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Qt Released For OS X
AxsDeny writes: "It looks like Macslash is also reporting this, but Trolltech is now offering Qt for OS X. Long live cross platform development." Doesn't look like there's a Free version, but there is a non-commerical license called the "Qt Academic License," which "Allows schools and universities to acquire and use Qt for free in relevant courses."
To a good article at Kuro5hin.
Best Slashdot Co
this is why I don't read anything modded below a 2...
zork% mv *.asp
283 files eaten by a grue
I've been using the Win32 Qt 3.0 for a while, and I have to say that I've vastly enjoyed it. Trolltech earns my vote for one of the best companies I've worked with so far.
:P
Don't flame them too much for charging money for stuff- everyone has to earn a living somehow
EOM
MacOS X really is the best of all worlds. You have the stability reliability and scalability of Unix/Mach with the familiar ease-of-use of the mac. Too bad the clunky old PC still seems to rule the roost with the general public :-(
QT == Quicktime !
seems a bit stupid to call your project the same name esecially as its on a Mac too
confusion reigns
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Apple still putting the TOSH in Macs
I've always been impressed with cross-platform initiatives. Especially the ECAs big project to get Eggplant code on every system available. Including embedded devices!
Eggplants!
Ace
Qt Academic License," which "Allows schools and universities to acquire and use Qt for free in relevant courses.
It's refreshing to see that a company is offering proprietary software for free to schools and universities.
Microsoft, take note!
...No not about the mystery press conference tomorrow where Steve Jobs will turn on the Reality Distortion Field and shock us with his "pssst, It's not a Mac" new product. No, I am talking about the native port of Tcl/Tk applications on Mac OS X!!!
You know I am going to end up with whatever Steve Jobs shows off tomorrow. I already have a closet full of Netwons, QuickTake Digital Cameras, Power CDs and exploding PowerBook 5300 batteries for home defense.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
I just have to point out that Qt really is the most excellent toolkit I've ever used, for any platform (and the fact that it runs on all major platforms is a huge bonus). It's sanely designed and it really is a pleasure to use. I'm not a big fan of C++, generally preferring C for most stuff, but Qt makes using C++ more than worth it.
:)
I just can't comprehend why anybody uses GTK these days
Fully carbonized! That means (?) you can develop a program in a mixed Linux/OS X environment, and get Aqua look and feel in OS X. I think it is time to learn Qt ;)
The article kind of glazed over the technical details here... but is this a port of Qt that just wraps around the native MacOSX widgets or does it re-implement everything with an aqua-ish look and feel? Didn't Apple object to the Mozilla port which had an aqua-like but not true Aqua interface?
While this is good for porting, unless it's ported as a true "localized toolkit" then it's not of much use. Take for example, GTK+ which works under MacOS X. Without an X server running to display everything on, it won't do much good.
What would really be icing on the cake is a translator of sorts, or porting the toolkit directly to MacOS X so that the same functions, etc. would transparently call MacOS X/Quartz functions.
Remember, Quartz/Aqua isn't X.
"One guy wrote that we should take all these Legos and build giant robots with which to attack Afghanastan." -- Rob Malda, Founder of Slashdot, a "News for Nerds" website, in a NPR report on post WTC gen-X, 10/22/2001
I, for one, would like to take a moment to thank Rob for setting us "Nerds" back where we belong. Way to make us look like a bunch of childish tech-heads with no conception of the real world! (That was sarcasm, you nincompoop!)
Remember, Carbon is for porting old OS 9 apps easily to OS X. It is based on C. Cocoa is the "real deal" for OS X, and is based on C++. It just seems more logical that they would port QT to Cocoa, not Carbon.
... I just wish they didn't charge so _much_. Never having been a free software zealot, I don't mind paying for software that's truly useful, as this certainly is. But as a starving student, I just can't pay the kind of prices they're charging. I didn't see anything in their academic license section about prices available to individual students. The excellent student prices available on Metrowerks products are one of the main reasons I've stuck with CodeWarrior as my primary dev environment for so long, even though I haven't been wild about their more recent releases in a number of other ways.
...
It would be great if TrollTech learned this lesson. Remember, today's poor CS students are tomorrow's pro developers
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
This is great because it means a whole load of great apps can now be ported to run native on Macs.
Technically yes, but legally no. Many common apps that use Qt are under the GNU GPL and may not be linked with non-free libraries nor compiled with non-free headers.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Trolltech should be called on to make QT liscense open on a crossplatform basis. While KDE is not my bag, there are alot of great apps in it. So far the straddling the fence on liscensing on their part has done more for gnome then trolltech. I'd have to say it would be alot more compelling if they made these free. They could make money by selling services like everyone else in this field. The era of software product royalties is nearly over. Trolltech needs to innovate.
I am using QT3 to write a cross platform legal case managment system. I am going to release a version of it that simply does contact, calendar and mail. It will have an Outlook style interface.
Screen shot: http://dunsinane.net/bryan/virtualaw.png
Using the database support found in QT3, this application will use PostgreSQL or an ODBC database as its back-end. It will be multi-user. It will allow for the sharing of contacts and calendars. Who knows I might even put in KDE support (someone had to provide an alternative to the anemically developed Aethera).
I am looking for anyone who might like to contribute to this project.
Cocoa is the "real deal" for OS X, and is based on C++.
No, Cocoa is based on Objective-C, the NeXTstep language. Objective-C is not C++, and C++ is not Objective-C. (Yes, the fact that the names of things in ObjC start with NS (NeXTstep) makes it confusing to read Mozilla C++ code, where things also start with NS (Netscape).)
Will I retire or break 10K?
of course I read the story dumbass... check the name. I'm the one who had it posted.
zork% mv *.asp
283 files eaten by a grue
Yeah, my bad... It is Objective C, not C++
Borland has already hinted that other OS/platforms would be supported in the future.
The wxWindows folks also have a Macintosh port that I believe also uses CARBON. From what I understand they are doing a great job. For python people, wxPython is just fantastic.
I may be a troll, but I am not making this stuff up !!!! Any problem you have with this is a problem with reality, son.
/.-er's as occasionally empathic and caring contrary to the "Nerd" stereotype would be trite.
/., an assinine soundbite liek that would cut deep!
Once again Rob, thanks for making your posters look like socially-stunted Lego fetishistic idiots! But then again, coming up with an anecdote portraying
Damn glad I've slipped over to the troll side, and consequently, nothing I say can be taken at face value. If I was a legitimate poster who actually cared about
They've also stated that a non-commercial license will soon be available for OS X. They currently have a non-commercial license for Windows, which lets you use QT for free for noncommercial projects (though you don't get sourcecode like you do for Unix). The Windows non-commercial is still at version 2.3 but version 3 will be released shortly, and they'll be doing the same for the Mac.
When I looked into their licensing in general (for possible work use) I noticed that if any project was ever touched by any free version of Qt, it could never be later realeased commercially by purchasing a Qt license at a later date.
This one limitation might be a severe one for those who care about complying with licenses. Read the whole thing carefully before proceding. And get your lawyer to check things for you.
Of course it would. And luxury cars would be more compelling if they were free as well.
Nobody is making money selling services for free software. Ars Digita made money for a while during the dot com boom, but not anymore. Cygnus did OK for a while, but never really made money. Red Hat & Ximian aren't making money on their services. Eazel and Great Bridge folded. I honestly can't think of anybody who is making money with that business model.
Yeah, keep dreaming.
Translation: "You mean I have to pay for this? But I want everything for free. Somebody should make them give it to me for free. Waaaaaahh."
I've got a biggish Win32 program and wonder about moving it to Qt. How big an effort? Any performance hits / gotchas? Any features that we'll lose?
Want to stop being dependent on MS before they collapse!
Can I make software with the Qt Free Edition and release it under the GPL, BSD, or Artistic license?
Yes. Since Qt Free Edition is provided under both QPL and GPL, all license conflicts are avoided.
Is software based on the Qt Free Edition really free? Does it carry Trolltech license restrictions?
Yes, it is really free. No, there are no special Trolltech license restrictions on free software produced using the Free Edition. In fact, the opposite is true: The Qt Free Edition licensing demands that the software must be free. The receivers must have the rights to obtain the source code, change it, and redistribute it.
BUT!
Qt non-commercial edition and the GNU GPL
The GNU General Public License (GPL) is a popular free software license widely used in the Unix/Linux world. The GPL is published by the Free Software Foundation (see http://www.fsf.org ). One of the key features of the license is that it does not permit the distribution of software linked to non-system libraries that are distributed under different licensing terms. Although Qt non-commercial edition is available free of charge this prohibition nonetheless applies to it.
If you wish to port one of the many GPL'd Qt-based Unix applications to another operating system using the Qt non-commercial edition, you need to get that application's copyright holders to add an exception to its license. Similarly, if you develop a new application with the Qt non-commercial edition and wish to license it under the GPL you may wish to add such an exception to your license. The Free Software Foundation has provided the following wording for such exceptions:
As a special exception, gives permission to link this program with Qt non-commercial edition, and distribute the resulting executable, without including the source code for the Qt non-commercial edition in the source distribution.
Note that such an exception is not required for code released under other free software licenses like the GNU LGPL and BSD-style licenses.
AND!
The Qt Non Commercial Edition for Microsoft Windows is a binary only distribution requiring Microsoft Visual Studio version 6.
You know when you have to dig this deep into the site to find the pricing information, it's going to hurt when you get there.
http://www.trolltech.com/purchase/qtpricing.html
US$1550 for one professional license, US$1950 for one enterprise license?
I believe all the people that say QT3 is the bees' knees, but yikes. Guess I won't be experiencing that coolness for myself.
(Wistfully remembering the days when Think C was $99, and the early CodeWarriors were around $199)
-- http://frobnosticate.com
MS does give free software to universities. They give tons of it to my school Penn State, i can go get office 2000 frontpage, visual C++, and windows for free if i want. They are very generous in this. They do it so teachers can require soemthing done in say powerpoint or have C++ classes uses visual C. This makes for a bad thing, Everything here is steadily becoming MS only, large chunk of web pages only work in IE and other such problems. If you don't run windows your pretty much screwed. Free software is not always a good thing, I would have similar issues if they required something done in a linux app and since its free we have no excuse. Free software being avalible just means they can force you to use soemthing. I don't belive there sould be reasons to be forced to use one app or another.
Also Apple gives many computer to, but their only used by like the 5 people here who willingly use them, other than that there only used when the other computers in labs are full. I belive Dell gives us alot of computers to.
in short Free is not always Good
This is a complete shameless plug for my application, but it is also a great example of how good of a crossplatform library Qt is.
Check out JabberCentral and you will see my client, "Psi", has both a Windows and Linux version. The programs are identical (all features are the same). By use of QSettings, application settings are stored in the registry on Windows and in a "dot" file on *nix. And the look&feel matches the OS.
The best part? All it took was a simple recompile. One source tree sure makes life easy.
-Justin
Always happy to throw fat on the fire. This was this morning's "Morning Edition" on NPR, I don't think they have the transcripts up yet. The Real Audio is here on this page.
I'm glad you explained that in your second sentence. For a moment, I thought it had something to do with flash freezing wanted freighter pilots on Cloud City near the planet Bespin :-)
First off, I'd like to see evidence backing up the "done more for gnome than trolltech" remark. That sounds like a shoot-from-the-hip comment, lacking any real evidence backing it up. To date, GNOME seems popular with hobbyists and open source developers, but I have yet to see any serious development efforts going into commercial GNOME apps. I'm sure there are some out there, but I have not heard of them (the only one that comes close is GNUCash, and that's such a friggin' mess right now that I won't bother upgrading my existing installation to the new version).
Second, the comment about making money on services "like everyone else in this field" is laughable. Very few people are making sustainable profits on services. Nobody. Linuxcare is all but a non-issue anymore, Red Hat is just now starting to get a services business started up (and considering their market share, they should be bringing in service revenue in the tens of millions per year; have they even broken a million yet?), and basically nobody else is making money on such things as far as I can tell. The whole "give away the goods and sell services" line is an open source dream that after years of preaching still has not paid off. Face it, people who deal with Linux rarely want to pay for support and services. Even those who toot the services trumpet will scoff at the idea of paying for support and services if asked.
I'm all for TrollTech charging $$ for their product. They have thought it out very well, unlike other projects that seem more spaghetti-ish than anything else (coughGTKcough). I'm also glad they're realistic about their financial prospects and are willing to charge $$. Without this, there would probably be no TrollTech 5 years from now to help keep Qt alive. When the free software zealots stop this nonsense of wanting everything free (yes, including services and support, you know I'm right), maybe there will be some longevity to this open source stuff. Otherwise, as far as I can tell, open source is "on trial" and is in danger of being dropped by commercial entities. Read between the lines; we're in dangerous times, and free software folks better come to terms with companies charging for software (which is allowed by the GPL, by the way) if they want to keep this corporate participation stuff going.
Dumbass. How about YOU get a clue?
Reminds me of "Hey, the first one is on me, buddy." Seriously, working in the commercial world, these academic licenses are really tiring: companies get students hooked on some piece of software in the hope that they will then enter the workforce and demand that their employers buy their overpriced commercial software, even when good open source alternatives are available. I hope more and more employers will refuse to fall into this trap: someone who has experience with a costly commercial package where a free alternative is available simply lacks the relevant experience for the job and needs to be retrained.
Matlab is a huge offender in the engineering world (almost free for students, thousands of dollars in the real world). Qt doesn't seem much different.
My message to universities (as well as open source developers): if you want a cross-platform C++ toolkit, use wxWindows or FLTK; they are good enough. And if you think it needs improvements, make those improvements student projects and contribute them.
I heard from an apple rep that OS X has one of the fastest JVMs available and offers OS X Look and Feel. New machines also come with Java Web Start. Is Java on a new OS X machine fast enough to replace C or C++? If not, it must be getting pretty close.
you anon coward twit
Perhaps it makes the port of their Qt/Mac easier to maintain. But if you are really targeting OS X, use the OS X APIs...
Moderators should have to take a reading comprehension test.
I agree. The GTK+/GNOME is not really activily used at all by companies not working in open-sourced products.
While Qt is increasingly used by many closed-source companies, which is almost guarenteed to make TrollTech a long term buiness plan. If I were to chose between investing in TrollTech or Ximian, for example, I think that TrollTech has a better chance for survival in the long term.
I'm really starting to get hacked off by this argument. $1500 is NOT overpriced in a commercial software development setting. It's peanuts, pocket change, it's nothing!!
I just finished doing a job where the development group were paying more than that for a consultant from Oracle to do development work on site, per DAY !!
because maybe the rest of the operating system is not GPL'd or under a Open license? Qt, when placed in a integral part of the operating system, TrollTech has made Qt match the licensing of the outer OS.
Judging from the comments you've made in the past (read this guy's user info), you sound like a ignorant troll. Get a clue, you little fucknut.
... where the toolkit can be "free" ... but on the "real" platforms (OS/X and NT) developping apps costs money. Blah lbah blah it's well designed etc. etc. So was NeXT and it's developper workstation and license was $uper expen$ive too ...
Do you actually know how much it costs to buy hardware, software and licenses in commercial organizations these days? It's outrageous! $1500 as a one off cost per development seat is nothing!
you obviously don't work in commercial software development or you wouldn't have this opinion. and if you do, then go talk to your boss about costs and how much his budget is
So you would rather there be no communication of any technical / hobby / fun nature until this entire global issue is resolved?
.even fun. I plan to follow the news regularly, read & post to /. , write my representatives regarding propossed "anti-terror" legislation, follow my vocation intently, and log online at night and play a few games of Tribes2 to have fun. Has my life changes since 11Sep . . . yes. Will I exclude all other activities . . . no.
While I think our lives do deserve a bit of a refocusing on what are genuine priorities, I don't think our avocations or vocations should be excluded from our life until such time is reached.
That is what balancing life's activities is all about. Try it. A balanced life is usually more rewarding, and yes . . .
robi
hehehe whoever modded this had fun modding down CmdrTaco.
I try to get a few posts above 3 every once and a while, but my smart ass side just has to quip in a few times a week with Score: 1 comments. Oh well. Karma isn't exchangable for US$, soI can spend it freely.
robi
Right on! Giving away the goodies for free and making money off the services isn't working for anyone. Those open source development companies that are making money are the ones who are using split licensing to split their product into bits that you pay for and bits you don't.
theKompany is a good example of this. You get most of their basic products for free, but if you want the extra bells and whistles that you need to be really productive, then you pay for the extras. Kivo's templates are a good example of this.
I think it's fine for Trolltech to straddle the fence:
Simple, right? Wrong. Add operating systems to the equation. Now it's:
Trolltech could make everyone's lives easier if they'd just forget about the operating system. Would I like to see Windows go Open Source? Sure. Would I like to see Apple open more of OS X than Darwin? Certainly. Is it going to happen? Not bloody likely. Are Trolltech's licensing terms going to change anything? Not bloody likely.
I just feel like Trolltech is robbing Peter to pay Paul. They're trying very hard to encourage adoption of Open Source operating systems. Unfortunately, their choice of licensing terms actively discourages cross-platform Open Source applications.
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I am attempting to head a project to port GTK+ to use Quartz and run natively on OS X, but I'm not getting terribly far (mainly because the unstable branch isn't building yet because libtool and Darwin's linker are a mess). Anyway, if you are interested or think you can help, please go to the project page and sign up for the mailing list.
We might see that happening in the near future now that Qt is available for Mac.
Qt has always worked between Windows/Unix, but big application companies (like say, Adobe) care more about Windows/Mac. AFAIK, Photoshop has two codebases, one for Windows and one for Mac. With Qt 3.0 they could reduce it to just one. Even though their original intention might be to just have Windows/Mac versions, this would place them "one compile away" from having a Linux version. They may or may not go the Linux route at first, but the option would be obviously there.
Who knows, maybe this will actually happen.
Actually, the Academic License and the Non-Commercial edition are two different things. academic -> for schools, universities, etc. free as in beer, NCE -> no-warranty, no-support license for developing windows apps. It is called "non-commercial" because it can only be legally used to produce non-commercial apps (Doh!). http://www.trolltech.com/developer/download/qt-win -noncomm.html
I would expect the mac version to become NCE available sometime. However, I must note that it was not an immediate thing for windows, so it might take some time.
--- "I didn't think anyone would understand it" -Prof. Bob Muller
Although the point should be made that although those who prefer C can still justify making an exception in order to have the cleaner API of QT, others cannot: GTK has bindings for an ever-increasing number of languages, QT is C++ only (for any practical purpose, there may be some hacks out there.)
I for example am most familiar with guile-gtk; it would be much harder for me to justify switching my toolkit to QT, since everything else would radically be changed as well with the switch from scheme to C++. But C users don't face this dilemna.
(Not my intent to contribute to a flamewar either, if there was a scheme, or better yet Common Lisp, binding to QT I'd have good reason to prefer it too, but multiple-language support is definately one of GTK's advantages.)
I don't usually respond to the usual uninformed crap that passes for /. comments, but I strongly object to the software that I have written and maintained for the last 4 years, that has spawned a book, 2 commercial products, and is used by many individuals and well known organisations as a hack.
Phil Thompson (author of PyQt)
there is a non-commerical license called the "Qt Academic License," which "Allows schools and universities to acquire and use Qt for free in relevant courses."
I'll use it in my dorm. It's pretty Relevent-- TO ME!
However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include ... the operating system"
I have written more about this operating system loophole in the GNU GPL. Some software publishers might claim, and some courts would believe, that Qt qualifies as an "operating system" under which other applications can run. It certainly is a "platform."
Will I retire or break 10K?
There's nothing stopping an author from making a modification to the GPL (as documented on the TrollTech site) allowing for linking to non-GPL libraries.
However, if your project contains any code written by other people, it may be difficult to get permission from them to link their code to Qt. For instance, if your program uses both GNU readline and Qt, or some other GPL library and Qt, tough luck.
That is, unless you take advantage of the GPL's OS loophole.
Will I retire or break 10K?
Sorry, poor choice of words on my part; my main point though was only that GTK currently has more languages supported even though I wish there WERE more projects like PyQT. And that this might be an additional reason why some people will keep using GTK instead of QT, which was the original discussion of the thread. But I am glad to hear that Python users are not in this group thanks to PyQT (and the same for whatever other languages do indeed have bindings, java for instance, but there are still more left over with bindings only in GTK--and hopefully not for ever.)
(I was thinking of language bindings for QT the same way I look at, say, Cygwin on NT; "hack" isn't the right word, but in both cases through the developpers' wonderful efforts they are achieving something that the vendor is not really interested in supporting.)
For an incomplete list of GTK's minority language support see the Language bindings for GNOME Matrix.