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Trolltech Discontinue Non-Commercial Qt
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.
Look around at crossplatform OSS projects. WxWindows is much more widely used. Hell, even the Win32 GTK port is more widely used.
Also, can someone enlighten me as to why my post was flamebait?
Slashdot: Where people pretend to be twice as smart as they really are by behaving like children.
Canopy group is delusional, what's your point? If a single-digit stake makes them a Canopy group company, than that's really grasping at straws. Linux Networx (which delivered a top-5 Linux-based supercomputer to LLNL) is also a "feature company" on Canopy's website. A search for "canopy" on their website doesn't even get any hits. Seriously, the TT -> Canopy relationship is hugely overblown.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
I've seen lots of grumblings about this, but lets think for a moment. Why should they be obliged to supply a windows version. Its software developed for unix. Windows is a big difference and porting to it is no fun (I know). If its not fun, why give it away for free. So they're currently only selling it. Looks like a proccess. If they don't make enough money to makeit a viable option they'll probably just dump windows support entirly. From the unix front they get lots of useage and thus advertising of a sorts, what with kde and all the related apps. But free stuff for windows using qt hasnt really caught on, so why bother supporting such a hassle. Its their work to do with as they will they were supllying a free service and it didn't work out for them don't harp on them Don't like it? the current code is gpl fork it yourself and continue developing it if you all really care the point is that probably no one cares enough and it won't happen, which is why I think they've largly abandoned it. The difference again being popularity of platform. If they stopped new release of the gpl unix versions, someone, most likely the kde group, would pick it up and keep it going.
Methinks we'll be seeing a lot more of this in future, ie: release software for free, let it become established for a few years, then discontinue the "free version" so people are, to some extent, forced to buy the commercial version.
Companies should either do free or commercial software, or both. They shouldn't establish their product as free and then start charging for it once people rely on it.
This strikes me as more of a long-term market-share strategy rather than a recent change of policy.
Rather than repeat the tired cliche about apples and oranges, let me merely remind you that filet mignon costs a lot more than canned tuna, yet no one complains about the discriminatory and punitive pricing of fine steaks.
Lay off the crack pipe. Even though the $109 will only give you the IDE for c++, or c#, or VB.NET(you don't get all of the languages/tools) with the standard edition, to say that the qt toolkit is so much better than a world class IDE such as VS.NET is almost comical.
In any case, this just hurts open source and QT in particular in the long run. I guess open source zealotry also tends to make people forget that the windows market is still atleast 93%.
Typical comment around here though. Open source zealotry tends to fry the brain.
How much money has GTK+ made for GNU? How much money has LGPL wxWindows made? How about plain XFree86? I'm not talking about donations from Redhat or SuSE, I'm talking about actual revenue from actual customers. Now ask yourself if that's enough to support even one full time developer?
Yes, but instead of looking at it from a TrollTech point of view, look at it from a user point of view. Regardless of *why*, there are a number of developers supporting GTK+. It might be very difficult for TrollTech to make a profit doing th same thing (hell, it's hard for a company to compete with lots of free software), but that doesn't mean that users should then use TrollTech software.
May we never see th
Well, you can do free cross-platform QT development on any platform you want, as long as that platform runs X11 and has a POSIX-like interface (and what platform doesn't, nowadays?). Now that XFree86 is available for Windows (which is awesome, BTW) it should hardly be any trouble at all to develop QT/X11 applications for Windows as well. But if you want native QT/Mac or native QT/Windows, you still have to pay.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
Trolltech is saying that there is no free lunch. It gives the source out freely to Free Software users because they receive so much from Free Software and the Open Source model. They could build a viable business model with their free software alone.
The reason why they refuse to give away their source code and add value to the Windows codebase is because they get nothing in return from them. In fact, they have to pay Microsoft for the "privilege".
It's also much more difficult to code for the Windows platform than for the standard free software *NIX platforms.
One of the reasons is the lack of reliable documentation. Sure, there are tons of documents out there on Windows, but there are too many contradictions in them. Which one is correct? Which calls may cause seg faults? Which ones will cause the entire system to fail? No one seems to know. Microsoft has a mysterious habit of presenting second-rank "experts" to the community, while hiding the first-rank and true experts from public view. This means when you go read an article written by an "expert" in the field, it is really a nice PR ploy with little or no true substance. I guess you have to pay a lot more or live on the Microsoft campus if you want access to the actual experts.
The other is the short, abrupt upgrades that totally invalidate their previous work. Imagine rewriting the entire KDE codebase every year or so because Linux and XFree86 decide to move around all their APIs and invalidate previous ones. That is what Microsoft is forcing people to do. I've experienced it first-hand from about 1997-2000, as I was writing a game based on Direct3D. How many times did the API to Direct3D experience a complete rewrite? I don't recall, but I think it was something like 4. I also had to code up from '95, to '98, and then to 2000 and NT. That was a very painful experience for me. I feel the pain of the people who are chained to their desks and forced to code for windows. You really are slaves to the whims of Redmond.
The other reason is that when they have a problem, they cannot "dig down" into the source code or the community to discover if the problem is on their end or the OS's end. When developing for Linux or *BSD, when you run into some serious problems, you can either look into the source code itself or even ask the kernel community if there is a bug there or what you are doing wrong. Such is not possible with Microsoft unless you shell out some cash and spend a lot of time speaking with phone monkeys.
If you really, really need a Windows version of Qt, and if it really is going to save you a lot of time in your project, then you should gratefully shell out the money to get a developer's version of Qt for Windows. And you can't complain that it is not open source -- neither is Windows, and yet you use that. Your money is going to hire people who really don't want to code for Windows. You will be paying to have them trained on the latest versions of windows. Not just the APIs, but the new applications as well. Your money is going to be used to purchase the latest and "greatest" windows platform for them to code, test, and build on. Your money is going to go to the phone monkey department as they call in to see if there is a bug in the Windows OS or if they are just reading the wrong version of an "expert's" analysis. Your money is going to be spent lining Bill Gate's pockets, and hire a few people who would rather be coding for Linux, in other words.
The radical sect of Islam would either see you dead or "reverted" to Islam.
The per-developer license, having no relationship with the value of the final product, introduces a lot of uncertainity in the economic calulation.
Virtually every commercial UNIX development tool I've ever used in the has been a per-user license. This is similar in some ways to a per-developer license, but more flexible. It's main drawback is that you need a license server. It still has the "uncertainty" factor you're talking about. Do we need licenses for 25 developers should we go with 50? On the other hand, most commercial Windows development tools have per-seat licenses. This ties the developer down to a specific workstation which can be quite annoying.
The uncertain economic calculations can be a problem for some things, but not for tools. Carpenters buy hammers at a fixed price. They don't send monthly royalty payments to the hammer manufacturers.
A royalties-based license, instead, is very clear: you make money, then you pay us. You don't, you owe us nothing.
Could you list some popular commercial tools that have this pricing? I can't think of any off the top of my head. I do know of some embedded operating systems that somewhat follow this model, but no develoment tools per se.
little by little, KDE is being marginalized, despite being by far the best desktop. IMHO, the QT license is the culprit.
In terms of KDE, the license is the dual QPL/GPL. You're right, the GPL is completely inappropriate for a Free Software desktop. What were they thinking?
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
If you're in a professional environment, that $1550 may justify itself. If you're successful, it's a drop in the bucket. But for the hobbyist, it's a brutal kick in the teeth. Never mind the money, though. It still doesn't solve the problem that buying Qt for Windows to develop Free/Open Source software is antithetical to both the spirit of the movement, and the letter of the law.
Say, for example, me and my buddy Kyle use Qt to write the Greatest Program In The World, and we suck it up and pay the $1550 each for Qt/Win licenses. We decide to release it under the GPL, with the required exception clause for the Windows version. While the Linux/Unix and Mac OS X geeks tinker away at it, the Windows folk discover that they can't do squat with the source, unless they also fork over $1550 to Trolltech.
This is precicely why the GPL does not allow you to use non-Free libraries from 3rd parties. Those libraries preemptively stifle any progress on the platform(s) that require them. And the sad part is that Trolltech recommended exception clauses with the non-commercial version! They're supposed to be such staunch advocates of Open Source, yet they suggest that Windows developers compromise their principles. Maybe Trolltech thinks that anyone who develops Open Source software for Windows has already compromised their principles. Pretty piss-poor attitude, if you ask me.
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