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Trolltech Discontinue Non-Commercial Qt

Posted by timothy on from the tradeoffs-and-obligations dept.

An anonymous reader submits "Trolltech has quietly discontinued their non-commercial version of Qt for Windows. This eliminates Qt as a choice for those wanting to develop free multi-platform software." Actually, according to the linked page, "if you write Free software (Open Source software covered by the GPL) you are welcome to download and use the Free Edition of Qt," and Trolltech points out that one can buy the current edition of Qt -- seems fair enough.

6 of 101 comments (clear)

  1. No great loss by lpontiac · · Score: 4, Informative

    Qt/Free on Windows was decreasingly useful .. it was a crufty old binary-only Qt 2.3, which is quite aged when you consider that Qt is up to 3.2.x. Being pre-3.0 there were notable differences between it and more 'modern' Qt versions.

    By the way, you can still do Free (as in GPL) software development cross-platform on Qt, between X11 and Mac OS X.

  2. Alternative Toolkits by oz_ko · · Score: 5, Informative
    I think one of the best free toolkits is the eclispse swt which can build binaries for almost any platform.

    There is also now a visual editor which should make development much easier.

    Check it out at http://www.eclipse.org

    Oz

  3. Re:No big deal by BrianHV · · Score: 5, Informative

    The wxWindows license is LGPL with an exception to allow static linking and binary-only distribution without extra source distribution burdens. This is nice when you want to tweak a platform's behavior at the toolkit layer.

  4. Re:Canopy Company by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Look here. Trolltech is not a "Canopy Company". The Canopy Group owns 4.1% of Trolltech shares. Borland owns 8.3%--is Trolltech then a "Borland Company"? The employees own nearly 64.7%--is Trolltech then an "Employee Company"?

    Do you see how fucking inane your claim is?

  5. Before the trolls start by daaku · · Score: 4, Informative

    It needs to be mentioned that this doesnt not affect the GPL version of Qt, as used for KDE and never can. Its been said, and said over again. Go here to find out why:

    http://kde.org/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php

  6. Re:Perhaps they are waiting for the Bill? by wcbarksdale · · Score: 4, Informative
    Actually, I remember that being roughly their answer on an old FAQ. Their current one says more obliquely:
    Trolltech supports free software development on platforms where contributing to Free Software/Open Source development is part of the platform strategy. At the time being it does not seem natural for us to release a free edition for Qt/Windows.