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Developers Go Mobile: Opie Releases Free SDK

An anonymous reader writes "The Open Palmtop Integrated Environment (Opie) project to develop a free graphical application environment for Linux handhelds and webpads has released a software development kit (SDK) based on the KDevelop3 open source IDE. The Opie SDK provides tools for developing open, professional-class applications for Linux based mobile and embedded devices running under the Opie platform, according to Opie hacker Oliver 'Groucho' Fels. In case you're wondering, Opie is a fork of Trolltech's Qtopia, a palmtop application stack popularized by Sharp's Zaurus line and other PDAs and handhelds. Opie features a sophisticated personal information (PIM) framework as well as several other productivity apps, extended multimedia capabilities and document model, networking and communication tools, and support for more than a dozen languages."

11 of 54 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Licencing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    Of course not. It's based on Qt which is licensed under GPL/QPL.

  2. Re:Opie, the one everyone forgot. by mutende · · Score: 3, Informative

    I thought OPIE was One-time Passwords In Everything.

    --
    Unselfish actions pay back better
  3. Re:Licencing by MooKore+2004 · · Score: 3, Informative

    It is binary compatible with Qtopia. Buy a qtopia licence from TrollTech. Of course if you release your programs as open source you can still sell them. Many people have wrote Qt Apps and release the source for free, but sell binaries.

  4. Not just for PDAs by anonymous+coword · · Score: 5, Informative

    Opie/Qtopia are useful several different enviornments. Most notably for "rescue" systems. For example in Ark Linux, if you mess up your XServer and it cant start up again, runs a Qtopia app to help you recover. Also for its installer.

    I personally have written an mplayer front end for my own home made settop box because I didn't want all the burden of X for just one app! So try them today, it may just be the "X replacement" that people are looking for!

  5. Re:Licencing by Ianoo · · Score: 5, Informative

    ... and hence the fork is licensed purely under the GPL, since the QPL is a commercial license and does not permit forks.

  6. More Linux Distributions for PDAs by wehe · · Score: 4, Informative

    OPIE is great. It works on different PDA models (not only the Zaurus PDAs made by SHARP). Though there are different other Linux distributions for PDAs available.

  7. Re:Opie, the one everyone forgot. by J.+T.+MacLeod · · Score: 3, Informative

    No, Opie was from The Andy Griffith Show.

  8. Re:Opie + Zaurus SL-C7x0? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Haven't used it on an SL-C model, but I'vve got one of the original 5500's I believe it was and I installed Opie on there pretty much off the bat, good software selection, decent hardware support (Considering the SD card module is binary-only from sharp, although somebody had a open source mmc module under development)

    They're worth a look if you don't mind your 'open source' having a lot of closed source items in it.

    On yeah, and if you kill the backlight you get a good 5 hours or so on a battery (maybe more)

    -- vranash

  9. Re:Opie + Zaurus SL-C7x0? by PaintyThePirate · · Score: 4, Informative

    I had Opie on my Pocket PC (An Ipaq 3650) for a while. It was running on the Familiar distribution from handhelds.org. It worked surprisingly well, though some of the PIM features were not as polished as those on the Pocket PC 2002 OS. Opie supported all of the hardware on the Ipaq, so I assume the Zaurus would be fully supported as well. As for the question about if it is "experimental", I would liken it to the Testing distribution of Debian. It is stable enough to run fine, but it is not as perfect as the Stable distro.

  10. Re:Opie + Zaurus SL-C7x0? by treke · · Score: 2, Informative

    You can't kill the backlight on a C7X0. If you do, the non-reflective screen just turns black. A c760 can already get you 4 or 5 hours of continual use, so it isn't a big deal.

    As for Opie, I've used it on my iPaqs and my C760. Works well for my needs, but it isn't for everyone.

  11. YES by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Of course you can!

    The desktop and all the development tools are GPLd so your commercial app would naturally have to be Free.