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MiniGui, GPL'ed Qt/Embedded Alternative
joshmccormack writes "MiniGui, a GUI for embedded Linux devices that offers a GPL alternative to QT/Embedded and other embedded guis has become a 'stable, viable alternative,' according to a recent Linux Devices article. Lots of screenshots on their site, including PDA apps, a web browser and a virtual console."
"Restrictions:
--Software created with Qt Free Editions is governed by the terms of the GPL and QPL.
--The Free Edition licenses do not allow the development or distribution of commercial software."
The LGPL allows you to use libraries, as long as you supply the code for those libraries, but your own code can remain closed. There is no such option for the GPL/QPL versions of QT.
Things are totally different in the embedded world. Most embedded companies want to standout by doing their own thing. As far as hardware support goes, embedded devices generally have a fixed set of hardware and often the devleopers write their own drivers. Also, we are not talking about Joe Home user here, these are developers and *should* have enough knowledge to look at all the options and choose which one is best for *THEM*. Why would the embedded market want what toolkits they use dictated to them? On the desktop I agree, picking one or two toolkits (QT, GTK+) and sticking with them is the best option. This pretty much what desktop Linux is doing. Sure there are other choices out there, but the majority of apps are GTK+ or QT. There is no problem with having tons of choices in the embedded world. It will only make it stronger and the embedded developers that can differentiate their products most should get the best sales.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
X11 worked fine on 20MHz 68k workstations with 4Mbytes of RAM. In the days of 400MHz PDAs with 64M+ of RAM, there really is no need to "replace" X11, in particular given their stamp-sized screens. And because X11 is neutral on policy, unlike other window systems, you can build a great handheld or embedded environment on top of it. In practice, of course, X11 is already more efficient in both memory and speed than either Qt/Embedded or the Windows GDI, so it is also hard to see why people think they can do better.
Besides, there is another problem with GPL'ed toolkits: the competition lets commercial developers develop for free. GPL'ed toolkits and window systems are no good: any Linux-based PDA is only going to succeed widely if commercial developers can develop for it for free. That's a bargain free software has always been making (e.g., you can develop commercial software with gcc for Linux and not open source it). Toolkits need to have licenses like LGPL, X11, or BSD.
So, please forget about all this "GPL'ed embedded toolkit" nonsense. Use X11 and one of several embedded toolkits for handheld development: wxWindows, FLTK, or GPE.
The default XFree86 port to handhelds, of course, has a lot of useless overhead in it because it is just a recompilation of a desktop server. That can be reduced, but you don't need to invent a new, incompatible window system to do it. An embedded X11 server can probably be stripped down to 100-200k. That is where the effort of people looking to create "efficient" embedded servers should be directed.