework) for the click and draw GUI design.

I'm currently evaluating Python IDEs at the moment myself, starting with Wing IDE Professional, and while I don't have any conclusions yet, I can list what the current state of the market looks like.

Black Adder, has a "GUI designer with all the features of Qt Designer and generates Python and Ruby code." I can't seem to find pricing information on their website at the moment; I'm guessing the "Cannot connect to database server error" text is where an add-to-cart button is supposed to be. Their license is proprietary and the product is not free for redistribution, but source code is included.

SPE - Stani's Python Editor features the wxGlade GUI designer as a plugin. Open source, GPL license.

Komodo Professional (US$295) has a GUI builder that uses Tkinter. (There's a $29.95 "Personal" edition, but that lacks the GUI builder and is restricted to non-commercial use, where "non-commercial use is defined as tasks for which you are not paid. If you are using Komodo as part of your job, you must purchase Komodo Professional.")

One can also combine using Qt Designer (licensed together with Qt; both GPL and proprietary license options available) with one of the above or with Wing IDE Professional (US$179) or PyDev (Eclipse Public License) which both look promising. Wing IDE Professional includes source code, though like Komodo, it is not free to distribute. (There's also a $30 Wing IDE Personal edition, but it's missing a number of key features from Professional that I would think just about any Python programmer would want, even for hobby use, so I don't really consider it an option. It also has a "non-commercial use" restriction, like Komodo.)

I didn't mention this, but I did start out trying to use Qt, and when I could never get past all the completely useless compiler error messages

That points out a difference between GTK and Qt that's possibly more important than licensing.

GTK is written in C, which means it's semantics are virtually a subset of every other programming language.
But Qt is written in a weirdly-preprocessed superset of C++, adding multiple new features to an already elaborate language. A natural consequence is that error-messages will be less understandable, as the C++ compiler doesn't grok the Qt stuff piled on top of it.

That also may be an additional reason for authors of cross-platform GUI wrappers to prefer GTK as a backend over QT: relatively straightforward function calls are easier to pull into your own logical flow, while Qt wants to bring in it's own overall structure.