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The reason for that comes down purely to licensing costs. It's cheaper to develop closed-source programs for Gtk than it is for Qt (if you look purely at up-front costs and disregard code maintenance and development time) because Gtk is free, whereas if you want to develop a closed-source Qt/KDE app for distribution, you need to work out licensing with Trolltech - and their licensing costs are somewhere between high and unrealistic. I'd like to see more commercial apps for Linux based on Qt and built for KDE, but until Trolltech fixes their obscene pricing most closed-source Linux apps are going to continue to be built using Gtk.

Mark Shuttleworth and now Linus Torvalds seem realize the value of KDE's superior architecture, on which which many must-have KDE apps. These apps don't have any gnome equivalents that are nearly as useful and feature-rich:

AmaroK music player -- The most feature-rich and polished music player on the Free Software platform.

K3b -- Best CD and DVD authoring program with intuitive wizards, on the fly transcoding between WAV, MP3, FLAC, and Ogg Vorbis, normalization of volume levels, CDDB, DVD Ripping and DivX/XviD encoding, Save/load projects, automatic hardware detection/calibration and much more.

DigiKam -- The most feature-rich application for digital photo management.

Wireless Assistant -- Most user-friendly app for connecting to wireless networks. Managed Networks Support, WEP Encryption Support, Per Network (AP) Configuration Profiles, Automatic (DHCP, both dhcpcd and dhclient) and manual configuration options, Connection status monitoring, etc

KDE Education -- Educational (Science, Literature, Geography, etc) programs for children. Could play a big role in whether school districts decide to use Free Software in their classrooms.

Konqueror File Manager -- Embeded image/PDF/music/video viewing (via KMPlayer [kde.org]) and a tree-view arrangement of the filesystem familiar to Windows users (Nautilus doesn't come anywhere close)

KDE Control Center -- Centralized location for desktop control. Controls _all_ common aspects of the KDE applications: language, power settings, special effects, icon and window themes, shadows, shortcuts, printers, privacy, etc. This is what makes KDE so well integrated -- all KDE apps respect changes made here, so they all have the same feel. SUSE has even made YAST a module of the KDE control center so users can access distro-specific settings from here. Compare this to the dismembered approach Red Hat (and other gnome distros) have been forced to adopt in the absence of a centralized gnome control center. (ie. a bunch of individial programs named redhat-config-**** that nobody can ever remember)

Seamless, transparent network file access on SMB, FTP, SSH and WebDav networks from _any_ KDE application.

Kaffeine -- The most polished FOSS movie player.

MythTV -- The most advanced analog and digital TV viewer/recorder in the Free Software world (built using QT).

Baghira -- A native QT style that faithfully imitates OS X eyecandy, aimed at new users coming from the Mac world.

Klik -- Gives non-expert access to bleeding edge versions of apps without requiring any compilation or permanent installation.

KDE and QT also make up a technically superior platform for developers, drastically lowering the learning curve for programmers new to FOSS development. KDE apps can be built from the ground up using the best development tools in the Free Software world (which also happen to be built on QT/KDE):

Kdevelop for syntax highliting, application templates, and project organization.

QT designer for GUI development

Quanta -- Rich web development environment for PHP, CSS, DocBook, HTML, XML, etc with advanced context sensitive autocompletion, internal preview and more.

That's just because it's using QT/Mac people. With QT/Mac you can't really do better than that (QT on the Mac is expensive and majorly sucks) - just look at apps like the PSI Jabber client. Now, everybody and dogs knew Google Earth is QT based (just look for the .dll's...) so, what else is new? (Linux-x86 will also end up being supported, once you're using QT and OpenGL that's not that hard to predict)

The Siemens simpad can run linux, thanks to open simpad [opensimpad.org]. I run Qtopia [trolltech.com] on mine, but it can also run Opie [handhelds.org] and X11 if you want that. This screen is an actual touchscreen, so I don't even need a stylus, I can use my finger.

.haeger

So Linux development has been hijacked by people that can afford $6600 toolkits?

You keep repeating that $6600 number, but not even the most expensive option for Qt is that high. If you take a look at their pricing, you have a full desktop edition for 2630. Nor is anything being hijacked, cheaper options are available. And if you're really that anti-Qt, noone is saying you can't write a GTK application with KDE integration.

What's the point crippling KDE (and hence Linux) with Qt - IF NOBODY USES IT FOR COMMERCIAL APPS ON LINUX?

That point can easily be proven wrong. HP uses Qt for their printer utilities on Linux. Google Earth is being ported to Linux, and yes, it uses Qt. Another example is Skype, which works on Linux as well as it does on Windows, thanks to Qt.

And if time to market and quality of tools are the most important aspects, why are you not using either Microsoft Visual C# or Borland Delphi / C++ Builder?

Maybe because Qt can be considered on par with these solutions? Or because being cross-platform is important?

So Linux development has been hijacked by people that can afford $6600 toolkits?

You keep repeating that $6600 number, but not even the most expensive option for Qt is that high. If you take a look at their pricing, you have a full desktop edition for 2630. Nor is anything being hijacked, cheaper options are available. And if you're really that anti-Qt, noone is saying you can't write a GTK application with KDE integration.

What's the point crippling KDE (and hence Linux) with Qt - IF NOBODY USES IT FOR COMMERCIAL APPS ON LINUX?

That point can easily be proven wrong. HP uses Qt for their printer utilities on Linux. Google Earth is being ported to Linux, and yes, it uses Qt. Another example is Skype, which works on Linux as well as it does on Windows, thanks to Qt.

And if time to market and quality of tools are the most important aspects, why are you not using either Microsoft Visual C# or Borland Delphi / C++ Builder?

Maybe because Qt can be considered on par with these solutions? Or because being cross-platform is important?

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

Good news all round, it would seem. :)

Indeed, here are some must-have KDE apps that are certainly going to help SuSE's popularity as a desktop operating system :
AmaroK music player -- Intuitive, powerful, good-looking music player. Supports transfers to/from iPods and many audio formats.

K3b -- Best CD and DVD authoring program with intuitive wizards, on the fly transcoding between WAV, MP3, FLAC, and Ogg Vorbis, normalization of volume levels, CDDB, DVD Ripping and DivX/XviD encoding, Save/load projects, automatic hardware detection/calibration and much more.

DigiKam -- The most feature-rich application for digital photo management.

Wireless Assistant -- Most user-friendly app for connecting to wireless networks. Managed Networks Support, WEP Encryption Support, Per Network (AP) Configuration Profiles, Automatic (DHCP, both dhcpcd and dhclient) and manual configuration options, Connection status monitoring, etc

KDE Education -- Educational (Science, Literature, Geography, etc) programs for children. Could play a big role in whether school districts decide to use Free Software in their classrooms.

Konqueror File Manager -- Embeded image/PDF/music/video viewing (via KMPlayer [kde.org]) and a tree-view arrangement of the filesystem familiar to Windows users (Nautilus doesn't come anywhere close)

KDE Control Center -- Centralized location for desktop control. Controls _all_ common aspects of the KDE applications: language, power settings, special effects, icon and window themes, shadows, shortcuts, printers, privacy, etc. This is what makes KDE so well integrated -- all KDE apps respect changes made here, so they all have the same feel. SUSE has even made YAST a module of the KDE control center so users can access distro-specific settings from here. Compare this to the dismembered approach Red Hat (and other gnome distros) have been forced to adopt in the absence of a centralized gnome control center. (ie. a bunch of individial programs named redhat-config-**** that nobody can ever remember)

Seamless, transparent network file access on SMB, FTP, SSH and WebDav networks from _any_ KDE application.

Kaffeine -- The most polished FOSS movie player.

MythTV -- The most advanced analog and digital TV viewer/recorder in the Free Software world (built using QT).

Baghira -- A native QT style that faithfully imitates OS X eyecandy, aimed at new users coming from the Mac world.

Klik -- Gives non-expert access to bleeding edge versions of apps without requiring any compilation or permanent installation.

KDE and QT also make up a technically superior platform for developers, drastically lowering the learning curve for programmers new to FOSS development. KDE apps can be built from the ground up using the best development tools in the Free Software world (which also happen to be built on QT/KDE):

Kdevelop for syntax highliting, application templates, and project organization.

QT designer for GUI development

Quanta -- Rich web development environment for PHP, CSS, DocBook, HTML, XML, etc with advanced context sensitive autocompletion, internal preview and more.

BKSys environment for a complete replacement of the autotool chain (libtool

Is there some license issue that's driving the KDE issue?

KDE is built on QT, a C++ framework released under the GNU General Public License (GPL), a free software license that has strong copyleft (forced sharing) protections meant to ensure that derivative code stays free.

Some corporations are raising hell against QT and KDE because the corporations want to make proprietary, non-free, closed-source software on the QT framework without compensating the makers of QT. Of course, those same corporations don't have to pay anything if their applications are free and open source. In this way, QT is actually encouraging companies to give back to the community, something beneficial for users as a whole.

Debunking KDE Myths does a good job disproving the FUD against KDE and QT.

Perhaps Novell would not have had to drop KDE if QT didn't cost 2000+ per developer to write for profit software.

Remember that QT says you have to pay them for a QT license if you use QT to make money.

http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/licensing.htm l

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

Please note it doesn't say commercial software whose source code you wish to keep private, it simply says commercial software.

You can use Qt with a number of other open-source licenses as well, for example the Artistic license.

This is possible because Qt is triple licensed (GPL/QPL/proprietary), and the QPL specifically allows to use Qt for any OSI-approved application.

The question is whether the open-source license allows linking against a differently licensed library (like the Artistic license), or if it forbids this (like the GPL).

Have you seen the customer list of Trolltech? Commercial support can be a big plus for companies.. They have one company to contact for support questions, instead of developers somewhere on the net.

The whole community thing means free support, but also also scares companies away. Companies who feel commercial partners are more reliable.

The real issue is who is going to pay for the next generation of KDE development if SuSE isn't going to pay.

Mandrake, Kubuntu/Mark Shuttleworth, Trolltech seem realize the value of KDE's superior architecture, on which many must-have KDE apps have been built. These apps don't have any gnome equivalents that are nearly as useful and feature-rich:

AmaroK music player -- Steve Jobs' nightmare, the single greatest threat to Itunes on the Free Software platform.

K3b -- Best CD and DVD authoring program with intuitive wizards, on the fly transcoding between WAV, MP3, FLAC, and Ogg Vorbis, normalization of volume levels, CDDB, DVD Ripping and DivX/XviD encoding, Save/load projects, automatic hardware detection/calibration and much more.

DigiKam -- The most feature-rich application for digital photo management.

Wireless Assistant -- Most user-friendly app for connecting to wireless networks. Managed Networks Support, WEP Encryption Support, Per Network (AP) Configuration Profiles, Automatic (DHCP, both dhcpcd and dhclient) and manual configuration options, Connection status monitoring, etc

KDE Education -- Educational (Science, Literature, Geography, etc) programs for children. Could play a big role in whether school districts decide to use Free Software in their classrooms.

Konqueror File Manager -- Embeded image/PDF/music/video viewing (via KMPlayer) and a tree-view arrangement of the filesystem familiar to Windows users (Nautilus doesn't come anywhere close)

KDE Control Center -- Centralized location for desktop control. Controls _all_ common aspects of the KDE applications: language, power settings, special effects, icon and window themes, shadows, shortcuts, printers, privacy, etc. This is what makes KDE so well integrated -- all KDE apps respect changes made here, so they all have the same feel. SUSE has even made YAST a module of the KDE control center so users can access distro-specific settings from here. Compare this to the dismembered approach Red Hat (and other gnome distros) have been forced to adopt in the absence of a centralized gnome control center. (ie. a bunch of individial programs named redhat-config-**** that nobody can ever remember)

Seamless, transparent network file access on SMB, FTP, SSH and WebDav networks from _any_ KDE application.

Kaffeine -- The most polished FOSS movie player.

MythTV -- The most advanced analog and digital TV viewer/recorder in the Free Software world (built using QT).

Baghira -- A native QT style that faithfully imitates OS X eyecandy, aimed at new users coming from the Mac world.

Klik -- Gives non-expert access to bleeding edge versions of apps without requiring any compilation or permanent installation.

KDE and QT also make up a technically superior platform for developers, drastically lowering the learning curve for programmers new to FOSS development. KDE apps can be built from the ground up using the best development tools in the Free Software world (which also happen to be built on QT/KDE):

Kdevelop for syntax highlighting, application templates, and project organization.

QT designer for GUI development

Quanta -- Rich web development environment for PHP, CSS, DocBook, HTML, XML, etc with advanced con

QT does, which you'll be developing for if you use qt designer. If you develop something with the free version it has to be under an approved license. You also can't later use that code with the commercial version:

"Please note that it is necessary to choose either the Open Source or Commercial license at the outset of development. Trolltech's commercial license terms do not allow you to start developing proprietary software using the Open Source edition."
http://www.trolltech.com/company/model.html

It's not like I'm planning on doing proprietary software, who knows what I'll be doing a year from now. I'll probably release some of the stuff I develop internally as GPL (I hold the copyright) but do a ghostscript-like scheme for a few parts of it (release it under GPL after a certain time). If I go with QT, even after I pay their $1800 I wouldn't be allowed to do that under the license.

Ideally, all software should be free, however, we live in the real world. What linux needs most to succeed on the desktop in the commercial sector is commercial grade "applications" (Photoshop, Illustrator,AutoCad, etc. Gnome (GTK+) uses the LGPL, so commercial (non-free) applications can be developed and linked against the GTK+ libraries. KDE on the other hand, uses QT. The QT license is free for non-commercial applications, but that isn't going to do much to get the range of game software, graphics, educational, etc. that Linux needs to make inroads into the desktop. Check out the pricing for a QT license for developers to develop the "commercial" applications for linux. http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/pricing.html and you wonder why all of the major distributions are standardizing on Gnome?

Years ago I went through the development framework of KDE, Qt. I was immediately surprised by the huge power of that platform versus GTK .
It might have been Qt's C++, or the Qt vs GTK "Hello World!" lazy-man choc but I then simply sticked to Qt (the troubles came later).
I mean I don't know much of the widget wonders of GTK so I possibly can't tell, but I just found a good bunch of classes around me with Qt and I was happy.
Perhaps for KDE losing such a strong 'mainline supporter' as SuSE the big deal is for the Qt platform losing terrain and future, and all the wasted/ to be wasted efforts when building up a gnome program vs a KDE one.

I think a lot of Suse customers will not be so pleased.

Of course SUSE customers won't be pleased. There are many must-have desktop apps built on the KDE framework that don't have any good gtk equivalents:

AmaroK music player -- Steve Jobs' nightmare, the single greatest threat to Itunes on the Free Software platform.

DigiKam -- The most feature-rich application for digital photo management.

Konqueror File Manager" -- Embeded image/PDF/music/video viewing (via KMPlayer) and a tree-view arrangement of the filesystem familiar to Windows users (Nautilus doesn't come anywhere close)

Seamless, transparent network file access on SMB, FTP, SSH and WebDav networks from _any_ KDE application.

Kaffeine -- The most polished FOSS movie player.

Baghira -- A native QT style that faithfully imitates OS X eyecandy, aimed at new users coming from the Mac world.

KDE and QT also make up a technically superior platform for developers, drastically lowering the learning curve for programmers new to FOSS development. KDE apps can be built from the ground up using the best development tools in the Free Software world (which also happen to be built on QT/KDE):

QT designer for GUI development

Kdevelop for syntax highliting, application templates, and project organization.

BKSys environmentfor a complete replacement of the autotool chain (libtool+automake+autoconf+make) that will make dependency a whole lot more simpler and efficient.

Gnome is way behind KDE with regards to these features. The only reason Redhat's doing so well with Gnome is because they're targeting geeky sysadmins who don't care about having a good-looking desktop. The other 99% of the world does care, and gnome just doesn't fit the bill.

No kidding! Looking at the screenshot it's an even more astounding claim. This Gorm is simply an interface designer that looks like a steaming pile when compared with the likes of QT Designer.

"proprietary Qt library"

Qt is not proprietary. It's an open-source library with full source-code available under the GPL. It's also available under a commercial license for those wishing to pay for support.

here
http://www.trolltech.com/company/model.html

lamer!

The problem arises when a particular free, open source app relies on a proprietary library.

You mean like KDE?

For the uninitiated, KDE is not "free" on the Windows platform, nor is it even LGPL on any platform. This is because of the proprietary Qt library on which it is based. Here's a price list.

This means it is easier and cheaper to write and deploy software for Microsoft Windows than KDE. I really do not understand how anybody can badmouth Windows and then turn around and praise KDE when in some respects it's even worse. FYI, Qt / KDE is also the main reason that Gnome (a desktop environment that isn't crippled by it's licence) even exists.

So, while selling their browser (now free), Opera should not pay Trolltech for QT which makes them possible to run on many platforms (especially mobile!) with legendary low CPU and memory usage?

Looks like Opera ASA has no problem with that, they are a technology partner:
http://partners.trolltech.com/partners/tech.html

I am not developer but I remember lots of flame wars about GPL license of QT. They moved to GPL for opensource/free projects and they still get flamed.

Interesting.

Plus, even if you were to develop an app for internal use you cannot go from open source to closed. Trolltech's commercial license is setup this way - once open source, always open source.

http://www.trolltech.com/developer/faqs/index.html ?catid=1953&id=190

because the license does not allow you to use code you wrote with the free version in the paid versions.

WRONG! Please mod parent flamebait.

You're confusing paid versions with proprietary versions. You can make money selling paid versions of Free and Open Source Software.

QT is licenced under the GPL, which is a Free and Open Source Software license. It forces software vendors to share the source code, but does not prohibit vendors from selling binaries.

Anyone (ranging from independent programmers to multibllion dollar companies) can create Free and Open Source Software built on QT and can sell the resultant software without giving a penny to Trolltech. Just look at Novell SUSE Linux, Linspire, RedHat and any other commercial distro that ships with KDE. These companies (and anyone else for that matter, including you!) can sell the binaries -- all they have to do is provide the source code to the user, so that the user can customize the software for his/her needs.

If you want to keep your source code secret and build proprietary applications that lock in users, prevent them from making modifications, restrict their rights, take away control of their computers, then naturally you need to pay royalties. In the world of spyware, DRM-infestation, and Treacherous Computing no proprietary software should be trusted.

In other words: If a company does the moral thing for the users and society, the company gets a freebie. If they're unscrupulous, then they better pay up.

Sure it does. It just doesn't allow you to distribute that code. You can sit down, write all the programs you'd like with the free version, test it out yourself, then switch to the commercial version when it's time to release.


This is actually *NOT* the case. As per the QT license, you must BUY the licence before you start coding the application.

Refer to the license FAQ: http://www.trolltech.com/developer/faqs/index.html ?catid=1953&id=182


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

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."

Though I think there are a lot of places where GIMP's poor vector handling matter a lot more than with stroking a path. Primarily in text handling.

It's too bad, because until the release of Photoshop 8 (aka CS) GIMP looked like it could seriously have been a year or so away from not just being completely competitive with Photoshop, but dominant. But as with so many open source projects, particularly on Linux, it is controlled by the wrong people who spend time doing useless things (like converting to GTK2, which doesn't really solve the problem of it being GTK) when they could be implementing features, improving quality of said features, or porting to a toolkit that doesn't suck.

What? You can afford the luxury of grad school, but not even the academic license? Or, did you spend all your money on the Windows Forms .net license?

Not to be too harsh, but give me a break dude, every time I hear the baloney about the Qt license costing too much, that is a clue you are an amateur. Qt is simply a fantastic product. Paying a little extra for a proper tool will make all the difference. I'm not sure who said it, but "If I had 9 hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend 6 hours sharpening an axe". Or a little money and buy yourself a proper chainsaw.

The KDE project and Trolltech have carefully protected the future of all software developed on top of the Free QT license.

In the event of a buyout, QT will be re-licensed under a BSD license.

This agreement was negotiated very soon after Trolltech was formed.

Read about Qt 4 here. If Trolltech are to be believed, we are getting more features and better performance. It's not a case of the two being mutually exclusive.

Don't listen to this guy... For an exceptional C++ GUI toolkit, check out QT http://www.trolltech.com/. It is well designed, has a broad range of supported platforms, and is free-software-friendly (you can write GPL software using QT).

Yup, a guy who cranks out C# programs for a living, his best option when wanting to code GUI for Linux is... Qt? No, only if your answer to every question is Qt. Clearly this guy's best option is Mono, even if I'm not particularly a fan of Mono.

Also, the "free-software-friendly" Qt is also "regular-software-unfriendly." That is, closed-source Qt development requires hefty license fees. That isn't true for any other major Linux toolkit.

(Qt is great, I use it regularly and I'm really not bashing it - but you see, grandparent, you've stepped in the middle of a geek war here and the partisans are only going to tell you half the story... And people wonder why Linux desktop marketshare is so low; it's partly because clowns like parent spend so much time working against eachother, and other clowns spend all their time striking down infidels who either use or don't use the "GNU/" prefix, and yet other clowns spend all their time worrying about the difference between virtual synonyms like "free" and "open." That they've managed what they've managed so far is quite impressive, considering.)

see mono, it's .NET for Linux

Don't listen to this guy.

For an exceptional C++ GUI toolkit, check out QT http://www.trolltech.com/. It is well designed, has a broad range of supported platforms, and is free-software-friendly (you can write GPL software using QT).

As for the learning process for C++ toolkits, once you've learned one, the rest are very easy to learn. I started on MFC (yucky), then learned FLTK, wxWindows/wxWidgets and QT very easily, because the software paradigm is very similar.

Anyway, go for it, GUI programming is a very useful skill to have!

Qt3 support has not been discontinued. In fact 3.3.5 was just released and will be up online soon. The changelog is already up here: http://www.trolltech.com/developer/changes/changes -3.3.5.html

They're a nice company and have a nice product, but Qt4 isn't quite ready for prime-time yet, and (despite claims to the contrary) they've discontinued support for Qt3 (if your bug doesn't cause a SEGV, it doesn't get fixed).

Eh? They released Qt 3.3.5 yesterday.

http://www.trolltech.com/developer/changes/changes -3.3.5.html

Looks like they've fixed more than SEGVs.

I'm not going to argue with you on Qt4, though.

Hi there Moto,

I agree that the license change will be good for Sun. Workplace using OO derived code without the improvements going back to Sun was wrong, but SISSL did allow that.

As for dual licensing being a messy, confusing business; I'm not so sure. MySQL, Trolltech (the makers of QT) Mozilla all use dual licenses.

Trolltech puts it best:

This is how it works: In return for the advantages you realize from using a Trolltech product to create your application, we require that you do one of the following:

  Either: Contribute to the continued development of the product by purchasing commercial licenses from Trolltech. This option secures you the right to distribute your application under the license terms of your choice.
  Or: Contribute to the Open Source community by placing your application under an Open Source license (e.g. the GPL). This option secures all users the rights to obtain the application's full source code, modify it, and redistribute it.

After investigating this further, I found I was incorrect. QT can be redistributed at no charge, but if you want to write a commercial application based on QT, you have to pay Trolltech the licensing fees. Sorry for the confusion (and bad memory).

future of cross-platform development

You know, after a while, ignorance isn't even amusing anymore. gcc, nasm, qt, gtk, wxwidgets, more, then even more perl, python, ruby, ... ... ...
 

>> In other words, you must NOT pretend that Mambo
>> is yours, and you must NOT charge people for
>> Mambo iteself.

> I thought that GPL software could be sold as
> long as the source was attached.


Yes, and you're right. You can sell the software for whatever price you'd like, but you MUST keep it under GPL licence which means you have to provide the source and the people who paid you money can again sell it or give it away. You CAN'T relicence the program if you don't have the COMPLETE copyright for it.

Some companies go to great lengths to make sure they have the complete copyright for the code they release and then they have the possibility to have the software as GPL and as a commercial licence (e.g. the competitor to Mambo: eZ publish or QT). But even they can't take back code that they've once licenced under the GPL.

I really dislike people who spin things like the mambo people. It's clearly stated in the GPL FAQ.

It does a disservice to the GPL licence because people get confused. And it only discourages people who don't know the GPL well enough.

In general, the BSD license is much more appealing to commercial endeavors. The BSD TCI/IP stack should be a sufficient example.

I would guess that there is much more software with commercial roots that has been released under the GPL than the BSDL. Some examples are QT, and Mozilla.

* KDE is evil (there's a $3000 development fee for the Qt libraries - and if you use the GPL'ed Linux libraries you are also FORCED to release your application code (it's not LGPL)).
* Gnome is not evil (there's no development fee, it's LGPL and is freely available on Linux and Windows).

So they pair a BSD-licenced free-to-do-anything-with os up with KDE. Brilliant move (sigh).

When will people realise that KDE has singlehandedly done the most damage against a chance of Linux (and now apparently BSD) taking off on the desktop and becoming popular? Even the great Satan (Microsoft) doesn't charge a development fee to use the Win32 API - but somehow Trolltech can get away with it, pretending to be community friendly by forcing the GPL on developers - and KDE is still touted by the free software zealots.

I do not understand this completely illogical behaviour, worshiping a company that is effectively holding the KDE development community to ransom and choking commercial development.

I would suggest finding some windows porters that can use a cross-platform toolkit of some sort e..g Trolltech's QT or WXWidgets. Even better if you can do it yourself, although it would need a C++ background which might be difficult if you are used to objective C.

I think it also depends on what you are porting. The above might be better for non-game programs. QT only if you can absorb the cost of getting yourself or other devs the licence for the toolkit, or wxwidgets if you can handle the fact that people consider it less mature. Both toolkits are fairly good at mac, windows and linux so would prob. need minor platform specific adaptations depending on what you need.

Just to be complete some people like GTK as a toolkit but the windows and mac support (IMHO) is pretty god awful.

These should help getting a cross-platform app, and if you transfer your original app to the platform of choice you can maintain one codebase. Just to note that you might lose some of the nice Cocoa goodness in that case, but the programs should 'fit' into the OS.

The zodiac had some clever custom hardware (video and audio) which meant games writers had to learn a new non-Palm API, but it did give the devices a real performance boost *if* the developer used them, and were able to spring for the licenses too.

People have been saying how wonderful Sony are, and how well the PSP will be supported. Well, Sony's versions of the Palm, their Clies, also had custom hardware did that with their Clie's, used non-standard APIs but not consistently between devices. And then to cap it all, Sony shafted developers and customers by withdrawing their support websites minutes after announcing the end of sales of Clies outside Japan. Nope, I won't be buying another Sony product.

On the subject of PDAs, I'd like to say Sharp and the Zaurus is better supported by Sharp. Sadly, it's the enthusiasts who make the Zaurus what it is today (new kernels, better applications, etc), seemingly with no relatively little cooperation from Sharp at all; there's people at trolltech who do quite a lot to help out.

..nearly has a seizure when he discovers that the commercial development licence for KDE is $3300 for one platform. (You're much better off using Gnome based Linux distros and doing development via cross-platform APIs like wxWidgets).

Because, you see, the development cost is $0 for using the Windows API (link to the Windows SDK download) and $0 for Visual C++ (link to the command-line compiler).

And for the cost of one KDE development licence you could buy 22 OEM copies of Windows XP Pro at $149., or 35 copies of Visual C++ .NET 2003 at $95 if you wanted an IDE to develop in (although personally I'd go with Eclipse and MingW32).

Who's expensive now?

Nope, Qt is available gratis under the GPL for Windows, too.
If e-tax isn't GPL-compatible, then it should be.

This is piss funny. Whoever wrote the answer to that FAQ must have gone on to a long career in politics.

You didn't read the license correctly.

You MAY NOT SWAP license in and out.

You buy an individual license PER DEVELOPPER.

"It is a per-developer license.
The license is 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. "

http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/licensing.htm l

Not a bunch floating licenses for the entire company.

It's not like you are getting:
5 windows floating license
5 linux floating license
5 mac floating license
1 cross platform floating license

"My gut reaction is this would be suicide if they did that, so I find it very unlikely they did."

That's what they do and that's why I'm complaining.

They are saying that floating licenses
do not make sense for a library.

So, unless your organization builds software on a single platform, then you need 6600$ multiplatform license.

There also used to be some bizarre language in the license FAQ stating that you were not allowed to use the GPL Qt to develop a commercial app, and then buy commercial licenses once you were ready to distribute commercially. Basically, in their eyes, any code developed with GPL Qt is forever tainted and can't be used any way besides GPL.
Here's the link that says basically that.

Their motivation is pretty obvious: most startups fail, so they want to get cash from any company using Qt right away before they go belly-up. But that's more restrictive and viral than even the GPL, isn't it? With the regular GPL, nothing is stopping me from developing my prototype using GPL code, and then replacing the GPL bits with something non-GPL at the last minute before distribution.

I guess the difference is that they're the ones selling you the commercial license in the end, so they can make the terms of the commercial license whatever they want. I.e. they can say that you're in viloation of that license if you initially developed your code under GPL Qt.

The Qt/Windows Open Source Edition Page
http://www.trolltech.com/download/qt/windows.html

For the click-alergic people:
Please note that the Open Source Edition of Qt will support the MinGW compiler. Visual Studio support and integration is provided with the commercial Editions of Qt.

They also provide a package that will install the binaries, and tries to install the right version of MinGW. A Torrent is:
http://www.trolltech.com/torrents/qt-win-opensourc e-desktop-4.0.0.mingw.exe.torrent

The Qt/Windows Open Source Edition Page
http://www.trolltech.com/download/qt/windows.html

For the click-alergic people:
Please note that the Open Source Edition of Qt will support the MinGW compiler. Visual Studio support and integration is provided with the commercial Editions of Qt.

They also provide a package that will install the binaries, and tries to install the right version of MinGW. A Torrent is:
http://www.trolltech.com/torrents/qt-win-opensourc e-desktop-4.0.0.mingw.exe.torrent

http://www.trolltech.com/download/opensource.html

"Add a notice to your program that it is GPL licensed when it runs"

The QPL seems to be gone. THis is new. So what if I use QT but want to release my own code as BSD?

I beg to differ. We see the situation as one of win-win. The dual licensing model does generates income for Trolltech through commercial the sale of commercial licenses. It also enables our customers commercial level support and a commercially maintained product. It also enables us to release a top notch product to the Open Source community. We are quite proud of that. We make Free Software. We don't offer free lunch.