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Qt Going GPL
summer was the first to note that it looks like Qt 2.2 will be released
under the GPL. This removes the licensing problem that is central to the age old (and very boring) KDE/GNOME flamewar. There's still nothing official appearing on Troll Tech's site, but this looks reasonable.
Why does *every* OSS need to be GPL? I thought OSS was about *freedom*, freedom of choice.
Stop confusing the Open Source movement with the Free Software movement, there is a difference.
My other
Not by halves. Free as is Free for everyone.
The "Free but for a price you can have non Free" isn't quite on the money, don't you think. If it were 100% GPL and nothing else, that'd be another matter.
This is the best tech news I have heard all year.
Like every other developer in my acquaintance, I believe QT stands head and shoulders above the competition in terms of its technical merit. It is one of a very few libraries that is beautifully designed, combining elegance, efficiency and full support for reusable components.
I believe even those who are strongly committed to the principles of Free Software (as defined by FSF) have long been enamoured with QT's high quality - but until now we/they have been prepared to forgo its benefits for the sake of Free Software ethics. At last, the release of QT under the GPL will relieve many a frustration for those of us who believe in the ethics of Free Software, but also want the highest quality tools available. This is truly excellent news!
Although I wish Gnome all the best (two high quality desktop environments can harm nobody), I strongly believe that QT and KDE (esp KParts) offer a much more technicaly sound platform for developers to build the fast and robust desktop systems of the future.
With KDE2 we'll have a visually appealing and functionally useful desktop environment. We'll have a web browser that has much better potential than Mozilla. But best of all, for developers, we've now got an advanced (but easy to learn and use) component architecture, a high quality free GUI toolkit, visual GUI development tools, language bindings for Python - and now we've got a community of talented AND committed people who can use all of this without reservations or uncertainties. For mine, this is almost too good to be true. The best technology is now free to win, and I sincerely hope it does.
Great work Trolls.
---- Ends are ape-chosen; only the means are man's.
Let's say instead then that it's going 'Free Software', which is not the same as 'Open Source', which has unfortunately obfuscated the free software movement.
Shawn Asmussen
It uses viral effect to protect our software (Yes, our, not your or mine), by being viral. You can modify/extend/embrace GPL'd code, but the result will always be GPL'd. So you can't hide GPL'd code inside propierty code. (Unfortunatly, this hasn't been court tested yeat.)
What I ment to say, is that GPL's viral effect is a good thing, and we have just seen another victory of it. QT is brilliant piece of code, a fact that has been overseen while we have been fighting over the licences.
signatures pending - ansa@kos.to - (dont mail there)
--Karl
I don't know a lot of this stuff, but the "easy" port would be to Cygwin + Xlib, and using one of the existing win32 X servers. I doubt this would compete with Troll Techs own native Win32 port.
If you want to make a native win32 port of Qt Free Edition, Cygwin would probably not be of help.
Have you ever tried to use C++ for object-oriented development? It's a piece of crap. It takes more time to work around C++'s idiosyncrasies than it does to do the same stuff in C. Also, GNOME _is_ object-oriented. Yes, you _can_ do OO stuff in C. In fact, writing a library in C++ is terribly stupid, because there is no binary compatibility specifications. Having the library in C and a C++ wrapper is a much, much better solution. If you want a better language than C, go with Objective C. C++ definitely sucks as far as OO goes.
Engineering and the Ultimate
Now that Qt is GPL'd Sun can do what I said they should in my previous post and switch to KDE.
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
I guess we might be up to the next Debian release before a "completely un-QPL-dependent" KDE is released - anybody know more about timescales?
Yeah, the end of this month. KDE2 is based on Qt 2.2, which is officially released under the GPL now. KDE2 was written with the beta versions, so it's ready to go.
My other
The QPL has always been 'opensource', the problem has been that it wasnt GPL compatible, rendering KDE undistributable together with Qt. Changing it to the GPL changes very little for Troll Tech, it just makes KDE entirely OK from a licensing point of view (just the two points of disclosing internal source code to Troll Tech and distributing changes to Qt as patches).
Most of gnome (as in almost all libraries) is under LGPL.
You wont likely see any flamewar between GPL and LGPL 'supporters', because there is no real rift there, they're good for different things.
Of course, GNOME with its LGPL infrastructure will be more palatable for proprietary developers, but then it always has been.
--
"HORSE."
"HORSE."
-Flaming Carrot
I don't know about ADA, but for C there are bindings, still a bit older. Porting should be easy and will probably done by interested people
If they already want to use KDE (not to mention Linux) as the foundation for their applications, how likely are they to want/care about commercial support of one library? The model only works for developers using only Qt, who could concievably have an interest in commercial support.
yes, why don't you retire your obsolete enlghitenment code base. It is written in that obsolete language of C.
jackass
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
It is nice to see that TrollTech finally comes around and GPL's Qt. Thumbs up to TrollTech for this move.
I think this may be the best thing to have happened to Linux desktop development. Now the choice between the two best desktop environemts will be solely on quality, not ideology.
Who knows what might have happened if this decision was made just a month earlier (wrt GNOME Foundation)
Thank you, Troll Tech! You have just done what nobody could have done to push Linux further on the road to desktop domination.
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Sorry, contentfree post ahead. Please disregard. (most sensible ppl read at +2, so this shouldn't bother too many)
I just have to add my wohoo!! to the crowd. this rocks! [/me dances a happy little dance around his box]. Qt is a very nice toolkit, and *finally* all the licensing gripes are gone! It seems to me most of the OSS community spends far to much time griping over licenses instead of coding. Imagine if all the time and energy spent depating licenses had been put to good use coding.
Again: Wohoo!! Qt rocks! Trolltech rocks! KDE Rocks! (Gnome rocks too - just slightly less, today.)
-henrik
It was possible for debian to include the kde libs
and other stuff since kde 1.0 beta 3.
for the libraries, there was never ever any issue.
so, why didnt debian include kde ?
and why should they do now ?
i have no reason to think, they ever will.
--
Why do you always a) mention it and b) report on it.
What do you mean catch up? KDE is still 12 months ahead of Gnome on the development front, and has a much bigger user base. You're basing your statements on marketing rhetoric from the Gnome spin-meisters instead of looking at the facts.
Macka
.. then it is fantastic news.
At last these two great products, GNOME and KDE can compete on their merits alone. That's surely in everyone's interest.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
IMNSHO, Qt should either be LGPL, or it should be for-profit. What the Qt team is doing with their licensing fiasco serves only to confuse developers and obfuscate the situation. "Hmm, which version of Qt should I link with today". With GNOME, you always know where you stand. With Qt, it's a mystery.
I don't mind commercial software, or paying for a license to use libraries. And Qt is definitely a decent package. But Trolltech needs to decide one or the other how they want their libraries used--for profit totally, or always under a free license (i.e., never charging for it).
Besides which, more relevant to this issue, the license has never prevented GNOME and KDE from going head to head, based on performance, appearance, and ease of development and use.
Matthew Vanecek For 93 million miles, there is nothing between the sun and my shadow except me. I'm always getting i
IMO, big companies will still prefer GTK+, however, because they wouldn't like depending on Trolltech for strategic issues like a GUI toolkit.
Ciao
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FB
Good attitude, Commander. Troll Tech should be praised and thanked for bending backwards and forwards for the community like this. We really do not need your snide remarks here. Will GPL'ed Qt improve KDE acceptance by the community? I certainly hope so. I've always been a KDE fan and user regardless. Now I hope that KDE can compete with GNOME on purely technical grounds and not depend on who can shout louder in the PR wars.
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
You're wrong. The gripe in the free software community has been that KDE had a serious license problem since the QPL wasnt compatible with the GPL, which KDE is licensed under, effectively preventing KDE to be distributed together with Qt.
That Qt cant be used in a proprietary fashion without paying TrollTech is another matter entirely and not in any way a problem or anything to gripe about. Of course, it likely means that KDE wont be accepted by proprietary software makers as a standard, but there is no problem from a free software point of view.
I don't care about this particular caveat. You give Bill cash for Windows and whine about paying the trolls? You support Windows by porting programs to windows and whine about things being nonfree? Come on.
Well, I guess we're going to be forced to rate each one on it's merits now. What a strange concept! It feels... kinky :)
which mean you can release your software under any free software license you want.
If you want to make your software unfree, you won't get Qt for free either. Basically, you choose the rules (free or non-free), and they will apply to both your software and Qt. What you cannot choose, is to play by different rules for Qt and your own software. Somehow, this fair to me.
to many corporate developers. There is of cource the anti-competitive
advantage of GPL to corporate developers: it can't find itself in a
commercial offering by a rival.
I have to say the whole QPL vs. GPL spat has me disillusioned with
the GPL: the GPL doesn't just ensure that it can only find itself in
free software (no-one disputed that the QPL license guarantees this),
it also ensures that it can only find itself in software that conforms
exactly to RMS's conception of free software. This reeks of
ideological intolerance, though I suppose one shouldn't expect
anything else of RMS.
The obvious and immediate repercussions of this is that Debian will be able to include an option for KDE now that the liscensing issues with QT being non-free are solved.
Excellent.
Rami
--
rJames.org - illustration
Story is now on www.trolltech.com
Because the flamewar has finally died down to epsilon (BSD vs. Linux; both are Free) levels.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
Like so many others have commented, if you use QT22 in your program you can either open up or pay. Not very evangelistic, just plain old financial interests.
Otherwise the whole lot will have to be GPLed, or released under a GPL compatible license.
True, but as it has been stated above, the price of the pro edition of qt is insignificant if you are serious on making a closed-source app with the intention of making money.
If you think about it, with this arrangement everybody wins: Trolltech, KDE, independent developers (both closed and open), and especially users...
No sig for the moment.
/*
Its a risky, but perhaps rewarding move for Troll. On the bad side (from their view) the GPL base would permit a better, seperately
maintained
variant with GPL code they cannot add to their commercial option - it wouldn't be all their code at that point.
*/
Absolutely true. They'll run into the same problem the Harmony project ran into: how do you incorporate changes without being sued? They'll have to have someone write e spec for the coders.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
As long as they add a clause to the GPL, it'll be fine.
If you believe the folks at Debian, that is.
Stating on Slashdot that I like cheese since 1997.
So what Trolls are going to do with their Qt Professional Edition, including Windows version? It seems that it will become completely separate product now, as there will be no easy way to keep it in sync with GPL'd Free Edition. Even APIs may become different.
Just a thought...
At least I hope so. On the one hand, I'm thrilled to see this news because I really want to see Qt and KDE rise or fall on their technical merits. (Is that going to happen? Not likely, IMHO. Troll Tech has already moved to a certified free license, and it's still one of the arch-villains of the English-speaking free software world. The new GPL vs. LGPL issue is shaping up to be the next round of FUD.)
On the other hand, Troll Tech deserves to make money. They have a superb toolkit, and equally superb developer tools, documentation and tutorials. I'd hate to see them forced into unprofitability to keep pace with the dubious business plans of their media-darling competitors.
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I think any post containing the words moderate, moderator or moderation should be marked as offtopic automatically. Now karma-whoring is something of the past since you can't get your karma above 50 anyway (I'm at 113 now, down from 114). Personally, I think that's a pitty since it removes a reward for posting insightfull or interesting posts.
In any case, when I said "and now for some flamebait", I fully realized that with the licensing issues out of the way, the next topic for the flame wars will be technical differences between gnome and KDE. One notable difference is the use of C in Gnome and the use of C++ in KDE. Hence my remark.
BTW. If you don't agree, feel free to risk your karma by adding to the discussion (which is why we have a moderation system in the first place). Also I'm in favor of a separate, thus on topic thread about moderation and how it can be improved. Particularly the way new threads are initiated is very much open to discussion IMHO.
Since I feel that this reply is a bit off topic (not entirely) I have toggled the no score checkbox which you forgot to do.
Jilles
It wasn't meant as an attack on Red Hat, I believe attracting unfree software is good for Linux. For example, it means I can play some cool games under Linux, which would probably not be released under a free software license.
Using the LGPL rather than the GPL for key libraries, is one way to attract unfree software.
Very interesting article. If they've changed their opinion on what the GPL says do they agree with Debians analysis on the distributability of KDE together with QPL Qt now?
Actually, the original NT kernel was written in Pascal
MacOS was at one time written in Pascal also. I was programming in C then, and all the interfaces and examples in the Inside Macintosh references were for Pascal. If the 8,000 redundant API functions didn't get you... the Pascal calling conventions would. Drove me nuts.
--
The QT framework was the only thing making KDE not qualify for being GPL'd, since it was proprietary software.
QT has several advantages over the GTK - it is written in object-oriented C++, and the libraries are cross-platform between UNIX and Windows. IMHO, if you want to build a cross-platform GUI in C++, QT is the best way to go. Supposedly it offers better Windows support than MFC, although I haven't confirmed this myself. However, it was becoming unpopular with Linux developers because it wasn't GPL'd, and having all the industry giants unite behind GNOME looked like the kiss of death for KDE and QT development on Linux.
My hat is off to TrollTech. Now I can feel comfortable using QT, knowing it will be around for years to come because of their wise decision to GPL the code.
No, Thursday's out. How about never - is never good for you?
The user base doesn't matter for crap. It matters what the industry thinks. Looks like they're embracing GNOME and not KDE. Therefore, the user base will grow. The same thing is happening in the *nix vs MS debackle, companies are starting to realize which the better product is, embracing it, therefore the user base increases.
IMHO KDE and GNOME are tools to interface more cleanly with your computer. Both are excellent products. In the 'one man's trash is another's treasure' view, different people want different things. This may not be a very business oriented statement, but if the companies are going for the OSS philosophy, they should allow the other to co-exist without arguement so that there will always be a choice. Neither KDE nor GNOME should be obliterated, therefore taking away the choice, therefore going against the OSS philsophy, and in kind shedding bad light on OSS. When people read that the OSS philosophy is about choice, then see flamewars like these pop up, it can not look good in the public eye.
If you think you know what the hell is going on you're probably full of shit. -- Robert Anton Wilson
If you think you know what the hell is going on you're probably full of shit. -- Robert Anton Wilson
jdube is who
It's inspiring that the GPL is becoming the standard license for companies who release free software. This is great news because it removes a lot of the complications for users and developers.
Thanks Troll Tech! I look forward to finally using KDE!
For those wishing to develop cross-platform applications, wxWindows and wxPython have been around for a long time. Much better than trying to use GTK on Windows (wxWindows uses GTK on Linux but the MS common controls on Windows).
The "L" in LGPL no longer stands for "Library", but instead for "Lesser".
If you want to wrote a closed source app you still have to pay Troll Tech!
And this is as it should be: if you want to restrict the liberty of others, you have your own freedom restricted. Turn about is fair play.
But I just don't want everyone who is writting for linux to be forced to pay these guys money.
People writing freed code will not be forced to pay anyone; only those who restrict the freedom of users will need to pay, in turn. This seems appropriate, no?
Randall.
Property law should use #'EQ, not #'EQUAL.
Great idea, but i need a window manager and I figured enlightenment is as good as any other. In any case I wouldn't consider linux or any unix for doing desktop work anyway. I love linux as a server OS but have no use for it as a desktop OS.
However, the release frequency seems to confirm you are right about enlightenment being obsolete.
Jilles
Yes, but only i386, as far as I can tell. I tried to compile kde2 on am alpha and failed because of the idl compiler segfault problem, which is a closed bug, but it looks like its only closed on i386. Therefore I would love to see kde2 in Debian.
As long as he doesn't distribute any modifications he makes to have it run on Windows, he isn't violating the GPL. And even then, he could release patches, as long as he doesn't distribute them with the original code. There's no bloody question about it. He could link against his ass if he wanted, as long as he didn't share it with others.
You pay nothing to write proprietary code with LGPL'd stuff. So how is LGPL less fair? Both are "fair", it's just a question of how free they want to make it. GNOME charges no one, while Qt charges non-open-source developers. It's a choice. It remains to be seen if this choice has an impact on their success.
A license cannot be totalitarianist; you can either follow it, or not. A license cannot maliciously hurt you, nor can it make a decision to remove your rights.
People are totalitarianist. People can make concious decisions to hurt you. However, no one's standing with a knife at your throat insisting that you license your software under the GPL.
Windows 2000: Designed for the Internet. The Internet: Designed for UNIX.
Not true. From the Free Qt Foundation announcement:
GNOME is indeed very object oriented. What do you think the 'O' stands for in GNOME? I get very tired of people claiming that you cannot do OOP in C. It is just completely false.
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Celebrate the finer things in life
What is obsolete is the fact that it is written in C and not in C++. More specific, it is not object oriented (as are most desktop applications these days) and probably includes some cumbersome mechanisms to make it appear object oriented to the outside world. In my opinion this has to lead to maintenance problems. In the open source world this means that perfectly good developers are spending time on maintaining a project that they could also have spent on other projects.
Now about the linux kernel. If it had been developed in C++ from the beginning, it would probably have moved past the point the current linux kernel is at. Rearchitecting it now is probably not feasible. I wouldn't be surprised, though, if a C++ kernel took over in the future.
Jilles
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I've always been a fan of the quality and stability behind KDE and the license has never been an issue for me.
But I understand why it is one for others and TrollTech changed the license too late.
Sun and HP backing Gnome changes the whole balance and it is now HIGHLY probable that GNOME will be the _corporate_ standard (which will of course ripple thru home usage).
The only thing that could counter this would be for IBM or another big player to "adopt" KDE has their official GUI. I doubt it however: IBM will probably switch to GNOME across their Unix product line very soon...
That is the most idiotic thing I've heard in a while. Trolltech's success deals a very very large amount on KDE's. Whos going to be writing programs with QT if KDE goes under? Trolltech knows that if KDE is on most linux desktops then commercial companies wanting to write closed source programs will probably want to choose KDE for more users, and hence will have to pay for the commercial license. Whos going to buy a commercial license to develop with QT if GNOME is more popular?
FiGZ.COM - A waste of perfectly good web space
Because if it were LGPL'd, I could take the QT lib, port it over to windows and write proprietary software (as long as I relases my QT enhancements)
This ensures TrollTech that companies will come to them for the Windows QT library for proprietary products.
--Doug
I think shareware culture is something we can live without in linux-community.
Don't toss shareware aside so casually, especially in reference to games. First Person Shooters pretty much owe their current popularity to the shareware Wolfenstein, and the next wave (whatever it is) could come from anywhere.
-jpowers
-jpowers
The license flamewars have fizzled out, but new battle lines have already been drawn.
C versus C++ isn't much of a war, people. C is a clean procedural language, C++ is a dirty OO language.
The only thing going for C++, when you think about it, is easy compatibility with C. That's all that stopped it losing to a cleaner OO language like Eiffel.
Software patents delenda est.
This is just not true. The NT kernel uses the Pascal calling convention because it's marginally more efficient spacewise, but the operating system itself has always been written in C and C++.
The difference between theory and practice is that, in theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
If you hadn't realized this, but Linux distros are full of redundant software. That's one of the main reasons I switched to Slackware. In RedHat 6.2, there are 3 versions of awk. Most distros come with two versions of gcc and their addandant language components (OBJC, Java, etc.) Mandrake comes with 3 Java compilers. (GCC-Java, Guavac, and Jikes.) Even Slackware has 3 versions of libc. Then there is all the redundancy that KDE and GNOME bring. Face it, if you were scared of a lot of code living on your computer, you wouldn't use Linux.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Uh, I don't really think $2500 is going to be a deciding factor in software development. I mean most projects spend 10x that on pizza over the life of the project! If Qt saves just 5% development time for a dozen programmers in a medium project, $2500 will mean nothing.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I'm not clear about the QPL yet. Does this mean that open-source and freeware people can port their stuff to windows without hassle? That would be nifty.
As far as companies not wanting to pay, I'm sure that will not be too much of a consideration considering that a few thousands bucks isn't very much money for a commerical software project.
The only people I see being put in the dark are the ms windows shareware developers (considering there isn't much shareware in the *nix world.)
All-in-all I'm with cmdrtaco in that its about time. It would have been better for KDE and QT if they had done this earlier.
Network. What's your point? I fail to see your argument.
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Celebrate the finer things in life
There is none. KDE will probably start carrying KDE now.
Isn't that hipocracy? I mean propriatory software developers on Windows are no worse then their Linux counterparts. If Linux developers get it free, then so should Windows developers!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
Comon, all you whiners, the license war is over! Think about the great possibilities now that Qt is completely free. First and foremost - the huge technical win: Now Qt/KDE and any other GPL application can share code and that is basically the the main goal of GPL. Example: Gnome has a new emerging i18n library codenamed Pango, which has features not present in Qt, such as complete bidirectional languages support. Now Pango can easily used with KDE and finally free the speakers of Arabic, Urdu, Farsi, Pashto, Uighur, Hebrew, Yiddish, Aramaic and a lot of other languages from Windows and Mac OS's which until now were the only ones to support them properly. And it's just one example (it happens to be quite relevant to me, as i need Hebrew and Arabic browser and office apps).
Linux ruling the desktop? Yes, now it seems closer than ever.
Thank you, TrollTech.
If you are interested in cross platform development, you might want to check wxWindows at wxwindows.org.
It is a nice cross platform C++ framework that uses GTK+ under Linux, and the native API calls under win32. It also works under MacOS (I think) and has a very active developer community.
> Actually, IIRC BeOS's kernel itself isn't written in C++ either.
That is correct. Only the GUI uses C++.
Troll Tech has done everything necessary to accomodate the requests of the free software community. They have my sincere thanks, and should have yours, too.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
I'm very happy to hear that TT has come to their
senses. I always believed that the GPL was the
perfect solution from the beginning. It gives us
the fredom we need, but still prevents non-free apps from linking and therefore does not cut off
their revenue stream as would the LGPL. It's more
risky from a business perspective because there is
a danger of forking, but as long as TT does a good
job of maintainang qt and makes enough people happy, history has shown it is not a common problem. I hope that more companies who produce libraries consider this as a viable business model.
-- Knowledge shared is power lost. -- Aleister Crowley
The way to bring Windows desktop users over to Free Software is to create cross platform Apps which reduce the need for Windows as a base platform in order to create a migration path for users
Exactly, and thats why I started GNUSoftware.com.
We should think about cross-platform issues though. I spend a lot of time trying to compile "portable" applications, which use GTK+, on Windows - and fail because people are using Linux specific calls when they really don't need to.
Even the Qt app's I see on Freshmeat are often very Linux specific, for no good reason, and this stops me using them on Windows. (I've got a professional license).
Steve
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just because it is a backronym doesn't mean it is a bad name. As for being a network object model, I think you have the word grouping wrong. Think (Network (object model)) not ((network object) model).
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
Sure, we all know of the historic fragmentation of Unix. But since then, the few examples of major forks in Open Source / Free software are notable for being rare exceptions to the general rule.
--
I'm not aware of this code, but if you post (or email me) the modules or files it's found in I'll be sure it has the proper credits on it. Unless you post specifics though I'm guessing this is a troll.
Some factual corrections: the GNOME Foundation does not write code (and in fact is not yet legally incorporated), so it certainly should not be the subject of your sentence there. We also do not consider KDE a "bitter rival."
Oh God! You people will never give up.
Gnome is GPL'ed, not LGPL. So, come up with another reason why Qt is still bad.
(Incidentally, Stallman prefers the GPL over the LGPL. So, if Qt was LGPL'ed, the Stallmanistas would criticize Qt for that. GPL is the most politically correct license.)
Stephen Molitor steve_molitor@yahoo.com
Now with this released let KDE/GNOME compete on merit not politics. The sad fact is that KDE is at a disadvantage because of the Big corporate sponsership of Gnome. This does not mean that KDE can not get sponsered by these same companies. It just mean that KDE would have to have another project within the companies. Intel sponsers BEOS and Linux because it helps them sell hardware. If a company can see that they can make money of sponsering KDE they will.
One of the great things about the free software community is the fact that it is growing. The people that compose the "mainstream" Free Software community today aren't necessarily the same ones that composed it two years ago. They sure as hell won't be the same as the ones two years from today. I am one of the new kind. A person who converted to the movement only recently. I don't have any bad blood against Qt. Neither do many of my peers. To the people that we convince to use free software in the future, the subject of the Qt license will be nothing but a history lesson. We will decide who's product we use, and whose product we contribute time, effort, and code to nased on the findings of our own experimentation. How can you be so sure that we will choose Gnome? Is it because gnome is the "standard" now. Step outside of your bubble and look around at the people using Freee Software now. If we chose something because it was the "standard" software for any given purpose, we would still be using Windows. I, and the people who switch to free software, have very little concern for standards. Take note of this and let your sekf grow.
I thought that the QPL was fine also, but I did respect the opinions of those that thought it wasn't good for KDE. Saying *you* raised a red flag in a sea of red flags that made a Stalin appreciation parade jealous is, well, something I've said before. Saying its all well and good, and expecting the community you think you represent to agree is, well, I'm getting tired of saying it.
You didn't start it, you didn't finish it, but you did help. Thats the bottom line.
That is a very redundant post despite being written by BP himself. Much like this one. Off to work moderators!
Ok. First, let me say that the only two distributions I use are Debian and Slackware. They are just what I like. My first instinct upon hearing this news was that.. "Great.. now KDE can be a real part of Debian." Then I did a double-take.
Is this really what I want?
What this means is that all of those countless KDE apps can be a part of Debian - for which in almost every case there is a Gnome counterpart. Package listings are already huge - they will surely go at least 1.25x by the inclusion of everything KDE. I'm not trying to knock KDE or QT - but having two of everything KDE and Gnome is not what I want in my package listing. Maybe it's time to set up three archives, instead of just one main one - one for non-aligned software, Gnome software, and KDE software (I realize that there are already KDE debian servers).
Maybe I'm just crazy - but I don't really want to have to muck about in countless instances of duplicate software in my dselect that I'm never going to use. There must be a good solution to this.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
However, the biggest problem with using C++ for shared libraries under any platform is that there is NO spec for
As a result, it is not possible to guarantee that file x.so, created with g++, is linkable to y.so, created with Borland C++. It's a shame that with all the other CRAP the ANSI committee dragged into the language during standardization, they couldn't have spelled out at least how to mangle the damn names!
As a big fan of C++ myself, I'd LOVE to see the kernel, X, and the windowing toolkit be true C++ classes: this is systems programming and that's what Stroustrup created the language for.
However, I take exception (pun intended) at the claim that QT is C++: It isn't. It is another language, that you then must run through Qt's MOC preprocessor to make C++. If TrollTech had truly make Qt C++, they would have used virtual functions or functors to implement the connection to the windowing message system, not this mutant "Signals and Slots" stuff. That's what got me when I looked at KDE: I want to write in C++, not some mutant version of something that is almost C++. It's almost as bad as working with somebody who uses
There. I said it. I feel better.
me->Attire(Attire::Flamesuit);
www.eFax.com are spammers
It was mostly abandoned when QT was released under the QPL, and now it's dead for sure, since its purposes have been realized.
Thanks
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
In short, we have been convinced that the GPL does indeed protect a library from being used to develop non-free software. Non-free software, in this respect, of course, includes software developed internally in an organization.
They seem to imply that code from Qt, or any GPL-licensed program, may not be used in any in-house software projects which are not distributed to the public. This conclusion flies in the face of the FSF's own interpretation of the rights granted by the GPL and free software:
I'd be very interested in finding out if the Qt/KDE developers really intend to say that I have no right to make in-house-only modifications or use of Qt.Wil this in any affect Kylix (delphi for linux) which is based on the QT lib?
I don't think so.
The idea behind the RMS editorial you're thinking about is that the GPL is preferable when you are providing functionality not available in other libraries. The LGPL is meant for situations where you provide functionality that the non-free competition already provides.
Since there's plenty of GUI toolkits around, free or otherwise, I don't think it matters a bit. And, since Troll will sell you licenses to develop non-free software with Qt, the whole RMS anti-LGPL argument is kinda demolished in this case.
But this is all speculation, isn't it?
It is great news that KDE is finally going to loose the proprietary licensing baggage from Qt.
It benefits everyone to having these desktops competing with each other. I hope this may spur KDE to develop C bindings like the C++ bindings for GTK. I really would rather never code in C++ (personal choice...)
Anyway, this should be good for the community.
Bill
Of course, it likely means that KDE wont be accepted by proprietary software makers as a standard...
Unless those companies want commercial support. In which case this model could work quite well.
Let's hope so.
LPGL as Cinderella, or, The Quest to Share the Source
I'm going to have to disagree -- GTK support under Windoze is definitely quite good.
Check out GIMP under Win95/NT/etc/blah/blah. I'll admit it used to be a little flaky, but now it works very well.
go to www.mandrake.net there is plenty of development going on. They are doing away with alot of their base. And I bet you they are still going to use C. Furthermore Enlightenment is not a window manager like any other. It uses more system resources than many other wm's. So yes you are wrong. What do you know about development anyway? Have you ever written anything?
It has been statistically shown that helmets increase the risk of head injury.
As for the asymetry, I can't speek for the inconsiderate twits who may or may not be denying KDE use of gtkhtml code. I was speaking about the future and not the past. I don't know the situation, but if it was a case of license promotion then they had a right to ask it to stop. If they had taken the code originally from KDE, they are being asses. Changing the license to artistic just to prevent use in other GPL code is sinking to the same level. It hurts not just GNOME, but all GPL code which might want to use it. As soon as KDE is fully GPL complient (GPL/LGPL/BSD) licensed developer permision won't be a problem so long as people don't promote a license (GPL->LGPL->BSD). Demotion of licenses is aways allowed.
Admittedly I am biased. I have been told in the past by one KDE developers "how dare I construct something to compete without consulting." That kind of attitude from someone who spouted "it is only about the code" and thus licensing issues should be ignore, gives me some reason to feel there are people in the KDE camp without a clue, in my less than humble opinion. But then KDE isn't immune to this. I am sure there are GNOME coders doing a tit to pay back for some preceived tat. They may well be the boneheads who flame Gtk-- from within the GNOME project just because they don't understand that some people might want to use C++. Just because both sides are engaging in license wars doesn't make either of them look mature. In virtually every case a license gets denided it results in bitterness and a denial the other way often to people who weren't involved in the first dispute. Maybe this will break the cycle. Most KDE developers and even TrollTech employees have not been bad, but KDE really should have cleaned their house up, come with their tail between there legs, gotten permision from all the people whose GPL code they borrowed and gotten themselves included in debian.
If you do know of some code on which copyright was removed (and the source wasn't licensed in such a way as to allow that), I suggest you back the assertion up with references and campaign to get it fixed. Removal of copyright is not legal and thus unacceptable no mater which camp did it. Any KDE code which is in the Gtk-- is properly copyrighted even after the code was replaced. I won't speek for GNOME as a whole.
--Karl
At last KDE and Gnome can go completely head-to-head because they are now both totally grounded in GPL licensing. So what does the future now hold?
Corporate take-up? Don't knock it - this is a potentially huge environment. Companies like to know where they stand, and simplified licensing is a huge bonus. Gnome already as a level of corporate acceptance as embodied by the formation of the Gnome Foundation to further the GNOME project. KDE may soon see itself in a similar position.
Interoperability? Both KDE and Gnome are continuing to push their infrastructures forward and both desktop environments are likely to start eclipsing the competition sooner or later (already have eclipsed the competition in some areas). It's likely that Gnome programs will always talk most efficiently to other Gnome programs, and similarly for KDE to KDE, it would be nice to see the arrival of some bridge mechanism to allow the two camps to exchange and inter-embed each others applications across the divide.
Flamewars? Almost certainly :-) At least now there won't be any (meaningful) wars over licensing ...
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
A) Microsoft indeed charges you to develop for Windows applications. Once upon a time you could get the SDK for free, but not anymore. And yes, Qt costs more than VC++, but Qt+Cygnus beats the hell out of MS for quality.
:-) ). The best libraries are LGPL, BSD or freer. Although copyleft may have seemed like a good idea at the time, it absolutely screws over library users.
B) You do make a good point however. Microsoft (and Sun, Borland, RogueWave, etc) doesn't care how I license my code. GPL libraries do. Qt under the QPL/GPL does as well. It's my only beef with Trolltech, but since I am already writing OSS, it isn't an urgent issue with me (so sue me for apathy
C) On the other hand, if you need no restrictions on your own code, purchase Qt just like you purchased your Windows libraries. It's strange bitching about how free libraries don't give you as many rights as purchased ones do. So just go purchase it!
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
I can imagine the level of comments going on at TrollTech if the Troll in the name holds true to the Slashdot definition: 5u53 r0ck5!!! N0 1t d035n't! 51AcK|/|/4R3 r0k5! 5kR00 y0u, 1AM3R! (and so on, and so on, and so on.)
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
It shouldn't be that hard at all. About 95% of Qt applies to either system. You only have to support the remaining 5%.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Look again!
There are two new announcements; Qt 2.2 released and Qt/Unix 2.2 being released under the GPL.
:wq!
No. ``Network Object Model'' means that the object model is network transparent.
> Um, doesn't this just eliminiate all philosophical reasons for Gnome?
.... ;-)
Yeap.
Now, of course the debate over techinical reasons
as we're waiting for releases. I think KDE2 stable is at least two-three weeks delayed. According to their release-plan it should be out...yesterday? yes: _yesterday_ :-(
It's all optional, but yes, there's a lot of redundant software.
What the heck is OBJC? I'm fairly familar with GCC (a lurker on gcc@gcc.gnu.org) and I've never heard of it. In fact, no one ships two versions of GCJ (GCC-Java), as there has only been one released version. Most distros only keep around the C part of GCC 2.7.2, as that's the only useful part.
Now the debate about Gnome and KDE can finally focus on the stuff that really matters and has kept both from being a serious alternative to commercial desktop environments like windows and mac os: consistency, usability and interoperability.
I'd say KDE has a headstart here, but not a big one.
Now for some flamebait:
Now that the license wars are over maybe it is time to retire Gnome's obsolete C code base. In my view only huge amounts of redundant efforts from open source developers will keep it working and up to date. I'd rather see these efforts directed at something usefull.
Disclaimer: being unhappy with both Gnome and KDE I am now using enlightenment.
Jilles
Could this be the end of the eternal (& damnable) kde vs gnome flamewar? Unlikely I think, though this could be a major step towards peace. At least it should reduce the amount of vitriol directed at TrollTech who are, by most accounts, nice guys. They tried what seemed to be a sensible open-source business model - make the code free for free software developers but charge people who used their toolkit for commerical (non-free) software. This seemed like a good idea to me and I still can't understand why this made them hate-figures.
Both KDE and Gnome are good. They both have cool features and annoyances. It's pretty childish to claim 'gnome r00lz, kde 5ux" and I'm sure that a lot of the abuse comes from people who are not developers. I'm a user not a (Linux) developer myself and at the moment I'm using Helix Gnome but am looking forward to KDE 2. Good luck to both of them.
HH
Not!. QPL is a OSD compliant license which means its free software - which is the opposite of proprietary.
Its just that some people think its not compatible with the GPL.
Oh man, what will happen to knightbird?! I'm looking forward to your next project, man! Take care.
Vincent
You know what I like about Open Source Software? It's the little things.
Jules
Example.
Vincent
Well they got their own version of Windows but they don't call it Windows...
Jules
Well what do they call it?
Vincent
KDE.
Jules
Get out! Well what do they call a Big Whopper?
Vincent
Uh, I'm talking about SOFTWARE, man, not burgers.
Jules
Oh... rrright.
In ten years we'll be able to look back at this episode in the history of computing with the benefit of hindsight, perhaps in the way we can now look back at the history of Unix - there are still arguments, but they are a lot more subdued.
Danny.
I have written over 900 book reviews
If they would have done this two years ago they would have had ~90% of the Linux GUI market. However, they didn't, and now QT is just another player in the GUI-field. Bad business move.
The only time I've found a reason to use C for an OO program was when I was first trying out OO design. The C compiler I had was very nice and very fast on my 33MHz proccessor. The C++ compiler was VERY slow and buggy. Oh, and I didn't know C++ very well :-)
I suspect that the second of those is the primary reason for people doing it nowadays...
Or perhaps these two distinct actions should simply be taken at face value. Yeah, that's probably it.
--ian
In any case, the GNOME Foundation itself is an advisory board, to the world outside GNOME it will probably look like they do little else than release the occasional statement (or press release or propaganda if you prefer).
It's the individual companies that make up the Foundation that we should be expecting things from and it seems to me that many of the newer companies to GNOME are coming to the table with some fairly substantial quantities of code.
In many ways it's better that such contributions come in slowly rather than overwhelming/changing the character of the GNOME project in a massive code drop.
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
the biggest problem is not the price IMO.. imagine the following scenerio: we have qt 2.2 GPL-d.. KDE developers (or anybody else) finds bugs is QT, fixes them and KDE uses this fixed (and obviously GPL-d version) of QT. After this nobody can ever write a proprietary application for KDE
metamoderate!
Interesting choice. Going for the full GPL pleases the extremists, but it also has the side effect of allowing Troll Tech to protect their revenue stream. If they'd made it LGPL, then people could develop and sell proprietarty (closed source) apps using Qt. Being GPL prevents that, thus pleasing both sides. Those wanting to go that route can still purchase a Qt Professional Edition license from Troll Tech (something you had to do under the QPL anyway).
"The invisible and the non-existent look very much alike." -- Delos B. McKown
Head on over to their website, and you can see on the headlines:
2000 Sep 04 Qt Free Edition goes GPL
Blah blah blah, etc.
> They sold a proprietrary version of gcc to
/. posters claim this over and over, despite having no supporting evidence, and despite the FSF having signed hundreds of counter contracts with GCC contributers stating that they will not allow proprietary version of GCC.
> Motorola (which they could only do because they
> require copyright to be signed over to them).
At least anonymous
I've been saying (seriously) they should do that here on Slashdot for months. Got ridiculed in the process. Glad to see them listening. This really does make sense, for everyone.
Once again, KDE has a chance. I was starting to think about dumping it for Gnome - that will no longer be necessary. (Although I like what I see of Gnome, so I'll use it too!)
Why does *every* OSS need to be GPL? I thought OSS was about *freedom*, freedom of choice. But it seems that GPL doesn't allow other OSS-licenses and tries to "strangle" all of it's opponents...
... that's not freedom... that's totalitarianism...
just my 2 cents...
Bjarne
GPL'd libraries can ONLY be used by GPL'd applications. At first I was thunderstruck that I can hundreds of other developers would no longer be able to use Qt for the BSD, MIT, Artistic or other Free Software projects. Releasing Qt under a pure GPL license would guarantee that many of us long-time Qt supporters would instantly switch to GTK.
But reading the announcement closer, there towards the end, I see that it will be dual licensed under the QPL and GPL. Whew! Thank goodness those of us who use unrestricted licenses can still use Qt.
This appears to be a dual-license (I have sent mail to Erik to verify). In this case, using the GPL makes all the sense in the world, since now everyone who uses *any* Free Source license can use Qt.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Damn, the whiner got what he wanted. I'm moderated down.
:)"
"the second half of this comment is grossly uninformed and/or just flamebait and deserved to be moderated down"
Well enlighten me (no pun intended). Really what good is it to claim somebody is uniformed and than call to the moderators to back your unmotivated opinion up?
"Of course, I realize I'm going to be modded down for this flamebait
Don't bother wasting valuable moderation points on this guy. Use it to moderate people up rather than down.
Jilles
... because it now means that the vastly unproductive whining about the Qt license that /.ers seem to love can now finally be declared a thing of the past. KDE can now stand (or fall) on its merits rather than on the basis of an ideology devised by a man who doesn't even have to work for a living.
I've been using KDE for a while at home now, and it's slick, especially compared to the lumbering dinosaur that is GNOME. For an operating system with a set of tools designed to be small and modular, it's amazing that most of the applications written for it are so slow and bloated, with "value added" features taking precedence over quality and performance. With people like this on the side of Linux, Microsoft's continued desktop dominance seems to be secured.
Let's hope we see more apps like KDE, where a decent product counts for more than ideological squabbles.
There's nothing stopping developers from forking the FreeQT codebase to create a new Windows based QT.
How does the GPL effect this change? Under the QPL one had every right to port it as well.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
What you are saying, then, is that TrollTech doesn't have the right to make money with their toolkit, in which they have placed considerable time and effort. Why, then, should companies who make proprietary apps have the right to make money with those?
Just a thought.
GPL: Free as in will
Oh my god, Christian Schaller (also known as UrAnus on /.) is out of a job too! Poor guy. Linux Power will have to close down.
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
I think they may have missed the bus on this one. If they had released Qt under GPL earlier, the whole KDE/gnome idiotic split could have been avoided.
Why is it companies never open source stuff when things are going their way? (eg Netscape waited til Microsoft had them by the balls).
not_cub
q='echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"';s=\';b=\\;echo "q=$s$q$s;s=$b$s;b=$b$b;$q"
> But this is all speculation, isn't it?
Yes, but you are right. The stated reasons for prefering GPL over LGPL doesn't really apply in this case. However, the idea of FSF advocating Qt over Gtk+ is fun.
Both Mandrake 7.1 and Slackware 7.1 come with both egcs 1.1.2 and gcc-2.95.2. They also come with all the additional components for each compiler (egcs-java and gcc-java, etc).
BTW> OBJC=objective C.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
But so is cost. I have worked at both large and small companies. $1500/developer is a lot of money, and you don't get a whole lot for it with Qt compared, say, to an MSDN subscription.
Huh? Where did you get that from? The core gnome libraries (and gnome-core) are all LGPL, for maximum flexibility in licensing when you build something on top of GNOME.
GNU/Linux. The Freshmaker.
Today is a great day for free software! Go KDE! Go TROLLTech! I wouldn't have dreamt of this! It also shows what constant, obstinate, bold complaining can achieve. (no, the excitement won't stop soon...)
and now for something completely different
My opinions (which don't represent that of GNOME) are mixed. Of course, neither project has been particularly good at sharing. Some GNOME people did not grant license to use code the KDE people have wanted (with some reason as Qt wasn't free and the KDE people at that time just assumed they could), and later some KDE people have licensed things with artistic license to prevent use in GNOME. It is childish tit for tat. I don't feel that KDE has a very good track record of respecting licensing issues. As far as licensing they have shown to be quite clueless. Closing your eyes and assuming it will go away like they did was short sighted. The fact that Qt actually did release GPL and cleaned up their mess does relieve them of the initial act.
TrollTech on the other hand is quite cleaver in protecting their business model to the benefit of free software. They released as little as they could until Harmony came allong. They released more (ablity to fork code base) which wiped Harmony out. It however, was still not enough for Debian but most people could ignore that. Had GNOME not pressed on it would have remained that way. Then when KDE appears to be losing some ground to GNOME, they release it as GPL (ablity to port to other platforms). It is good for KDE and for free software, but it is too late to heal the frictions caused. Merging Gtk+/Qt won't happen because a GPL licensed GUI in a field with many LGPL GUI is not a value added. It also shows that there gamble that the QPL would be enough was not enough to keep KDE ahead politically. Had they released with GPL at 2.0, it may have made a larger difference. That should be a valuable lesson to other companies, if you want to be free do it with GPL. Less arguing and larger acceptance.
For TrollTech latest gift, we should certainly thank them.
--Karl
But ultimately, I think it won't help much. GTK+ is covered by the LGPL, and there are nearly a dozen other free toolkits out there that can be used for both free and commercial software without paying anyone anything. Qt is competing against software that is much cheaper (i.e., free) for commercial usage, and the cheap competition is pretty good.
Another issue that now needs to be revisited is what happens to commercial users of Qt if Troll Tech goes out of business or stops development. Will the FreeQt foundation continue to exist? In the past, it attempted to guarantee that a BSD-style version of Qt would be available.
Yes. That's where CORBA fits in. CORBA is basically an object oriented RPC (Remote Procedure Call) specification.
----
Celebrate the finer things in life
While the move to GPL is definitely a good one, it does not put qt on level ground with gtk/gnome. Most of the gtk/gnome libraries are LGPL, which allows dynamic linking by proprietary (non-GPL'd) applications, which is much better for "system" libraries.
I understand that licensing to commercial apps is the tt business model, and that is fine, but the GPL does not eliminate the issue license in choosing a graphics library (if you want to see proprietary apps for GNU/linux/...)
This is still a move to praise, but with the understanding that the qt/gtk competition is still important.
My blog
Because claiming that GNOME is "obsolete" on the grounds that it uses C instead of C++ is, IMHO, grossly uninformed, and didn't even deserve explanation. 90% of what makes code easy or hard to maintain is how well it is designed and presented, and maybe 10% is due to the language. I'd much prefer to have to maintain well-written FORTRAN than badly written Java, and, from most of the stuff I've looked at, GTK+ and GNOME are well-written.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
They will just have to ask the copyright of the patchs to be assigned to them, as does the FSF, otherwise the patchs won't be incorporated. Most of the time (although not systematically) having its patch incorporated is a priviliege (witness Linux) so I am pretty sure developpers will accept. They have also the option to "buy" the most intersting patchs.
Technically speaking there is also a risk of forking, but "moraly" I don't see this happening, as most developers understand that Trolltech still need to make a leaving, to continue to improve QT. This will be like a stab in the back for someone who has given a lot to free software. Personally I won't hesitate to buy the commercial QT edition if I had to develop a closed product, I see this as a deserved reward for Troll Tech.
Well those are just suppositions ! only the future will tell what will really happen !
KDE has a far superior architecture to GNOME (its main rival), since it is written in C++
And has no C or Ada/GNAT bindings; do the C++ booksellers have stock in Trolltech?
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
When will you gamer morons get it through your thick skulls that a lot of people *DON'T LIKE* First Person Shooters?!? I for one would not pay .10 for a First Person Shooter.
Don't get me wrong, I feel the same way about FPSes. I'd much rather play strategy games or RPGs, which I'm happy to pay for. What I was suggesting was that shareware has been and still could be an important route for NEW, DIFFERENT, and as yet UNDISCOVERED types of games to be introduced, and shouldn't be tossed aside while it still has potential value.
Of course, to understand what I was trying to say, you'd have to have the capacity to grasp things in context, which would require that you NOT be a moron... too bad you couldn't manage.
-jpowers
-jpowers
What should we think about the fact that only Qt/Unix (i.e., the one directly threatened by gtk/gnome) goes GPL ?
ARRGGHHH!!! Why does every good thing happen _after_ a Debian release!?!?!?
Hipocracy means saying one thing and doing the other. Releasing your software under the GPL for Linux (saying that you embrace free software) while keeping it for-pay under Windows (which is essentially NOT embracing free software) is hipocracy by definition. Unless you can prove that using the GPL doesn't mean that you embrace free software, or that charging the developers on one OS and not the other is in tune with the ideals of OSS, then you've got no case.
BTW> People who correct spelling are the most anal-retentive jack-holes you'll ever meet.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
For immedeate release 4th september 2000
The widespread virus called 'GPL' is spreading at alarming rate. Because most patients don't notice any symptoms, 'GPL' has managed to lurk it's way into so many lines of code, that many anylysts believe that all other copyright forms are about to become extinct. RMS, the author of the virus, has been spotted partying like a wild animal and laughing his beard off.
signatures pending - ansa@kos.to - (dont mail there)
...Kylix apps can be released under GNU GPL. No more and no less.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
Now, however, it could be too late for this strategy, with KDevelop already well on his way - and both free and gratis, apart from powerful( I never used it, but I've read a lot of praising reviews ).
So, let's hope they have a better strategy - or that they offer has enough added-value wrt KDevelop to gain them customers.
Ciao
----
FB
Yes, yes, yes, etc....
I'm so happy. KDE will officially get into Debian and discussions with Gnome people are shortend by at least 40%.
Thank you God, now how about that Ferarri I asked?
Whaddaya mean, I get it on the same day as Microsoft break up and the 2.4 kernel?
LGPL is a good license for an open source or free software GUI toolkit if it furthers the goals of open source or free software. I think it does.
WRT the GPL/LGPL debate:
:)
Am I the only one that noticed that Qt can still make money with the GPL, instead of the LGPL?
The GPL benefits us, the home users and developers, with a free Toolkit.
The application developers, who want to modify the source and not release the changes, are going to put a nice lumpy sum in the Trolls' pockets. The LGPL wouldn't require them to show anything but the library source.
Erik
A) Yes and no. You do have to pay for the Visual C++ compiler. But you can still download the Platform SDK gratis.
B) Amen, brother!
C) Have you seen the price of Qt/Windows? $1550 for one Professional edition license! Either that, or use Qt Free Edition, and write to an X11 library/server for Windows, which is redundant for obvious reasons.
My big problem with Trolltech is that they consider Windows-compatible and Open Source mutually exclusive. Is it GPL eliteism, or are they just trying to stick it to the "evil empire", developers and users be damned?
Every day we're standing in a wind tunnel/Facing down the future coming fast - Rush
This sig intentionally left blank.
Personally, the only concern which seeme to be relevant was that closed-source software developers would have to pay licensing to Trolltech to write KDE apps. I didn't want one company controlling and being the sole benefactor of QT [which has contribution from many other sources].
Now the closed source developers won't have to pay that license fee. This is a good thing, but not really that great. Still, it will slightly encourage vendors yet to take the open source plunge to create apps for KDE. This is a good thing.
From what I can ascertain, the license allows you to "distribute machine-executable forms of the Software or machine-executable forms of modified versions of the Software", and thus you could port Qt to windows- which means that some intreped developer could potentially make Qt an actual Cross platform development platform(I suppose that you could also port it to Mac, and various other OS's)
This would be REALLY nice for all those open source projects that have been residing only on Linux due to Trolltechs strange marketing scheme for the professional version.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
There's nothing stopping developers from forking the FreeQT codebase to create a new Windows based QT. Frankly, I think the Windows port of QT is one of the best advantages of QT over GTK+. Windows support with GTK is still in it's infancy while QT is quite usable.
The way to bring Windows desktop users over to Free Software is to create cross platform Apps which reduce the need for Windows as a base platform in order to create a migration path for users. That means porting the new StarOffice and KOffice to Windows, giving users a chance to feel comfortable with the new environment, and then waiting for the next costly Windows upgrade to convince the users "there's a cheaper way..."
Every time KDE is mentioned we have the claim about no standards or people needing QT to develop KDE apps.
Actualy what you need is to folow the stile guide.
KDE Standards and Style Guides
Ohh. And here is an interview with Kurt Granroth.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
Have you ever tried to maintain a port where you can only distribute patch files to a base source file?
While the QPL gave the legal right to create a fork, its patch clause made it a practical impossibility.
Steven E. Ehrbar
- X is more stable
- X has a better GUI
- X uses much less memory
- X also works on older computers
- X compiles on more platforms!
- X is/should be default on distro Y
(where X is your favorite Desktop Environment)I'm sure you can make up more of these....
Every expression is true, for a given value of 'true'
Riiight. It has nothing to do with control, more likely it has to do with a few people who can't stand to pay for software. The free beer rather than the free speech. The code is GPLed, if you wanted/needed something which works differently, you could a) change it yourself, or b) use another toolkit. It seems you'd rather choose b, which in itself is telling. (As a side note, the "artificial right of profit," as you call it, is what keeps companies alive.)
Qt by its nature presents a framework for application development. Anytime you create a framework for something, there is a certain amount of influence exerted. This is not necessarily a bad thing, progress has to be made somehow. The fact that a company has produced this toolkit has little bearing on its usefulness, however it has allowed TrollTech to create an excellent and productive programming environment which might not have existed had they not put their effort in. Indeed, they have gone the extra mile now and made it free - free to be distributed, free to be changed. This is a big step for a company which derives its revenue from Qt.
Frankly, I don't believe that Trolltech is any more destructive than the Helixcode or Gnome foundation "bands of nobodies." The main thing that has been proven by this discussion is that people will complain about anything given the chance, and that's pretty sad.
GPL: Free as in will
It seems, from past discussions I've seen and had on Slashdot, that the reason the big corporations prefer Gnome is not the GPL or concerns over the legality of KDE, but the fact that the Gnome libraries are actually L(esser)GPL, which allows the development of proprietary apps.
Now, the KDE libraries are LGPL, but if Qt is GPLed, that makes no difference. Anyone who wants to write non-free software in KDE will still have to pay for the Qt Professional License. Otherwise the whole lot will have to be GPLed, or released under a GPL compatible license.
I suppose it's up to personal taste whether you regard this as a problem or not, but it's something to think about.
That links to the old QPL announcement.
(although I would be more worried if the date was 31st march 23:59:59 :) )
As some people had predicted, the formation of the GNOME Foundation is having more of an effect on KDE than the KDE leaders had claimed possible.
Since Qt 2.2 should be compatible with KDE 2.0, I'll be checking it out in a couple days. Didn't like KDE 1.0 much, but I didn't like GNOME 1.0 much either.
The much-talked-about though never-quite-here package pool idea may provide a good infrastructure for this.
It's that exact phenomenon why I personally view the GPL as unfreeing, by requiring me to license my software one way versus another reduces my freedom. In practice I almost always use the BSD license which gives the users of my software the most freedom: keep it open, close it, or just plain use it. Don't mistake me, I think the GPL is a Good Thing in many cases, for example the Linux kernel, by requiring all of it's derivations to stay open all modifications to it can be absorbed into it as they are deemed worthwhile by Linus; and this sort of mandatory evolution behavior is good for many sorts of projects, I just think it's wrong to refer to it as free, because I really think that's a huge misuse of the word.
:)
Looking back I trailed off, but that's ok
where'd my typewriter go?
Funny... the message was labeled as "Interestin", i would have labled it "Incomprehensible".... guess you had to be there...
--
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
One less problem with an obvious yet unaccomplished solution on the way.
This took a long time. I only hope it will prove profitable for Trolltech - that would show the way for other companies as well. Profitability is actually quite likely, due to more spread (Debian etc) with GPL and the fame of QT's ease of use (I haven't tried out doing user interfaces with anything else but HTML for years, so I really don't know myself).
I think, therefore thoughts exist. Ego is just an impression.
and
"Qt 2.2 to be released"
Chris Hagar
"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson
Why has this never been publicized in the past? A combination of two reasons. The first is that most (>99%) GNOME's users lack the technical skill to read source code. The second reason is that because of the rift between GNOME and KDE, very few people know both codebases well enough to notice, and those who do are probably the GNOME developers which stole KDE's work in the first place.
Brought to you by The Truth About GNOME . Please write us for more information.
Link is http://www.trolltech.com/c ompany/announce/generalpl.html
I say, NONE, cause I don't use desktop enviroments! Unless you count CDE, which they make me use at school, which is still better than Gnome or KDE. Gimme a straigh window manager, and I'm happy.
--N
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
(from the spoilsport dept.)
Large caveat: This applies only to QT free edition; that is, QT/Unix. Those who wish to develop cross-platform applications will still have to look elsewhere for their toolkit.
Note: Don't bother replying with flames about GTK+ sucking for Windoze. At least the port exists, is free software, and has the chance to improve eventually.
--
Friends don't let friends misuse the subjunctive.
Well, I have seen no announcement to that effect. But given that FSF prefer libraries to be covered by the GPL rather than the LGPL, they should now consider Qt preferable over Gtk.
Since companies like Red Hat have a interest in promoting development af Linux software, free or unfree, they should still have an interest in Gtk, because the LGPL allows their customers to develop unfree applications.
Why has this never been publicized in the past? A combination of two reasons. The first is that most (>99%) GNOME's users lack the technical skill to read source code. The second reason is that because of the rift between GNOME and KDE, very few people know both codebases well enough to notice, and those who do are probably the GNOME developers which stole KDE's work in the first place.
Brought to you by The Truth About GNOME . Please write us for more information.
...for news websites ;-) Without the opportunity to post stories about this topic, banner impressions will drop like a stone! Who will be the first to file bankruptcy?
Or maybe they will move over to stirring up anxiety between BSD and Linux now...
Freshmeat has an article by the Troll Tech guys talking about why they decided to go GPL.
Prevent email address forgery. Publish SPF records for y
The link is http://www.trolltech.com/c ompany/announce/generalpl.html
> I thought OSS was about *freedom*, freedom
> of choice.
Well, Qt 2.2 gives the developer the *choice* of two licenses, QPL or GPL. Qt 2.0 only offered one license, the QPL. So it seems to me that the freedom of choice has increased, not decreased, with this announcement.
I say this is a good thing. Competition prevents stagnation. 'Nuff said. Especially in the free software world, where profit is usually not a motivating factor.
---
mikre he sophia he tou Mikrosophou.
> Why is it companies never open source stuff
> when things are going their way?
It would be silly to change a business model that *worked*. Only when the currect business model breaks down, you go looking for alternatives.
Or do you believe companies should make free software for the good of their hearts?
I've send the following e-mail to TrollTech:
:-)
>>>
Your web site says in the front page "2000 Sep 04 Qt Free Edition goes GPL".
My first reaction was: congratulations, but when I click to the link it links to 1998 article which talks about the QPL being an OpenSource license ??
I am a quite puzzled by this, could it be an error ?, a bad link ? a web site defacement? I don't know.
What I find very funny is that (if its true), they are protecting their business model (selling Qt licenses) by going GPL and not LGPL! But it should please RMS because he is telling people to use GPL and not the LGPL!
I'm wondering, under what licence Gnome is ? GPL ? LGPL? a mix of both?
Will we see a flamewar between LGPL supporters and GPL supporters? (beside the obvious C/C++ holy war of course).
We're indeed living in "interesting times"
Might it not be a good idea to release a free edition of Qt for Win32? Now that the source is GPL'ed there's nothing to prevent somebody else from building a workalike implementation layer, but using TrollTech's source would make for much cleaner development and easier upgrades to the Professional edition.
I know a lot of the /. crowd consider the whole issue of Windows ports to be beneath contempt, but there are some useful OSS projects using Qt (Doxygen springs to mind) which supply binaries for Win32 but can't be built under Win32 unless you sell off some internal organs and buy a pro license. More testing eyeballs are all very well, but it seems a shame to restrict your developer base like this.
It's 1am, and I've had no caffine for 6 hours.... so I have SOME excuse ;)
Excuse me if I am wrong. I belive the main gripe with the QPL was that if a closed source developer made software with QT they had to pay Troll Tech. Which means if KDE became the standard linux desktop then all closed sourse developers that wanted to write for Linux would have to pay money to Troll Tech. So the agaer was that is seemed wrong for one company to have such control over linux and m ake money off every closed source app. So that is why people did not want QT to be standard. Maybe I am crazy and wrong. But. They GPLed it not LGPLed. Which is funny because it is a library. What this means is now the code is split but.... If you want to wrote a closed source app you still have to pay Troll Tech! GTK however is under the LGPL with means it is free for closed and opensource developers. So really I don't see the change except the Debian will not include KDE and their distro and people who do not read between the lines with think everything is all better. Personally I don't care what license there software is under. It is their software. But I just don't want everyone who is writting for linux to be forced to pay these guys money. I would like to see them LGPL there library (or BSD it for all I care) and then just sell the development tools to whoever wants them. But hey what do I know. -Brian
Go Per! :-)
Just kidding. I love your work man.
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
Not only does the community gain, but KDE gains too. I hope this removes Miguel's objection to KDE using GNOME code. This will be very interesting indeed as now KDE is free to copy GNOME code verbatim. They may not really want to do that though, seeing how KDE uses clean C++ while GNOME uses C.
On another note, I wonder what it means for Red Hat's C++ toolkit, GTK++, etc. They may gain from copying Qt code too.
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
When Troll announced that QT v 2.0 would be released under the QPL, there was some lag time before v2.0 was released. I guess we might be up to the next Debian release before a "completely un-QPL-dependent" KDE is released - anybody know more about timescales?
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Actually, the GPL doesn't protect you from commercial bastardisation at all. Sun WILL eventually produce there own gnome as WILL HP and IBM and even though the GPL means the source will have to be available, who is going to give a damn. There will just be Sun's source, IBM's source, HP's source, Helix source whatever.
However, QT have to be given a little praise here, they grew from nothing to be a relatively profitable little Norwegian company and have taken a very bold step. I hope it works out for them.
Regards
If KDE was QPL then Debian would already have included it. Their beef was that the two licenses were incompatible, thus they could not legally distribute KDE. I believe the QPL version of Qt is already in Debian non-free.
Whatever the PR, Troll did this because the Gnome Foundation scared them. One advantage of GPL over QPL is it's hydra-headedness.. you could kill Qt before by putting Troll out of business.. but now Qt is immortal.
/etc/apt/sources.list will be losing a line anytime now.. coolies.
Software patents delenda est.
Nice to see this happen. But... I still have to pay for not releasing the source. Yes, "it's good for the free software, you have to release the source"! I refuse to call my desktop free (as in speech) if I must to do that. I would release my software under GPL, but just because it's the only allowed way, I won't use it. This is my opinion, I know that everyone disagrees with me.
How hard would it be to port QT/Unix to Cygwin? Anyone who knows lots about this sort of stuff care to answer?
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
Because Free Qt is copylefted (choice of QPL or GNU GPL), companies still have to pay the Trolls to be able to port their proprietary winsoftware to free*n?x. GTK+ on the other hand, is lesser copylefted under LGPL; it will be more popular for proprietary apps such as your precious games.
<O
( \
XGNOME vs. KDE: the game!
Will I retire or break 10K?
You overlook the users (that's me). The users want KDE and want it bad, as they have often made clear.
If the bad commercial boys have any sense they will give it to us.
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
30s or so after, I have their answer and now the links is refering to the true beef, here an extract:
(2000/04/31) -Trolltech announced today that it will license the upcoming free version of Qt/Unix 2.2 under the GPL (GNU General Public License). Developers will have the option of using the open-source version of Qt 2.2 under either the QPL (Q Public License) or GPL license, depending on their licensing requirements.
Many thanks to Trolltech.
Mmm, time to have a second look to Qt.
Hmmm... looks like TrollTech as a twisted sense of humour:
emphasis mine. Since April has 30 days, I guess this one is an April's Fools, no?
Com'on! I'm joking! Wait! No... no! Arrrgggh!!!
Personally, I always thought the licensing issue was blown way out of proportion, but now that it's history we can lay that to rest. (Even though I suspect some of the more ardent /.'ers will suffer withdrawal symptoms...)
Is that a fair statement? Red Hat seem to strongly favour free software, though they use non-free software sometimes. If you were talking about Caldera I'd agree, or to a lesser extent SuSE.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
But now the flamewars will be about straight-up technical merit, or perhaps the relative merits of C++ vs good old C for development and deployment.
Such flamewars mainly have good effects. If you don't believe me, you haven't read the linux-kernel list enough. Most good things that happen in the kernel seem to require a flamewar somewhere along the line. Flamewars force participants to do their homework, and to engage in a continuous cycle of technical oneupsmanship. Flamewars force participants to produce results.
Regardless of the prospects for ever-more-entertaining-and-productive flamewars, the door is now open for real interoperability between Gnome and KDE.
--
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
Such announce is never gratuitous in the open source software world. This kind of event has to be triggered...Let me think...Ho yes, all the momentum around gnome this past week must be the reason why Troll Tech has decided to release QT under the GPL. They were afraid to lose interest against the duo Gnome/GTK with all the declarations made by Sun, IBM etc. Ho well, the past has shown that releasing a software under the GPL is godd to compete. I would love companies to release more software under GPL not because of the pressure or competition but because it really good indeed. Congratulation to TrollTech anyway. We will miss the KDE/Gnome troll.
The C++ ABI is a moving target. Sun and HP would want to release binary distributions of any desktop/GUI environment, and unfortunately, this is not possible with KDE/Qt because Sun and HP's compilers keep changing their C++ compilers and break their ABIs. GNOME is the lowest common denominator - it's written in C and will work as well on 15 year old compilers as it does on the current crop of optimizing compilers. You can write your GNOME/GTK C program with gcc and link it against a Sun compiled set of GNOME libraries without any trouble - try that in C++/g++ and see how far that gets you. Commercially I can tell you that supporting Sun's C++ offerings is a complete fucking pain in the ass: 4.2, 5.0, 5.1, 6.0 all have incompatable ABI changes. A C++ vendor *MUST* ship source code - there is no other choice. No wonder why the public loves Java so much - in theory it works the same everywhere with no ridiculous compiler/environment/version conflicts to worry about. Too bad the C++ crowd can't get their act together. Life would be MUCH simpler if all companies dropped support for commercial compilers altogether and just supported GCC.
Where did that quote from Eng come from? I'm not questioning its accuracy; I just want to find it.
Once again, moderators have been sucked in by a comment along the lines of "I'm going to get moderated down for this, but...". In general, I think that any post containing such a remark should be moderated down because it's an attempt to unduly influence the moderators. In this specfic case, the second half of this comment is grossly uninformed and/or just flamebait and deserved to be moderated down. There was NO justification for moderating this comment up.
I call for some debate on an explicit addition to the moderation guidelines that these kind of appeals should cause a comment to be moderated down. Does anyone else out there care?
Of course, I realize I'm going to be modded down for this flamebait :)
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
People still stand in having to pay royalties to Troll to use Qt in a non GPL application. Not necessarily a bad thing. That comes later...
Gnome's libraries are mainly under the LGPL allowing royalty free use which is really why its been blessed so.
Its a risky, but perhaps rewarding move for Troll. On the bad side (from their view) the GPL base would permit a better, seperately maintained
variant with GPL code they cannot add to their commercial option - it wouldn't be all their code at that point.
On the good side from their view, it may mean more people use KDE/Qt. Thus developers wishing to support it end up paying Troll in the
process.
This isn't bad though. The problem (as I see it) is this....
Companies who wish to use Qt commercially can do so (at a price) without giving their improvements to Qt back. While GTK+ can be used without
royalty, its LGPL status means any improvments made that a non Free product uses must be distributed back out under LGPL or GPL. Nothing
else. No bribe accepted. (Yes, they may go elsewhere but the real issue here isn't about being popular, its about being Free. Ideally both, but not simply popular. Windows has that).
In the absense of an "only GPL" library suite in popular use (meaning GPL applications all round from everyone who uses it), the LGPL option
with no alternatives is better than the GPL with a (regardless of price) non Free alternative. At least we get the improvements.
Its a fair swap. More use of Qt to Troll's benefit for the option to merge Qt/Gtk under GPL. That would be the Free softy utopia but for not the GTK is still probably going to be prefered until an "only GPL" Qt vriant becomes widely used without a commercial option.
Phill