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Novell Desktop To Standardize On Qt [updated]
Balinares writes "NewsForge reports that Novell has settled for Qt as its Linux desktop development environment, casting more light on their strategy to unify KDE and GNOME. This ought to be interesting. The prospect of using Mono to code against Qt makes me drool in advance. Maybe programming will suck no longer!" Update: 03/30 00:01 GMT by T : Sounds like that story doesn't quite hold water; Nat Friedman writes in this Slashdot comment that "We have not decided that we are standardizing on Qt for the desktop. ... We support development with a variety of toolkits, and our internal development is done using the right tool for the right problem. This includes Qt, Gtk, VCL, XUL and others, depending on the application."
Novell is slowly changing my opinion of them...
Doesn't QT have a bunch of annoying licensing restrictions?
It's good to see these two being merged. I love Linux, but it seems as if some people need to see a common desktop, for them to feel like Linux has arrived. BTW: FP!
- Will they be writing a GTK-on-top-of-QT layer?
- Ditching GTK apps?
- Using GTK apps but not encouraging their creation?
- Just using QT for Novell-specific stuff (like Redhat uses GTK for its configurators, etc)?
*confused*Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
The prospect of using Mono to code against Qt makes me drool in advance.
Boy, you really need to get out more.
How much will it cost to use QT to write business apps?
m l
From the trolltech site: http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/licensing.ht
" Use the Qt Commercial License to:
Build commercial software.
Build software that is not sold, but that advances the business goals of a commercial enterprise."
Hey, if programming were easy, people would do it for free.
taken! (by Davidleeroth) Thanks Bingo Foo!
No way, not cool. I don't want to sell my customers a Linux distro and then tell them that if they choose it for development, they have to pay for dev licenses of QT and an IDE and ... That's bullshit. What's the alternative in my client's eyes? Write internal code against GTK, which will look like a secondary/inferior choice to them, whether it is or isn't. And with Mono inhouse now, how long before Miquel and the Mono group will be forced to use QT#? Wow, now the default toolkit for Mono requires a developer license (which is WAY overpriced). I disagree with this wholeheartedly. My opinion may not amount to anything, but they are wrong in doing this.
So the obvious question: does this mean Novel has changed Mono's mind about GTK# which they've been saying lately is their preferred widget set? Presumably.. but they are fairly well entrenched in GTK I think.
I've been hesitating to jump ship from Fedora to SuSE for fear that SuSE would, over time, become just as difficult to run/maintain KDE on (beyond the token Fedora KDE install option, which works--actually USING it on Fedora, which isn't so fun). Looks like I should wait no longer. All hail the lizard!
This does make a lot of sense, actually. And it might actually be early enough in the game for it to work.
.NET API's. .NET might, in fact, actually be the fastest route there (aside from Java, which I think people ought to be using for this purpose, but let's set that aside for a moment). Perhaps if, boosted by a Novell push, developers begin writing and publishing .NET code that uses Qt libraries, there will be that many more cross-platform desktop apps available that won't be bound to Windows.Forms, Avalon, or whatever other Windows-bound API's Microsoft wants everyone to use.
.NET is, on its face, a good design, but that we have to worry about Microsoft using it as a cudgel to beat back its competition.
Right now, there is still the opportunity to attract developers to cross-platform
It would be a double-bonus if Novell could make Mono a unified framework for writing apps that can be backended by KDE, GNOME, or Microsoft Windows without a rewrite. Let's see what happens. What's really a shame is that
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
It's a bit odd that this article wasn't posted to /. sooner, as most people first noticed it when it made osnews almost a week ago.
Many BrainShare attendees have already dismissed this as a badly written article, as it combines statements from Novell about their desire to see a unified Linux desktop (see one of the worst examples of tech reporting in years) with rumors and rampant speculation. There is no basis of truth in the heise article.
I'm sure Novell will send out someone with authority in due time to stomp this out, but this is just what I've heard so far.
The german newsmagazine HEISE a very popular and creditible organisation was reporting about that as well. As they got told from first hand QT/KDE is doing the run.
You can read more here on their site.
The old Microsoft approach is to Embrace an Extend. I often hear people say that Mono is going to die because MS has the staff to write more and more APIs and Mono will not be able to keep up. But my thoughts are that Mono and other Open Source projects should be able to implement some impressive and highly usable C# and .NET implementations completely independent of MS influence and support. Essentially the community will have the ability to Embrace and Extend a MS created technology with just the ECMA standard C# and CLI recommendation.
.NET framework are very robust when compared to traditional network communications such as CGI or OLE. It is clearly an ideal glue language for a diverse Linux desktop which often mixes many programming and scripting languages together.
I have been impressed with the CLI implementation and the SOAP and Web Services technologies that are a part of the
Brennan Stehling - http://brennan.offwhite.net/blog/
I can say that there is nothing easier outside of web development. I am an old MFC programmer. I am often lost in developing Qt apps, but I am very comforatable with that because the documentation is copius cnad clear. Whats more is it is soooooooo well thought out. It makes MFC look like the crap that it is (C++ wrappers for C objects). Learning Qt is like learning to walk the right way. It's amazingly simple. I will always request that Qt be used regardless of platform in future jobs.
Now the license is different. I often wish there was a small-business or starting-business license, but this is only pertanant if you are going commercial work. for GPL work it is completely free.
Right now I'm doing some advanced work with QSA (Javascripted Qt apps) It is easy and cross platform. I can now replace a browser (and the rendering issues with a user interface file (loaded at run-time) and ECMA script code (platform indep. cause we run on various architectures with limited space, whose list may change at any time)
The Troll Tech stuff is top notch.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
Canopy is run out of Utah. ... err... I mean Trolltech.
Novell is run out of Utah.
Canopy representatives sit on the Trolltech board
and SCO and Canopy own chunks of Quasar
Technologies
Trolltech produces QT.
What's up? Is their some kind of dealing going
down?
Ups, sorry I forgot, he's busy providing QT support and services for several companies as reported on slashdot.
The combination of Mono with Qt and Linux is great. The Open Source nature of these applications means that they are virtually bug free. I am glad to see that Novell is in top form once more, supporting Linux. I have used Mono extensively and it really is great. It is not proprietary like Java, and it is a wonderful tool to use. Mono is the programming platform that will put Microsoft to rest once and for all!
---
Find out more about the impending downfall o
I'm surprised redhat has stuck with gnome this long as their DE of choice. It is more usable, and that's why I am glad personally they have.
With so many of the gtk programs riviling the qt equivalents, I wonder why companies always flock towards Qt.
- tristan
It costs nothing to develop business applications qith the QT toolkit. The only requirement is that if you use the $0.00 license(GPL) the app must be GPL. It really isn't much to ask.
The fact that Novell is going to use QT is very telling. Novell is a software corporation whose existence past, present and future relies on selling software. That means that while they will throw the open source community a GPLed bone (Yast, Evolution) they will also offer up lots of closed source applications and some will be QT based.
Novell is not afraid of having to pay a very reasonable licensing cost for commercial development and neither are most other software companies. They already pay licensing for MS Visual DEs, Borland DEs and probably many others. Paying for a QT license is a minor cost of doing business and it will not deter any serious software house.
I think that many commercial development companies would consider the GPL to be "annoying license restrictions" if all they want to do is write a GUI app.
I personally have been hoping for a while now something like this would happen for the Linux desktop. It's going to take a corporation to step up and unify this effort in order to gain mass acceptance. I'm sure there will be some grumbling in the community, but open source is open so feel free to customize to your hearts content if you don't like it. Most people don't want to have to go to this effor though.
The only potential problem I see is Trolltech's insistance on license fees for commercial development. Not that this is any different in the Windows world, but it'd be nice to give ISVs a completely royalty free solution. I'd like to see Novell take that $50 million that IBM gave them and purchase TT outright and put Qt under a more liberal open license. The wording on the KDE Free Qt clause seems a bit unclear to me. Does Qt get automatically BSD'ed when any company buys Trolltech. What if the purchasing company doesn't make the license any more closed that currently, does that have an effect.
Anyway, I've never understood the reasons people chose to write a whole desktop environment in straight C. C++ just seems a far more natural fit. I've looked over both GNOME and KDE fairly extensively, and there is no doubt in my mind that KDE has a cleaner code base and architecture. With all the "higher level language" rumblings going on in the GNOME community, I suspect that those developers are hitting a brick wall in terms of where they want to go and what the current code is capable of becoming. That sort of thing isn't happening in the KDE world, so I think that speaks volumes.
Good luck Novell, you've got at least one supporter here.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
Quicktime works in linux?
I hate QUICKTIME!!! /should I rtfa?
That is the only logical choice left to them.. if they want to encourage 3rd party applications that integrate into their desktop.
-
WHO CARES
Casual Games/Downloads
You don't want to use a non-Free version of QT for developing commercial aps? Fine, don't. No one is saying you have to. GTK won't die precisely because of this. Stop complaining, continue to release apps using GTK (or other toolkit) and be done with it. Or better yet, consult with someone who has great insight into the QT license and see if there is a way for you to release your commercial code independent of non-Free QT, and allow the user to link their own widget toolkit in (i.e., Free QT) post-distribution.
.02
I don't know if that is either technically or legally possible. just my
Not everyone wants to use the GPL. Me, I like the GPL. But some people don't want to use it , for varying reasons, and that's their right.
When we're talking about, say, incorporating large portions of an open source project into your program, if you say "but I don't want to use the GPL!", that's no excuse. You're getting something of value. If you don't want the value provided by the GPLed program code you incorporate, write the code yourself.
When we're just talking about developing for Novell/Linux using the default GUI widget toolkit, "but I don't want to use the GPL! and i don't want to pay for a developemt license, either!", is pretty fricking reasonable. In this case, the people don't want the value added by Qt, they just want their scrollbars to look the same as the scrollbars in all the other Novell/Linux apps.
What about wxwidgets (the GUI development library formerly known as WxWindows? Sounds like a safe compromise with strong portablility and no licensing hassles.
Maybe in the future you won't be so moronic as to mention FP or other lame things like that.
What an idiot. You look even more stupid because your post is like the 20th in the thread. Sheesh.
The only source of this so far has been Heise. In their original article, they word this quite unclear (I'm german) basically just mentioning that this information "slipped through during the day", without any source or confirmation.
However, derStandard.at asked for confirmation at Novell and they assured that no decision would have been fallen yet.
They (Novell) also demoed quite a few new Gtk applications at the keynotes, most notably the interesting iFolders (using Gtk on Linux), while I don't think there has been shown any _new_ Qt program.
So take this all with a grain of salt, I can't really imagine that this is a clear decision yet.
Novell Linux will definately have a transparent kicker!!! w00t W00t
If only Sun had embraced Open Source the way Microsoft did, maybe Java/Swing would find itself beginning to be the consensus cross-platform GUI development platform instead of Mono... pity
Why, oh why, did they choose a C++ toolkit? Issues of gcc binary compatibility aside, C++ suffers from the Fragile Base Class (FBC) problem, where adding new instance variables to base classes can break binary compatibility for every derived class. This is why QT has broken binary compatibility twice already in the past. C structures suffer from this same problem, but Mono classes, Objective C classes, et al do not.
I still don't understand the popularity of QT. It's as if people don't want linux to be taken seriously as a deployment platform. Why target a host that won't run your binaries next year?
.. and non-gurus, just for normal users of linux, what exactly does this mean?
According to a message on the Austrain Web Site derstandard.at (available via http://www.pro-linux.de/news/2004/6630.html) the decision has not been taken.
keeping kde and gnome separate for a little while longer, or possibly forever, might be a good plan. There's one catch though, they need to be completely interoperable. I want to be able to install the same program on both desktops and have it work seamlessly. I also want an icon put on the desktop or the taskbar menus. Is this possible? I don't have the expertise but I'm sure it can be done if these programs are on top of a standard api.
Why do I think this is a good idea? Keeping them separate but equal promotes competition between them. It makes them work harder to fix those little glitches that annoy users. KDE is looking kind of like windows xp, and gnome mac os X. It'd be nice if they took on more of an original look, but hey rome wasn't built in a day. I think that having the choice between both desktops knowing that most applications will work the same without needing a hundred different rpms for each thing is what's needed. I also think that libraries need to be consolidated. Basically I guess I'm saying this: the ease of installing programs on windows, but the ability to run them on a mac. Sound difficult? eh, look how far things have come.
nt
We're not really sure where the rumor came from that Novell is standardizing on Qt as its desktop platform. Chris Stone said no such thing during his keynote; the video for the keynote is available here:
http://www.novell.com/brainshare/keynotes2004.h
Novell supports GNOME and KDE, Qt and Gtk. We have not decided that we are standardizing on Qt for the desktop. First of all, most software developed for the Linux desktop is developed by the broader community, and Novell could never impose a standard platform on the community at large. We support development with a variety of toolkits, and our internal development is done using the right tool for the right problem. This includes Qt, Gtk, VCL, XUL and others, depending on the application.
We do not regard the variety of toolkits and platforms in the Linux world as a problem, as long as there are standards and shared code which allow applications to work together.
And frankly, today's Linux toolkits and platforms are one of the least interesting topics on the Linux desktop today. The important issues for this industry and market are our opportunity to innovate in information management and collaboration, improving interoperability with Windows users and services, bringing more ISVs and developers to the Linux platform, enhancing the usability and consistency of the various components that make up the desktop, enabling Windows migration with tools and training and documentation, and creating a manageable Linux desktop to enable large-scale deployments.
We see freedesktop.org as one of the most important and central elements of the Linux desktop for the next several years. The desktop today is made up of a number of components, including OpenOffice, Mozilla, Evolution, and of course GNOME and KDE. Over time we hope to work with freedesktop.org to unify the key interfaces and functionality of these components, to improve integration for users and provide a common open
source desktop platform.
Nat Friedman
Novell/SUSE Linux Desktop Lead
Bullshit. I've watched that keynote from Novell's website. (and you can too) All he said is that SuSE 9.1 will be getting a QT-based Openoffice. THAT IS ALL. nothing more. The journalist completely missinterpreted this, saying that SuSE is going to standardize on QT. It's all a missunderstanding.
Life is offtopic.
QT is much prettier than GTK..
- Hi I'm Linus Torvalds and I pronounce Linux, Lih-nix..
That the way the GPL is written, it makes it such that any free-speech software under it will be free-beer if someone wants it to be. You get the software, then compile and release your own distribution for free. So a company can charge for GPL software, but people only need to pay it if they want it straight from the company. Anyone who has bought it can release a free version, legally.
Novell is trying to create a professional desktop environment for Linux. To this end, choosing the highest quality toolkit is much more important than having to pay a small fee for the development of non-GPL applications.
Gtk's licensing only has an advantage over Qt's for those shops that want to create commercial non-GPL applications yet are too small to afford Qt's relatively cheap license. Novell have obviously decided that those shops aren't such an important market to sway their choice.
-- Repeat with me: "There is no right to profits".
Novell is taking the worst approach of "if you can't beat them, join them." I have never seen a company more desperate to adopt another OS's feature.
In the end when you reinstall Novell, you are really installing a Linux OEM.
What exactly is Novell's unified desktop?
Are they writing a new desktop environment from scratch using Qt, taking ideas (and code?) from KDE and GNOME?
I have to admit, I don't understand the reason why they'd do this. While it would be "politically" better -- the new desktop is neither KDE nor GNOME, they'd have to turn their back on a lot of code the KDE/GNOME people have written. Wouldn't it just be easier to add interoperability function to each of KDE and GNOME rather than re-write chunks of code which cannot be "borrowed"?
I'd be interested in hearing the opinion of people who know more about KDE and GNOME than I do...
I want to be able to install the same program on both desktops and have it work seamlessly. I also want an icon put on the desktop or the taskbar menus.
you can start coding then...
Your company's stance on the GUI toolkits available for Linux is a good one, and makes a lot of sense - as you said, Novell should not standardise on one particular toolkit.
So how could the keynote speech have been misconstrued?
SCREW THE ADS! http://adblock.mozdev.org/ Proud user of teh Fox of Fire - Registered Linux User #289618
I find that Gnome's apps are far more primitive than KDE's, and behind the times. Let's take a look at your examples:
The Gimp: Well, it uses Gtk+, but it isn't officially a part of the Gnome platform, is it? It doesn't use too many other Gnome libraries. I don't really count it as a Gnome app. And, er, why was it in development for three frickin' years to get to 2.0?
Gaim: Yes, Gaim is very good, but you should see the new Kopete messenger in KDE 3.2. Very slick, supports MSN, Yahoo, AIM, ICQ, and IRC, with a plugin interface, XSLT to generate the chat windows, etc. etc. It's at least comparable to Gaim.
Rhythmbox: Hmm, looks like a pretty nice music player. But have you seen the new JuK in KDE 3.2? Very serviceable, and very solid MP3 player. It even looks similar to Rhythmbox. On the other hand, it lacks net Radio... maybe in the next version?
Galeon: Umm... Galeon is just a wrapper around Mozilla, the 10-thousand pound gorilla of a web browser. I prefer Konqueror and the KHTML widget. KHTML, though not perfect at CSS, is way faster, and is far easier to embed that Mozilla. It now supports mouse gestures with KHotKeys, and conforms properly to your UI theme.
And look, I seriously have to point out that Konqueror beats Nautilus. The KIOSlave system means drag-and-drop "just works" across many protocols (ftp, sftp, fish, audiocd ripping, http, samba (smb protocol)). I have yet to see Nautilus do anything like this, except with CD Burning (but KDE has K3b, so I don't mind).
KDE is an extremely capable desktop with many more mature applications than Gnome. Plus, most companies prefer dealing with standard C++ for GUI apps, as opposed to learning some weird custom OO model like glib, even if they have to pay a bit.
Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so. --Ford Prefect
I'm a KDE user and I love it, but this is just the same story regurgitated about five times. Stop it until we get some official confirmation please.
In all honesty, I don't think it's going to make a blind bit of difference what they pick, although for what they have been describing in the past few weeks (embedded system etc.) it seems like a sensible choice.
What are the legal ramifications of using something like Mono? I'm guessing there isn't, as I'm sure Novell would've taken it into consideration any possibility of Microsoft trying to patent .net technology.
.net and totally screw over any open source projects that use Mono?
I don't know if it's just heresay, but could MS patent
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
One can hardly say that the Canopy Group owns or controls Trolltech.
Uh? Really? What's Ralph Yarro doing on the Trolltech board of directors? Ralph Yarrow runs Canopy and is Darl McBride's boss. Gee. Looks like Canopy does control Trolltech.
Give it up man, face the music.
This is what happens when you try to pull too much information out of a German translation of an offhand comment
Is anybody keeping track of how many morons are spouting this same crap?
Please specify a single popular commercial app that uses GTK...
People fail to understand that you don't pay only for the right for developing commercial programs when you buy a QT licence. You are also paying for SUPPORT.
There exist lot of free software for Linux, thus if you want to SELL your software, you need to invest lot of money in any case to create something much, much better.
Last time I checked, there were lot of undocumented widgets in the GTK. How are you supposed to figure them out? $1000-$2000 QT licence pays itself quickly back with faster development times.
There's a valid point buried in that funny. If all it takes to make programming "not suck" was to build an framework, then it would have been done years ago. The fact is that at best it will make programming "suck less". At worst people will be spinning their wheels. QT is nice, and GTK is nice, but neither one will make programming "not suck", because that's not what makes programming "suck".
Qt/Free is GPLd. You can make any proprietary internal app with it. Period. Not even Trolltech can impose additional restrictions over GPL. Not anymore, at least.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
GTK is much prettier than QT.. But seriously, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. There are just as many people who prefer Gnome's look over KDE's as there are who prefer KDE's over Gnome's.
Please specify a single popular commercial app that uses GTK...
Evolution.
Use GNOME/Gtk, because you can USE Gtk as much as you want for COMMERCIAL development without paying anything.
Don't use KDE/Qt, because you can only develop FREE software using it, otherwise it costs money.
So.. NOW KDE/Qt is the champion of free software, whereas GNOME/Gtk is for the COMMERCIAL (and apparently not so evil after all) PROPRIETARY closed source solutions.
You make me laugh!
If GNOME/Gtk is REALLY a friend, let's see them place everything under GPL (for true software protection) rather than the LGPL.
What's the big deal about support Qt is you use the toolkit? Yep.. it's commercial...and if you use it for commercial development, it costs money... so?? Is someone suggesting their software business plan is only to sell like 10 copies of their software, so they can't afford to by a real development license?? Just seems weird.
Now the license is different. I often wish there was a small-business or starting-business license, but this is only pertanant if you are going commercial work. for GPL work it is completely free.
There's no reason a small business can't do commercial work and license it under the GPL. It's done all the time by the Linux distributors both large and small, and many other development groups.
Anyway, I see this misconception about QT's licensing all the time, and I think part of it stems from Trolltech's own use of the word commercial to describe their other license. The word they (and you) are looking for is proprietary, not commercial. If you don't want to use the GPL (usually because you're paranoid about people stealing the ideas, or because you want to link with some other proprietary code), then you have to pay for commercial (i.e. proprietary) Qt licensing. However, you're free to use the free (GPL) version of Qt commercially, as long as you follow the GPL.
GTK (and most GNOME libs) are LGPL. As in: Permits linking with proprietary apps.
So please mod parent down.
When the standards are cuty.
If they don't want to pay for a commercial QT license, they are in exactly the same boat that they would be if they wrote a GTK app; i.e., if they want to distribute, they have to distribute under GPL.
GTK has no such restriction. It is released under the LGPL.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Essentially the community will have the ability to Embrace and Extend a MS created technology with just the ECMA standard C# and CLI recommendation.
.NET related? Is your ultra-nifty Linux Mono C# super app gonna withstand a barrage of M$ suits and such?
.NET? I mean, that's their friggin lifeblood for christs sake!
/.'ers bark, bitch, whine, and generally froth at the mouth at any 'Microsoft just f-ed over <insert any object or idea in the universe here>' news, but when it comes to Mono or C# or .NET those same types are like hmmm, welllll, it has been ratified by ECMA, so that has to mean something. Maybe I'll give it a lookie over.
Gee, how so? I mean, there's only so many ways you can open a socket and read in info and who, when pressed with some bullshit lawsuit from M$, is gonna stand up against that machine? The only reason Sun got anywhere with the Java lawsuit with M$ is because they had the cash and disdain to go the distance. Assets like that are a rarity. And if f-ing Amazon can patent one click (the pukes!), what's stopping M$ from firing up the legal machine when it comes to ANYTHING
C'mon man, Mono is poison. Not cuz of the great job all the guys who built it, but because it is based on PATENTED MATERIAL from the most poisonous software company on the planet. WHY OH WHY will M$ give ANYONE a break when it comes to licensing and patent issues related to
It's hilarious, but sad, how
BZZZZTTTT! WRONG! Same company. Same tactics. Same aspirations. Same one folk, one operating system. Same monkey boy, same Billy 'the borg' Gates. Wake the-f up!
"Btw, if you have been following my posts on
my blog and on the desktop-devel-list, you will
know that my feeling is that all of the existing
toolkits today (Gtk, Qt, XUL and VCL) will
become obsolete and we need to start looking
at the next generation toolkit system."
And the ironic thing is this "next generation" toolkit is being produced by a convicted monopolis with a history of corrupting standards, while our "community" open source efforts (Gtk, St, XUL, VCL, and Wxwidgets) are being abandoned as not visionary enough.
I'm certain history will remember you well, Miguel.
BTW Can we conclude that this story being misconstrued the way it was, is a sign of people's true feelings about their preferences?
I happen to think that this is ontopic.
1. glib is an attempt to bring one of the c++ features to c (classes, vtables, virtual methods) -- it works. but in c++ it's far easier;
2. once I was in this c++ shop, and they said: we don't do operator overload; it's dangerous! what if you overload operator+(point&,point&) to subtract the coordinates of the points? and I answered: (a) why in heavens one would do something so braindead? (b) operator overloading has its place; it's not to be taken lightly, and it's not to to such brain damage; it's to overload operator+ to when you would do a method called plus and substitute Vector c = a.plus(b) by Vector c = a + b; which is far more expressive;
3. RAII: Resource acquiring in initialization! No "finally" keyword!!! No "goto cleanup_this; cleanup_this: clean_x(); return" want a file? open it! "fstream f("gee.txt", ios::read)"! when it goes out of scope (by way of return, even, or an exception) it will be closed!!! No garbage collection large cycle of hmm-is-this-being-used-yet!
4. Everything else is unnecessary complication.
IMHO
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Isn't drooling (in this context) kind of by definition in advance?
Find a DEFINITIVE quote, not taken out of context that says that it is ok to develope with Qt for free. The closest I can come is their policy/FAQ that says it is only on Linux, only GPL. It says nothing about Windows, even if also free and GPLd.
Why is the open source community interested in taking sucky .Net and making it suck on Linux too?
I am a Linux desktop user. I would like to see the Linux desktop grow to a healthy double digit percentage of market share. That is my dream.
The problem with standardizing on Qt is it's license. GPL your code or buy a proprietary license from Trolltech. Yes that is choice and it seems fair.
The problem is that GUI libraries have become commoditized. This happened decades ago with Microsoft and Apple. Developers have become conditioned that using a GUI library is free (as in cost). These Microsoft and Macintosh developers are in for a shock when they realize they have to pay for the *right* to use the standardized GUI. They never have had to pay before. Chance's are that they will just say screw linux and walk away.
With all the SCO lawsuits, MS TCO FUD, slashdot idiocy, and the GNU/zealotry poisoning the water hole, Linux does NOT need anymore baggage that will harm it's desktop acceptance. Personally I am sick of it. And I am sick of people like LMCBoy.
Any Linux distro that standardizes on Qt is commiting business suicide. Sun knows this. Bruce Perens knows this. Red Hat knows this. Apparently Novell is clueless.
There's a nice GPL version for us all to enjoy.
puts ("Python r0cks\n");
For which Gnome is the default desktop. It forms the basis of Sun's Java desktop.
Oh yeah, GNUStep and VXWindows are world class and bugfree applications or whatever you want to call them
........ etc etc etc
Have you ever tried to do a multiplatform program using VXW ?
This feature does not work on this platform, that feature has a bug on that platform, the other feature has not been fully implemented
99.99999999999999% of the time QT is free, no cost, nada. KDE doesn't fall under a situtation where it would need to pay for using QT. By no stretch of the imagination. If a situtation comes up where you want to write closed source code to make money off of QT, why shouldn't they be paid for their superior product and hard work? QT is possibly one of the best graphical libraries around. It's mature, portable, clean, GPL. Can anyone here actually name 5 linux applications they use in their day to day life that falls under the situtation where they'd need to pay Trolltech? Frankly, I think they _should_ be paid if you are going to make money off of their work. They are encouraging programmers to write GPL compatable code, and if you are so opposed to writing GPL compatable code, you will be charged for it. More than anything there are a lot of people talking about a lot of hypothetical situations that will arise less than 1% of the time and will not apply to KDE as long as it stays open source.
Well, it appears that it was actually SuSE, with their Trolltech connections, that took over Novell, and not the other way around.
And if we are not careful, Trolltech is going to end up controlling Linux. [We also need to consider the possibility of a backroom deal between Trolltech and Microsoft, similar to the deal between Microsoft and SCO.]
The danger, of course, is not the GPL'd version of Qt. KDE is also not a problem. Both of those are Open Source, so we don't have to worry about them, and I have no reason to talk about them.
The real danger of Trolltech is the proprietary version of Qt and the applications that depend on it.
Or, in more general terms, the danger is proprietary middleware.
Let's look at an example from history. Remember when the PC platform was open, from bottom to top? Remember when you could not only buy the hardware from any number of vendors, but there were also competing vendors for the BIOS, there was more than one windowing architecture (Gem, Geoworks, Borland's GUI libs,...), and there were dozens of development environments, and thousands of code libraries? Remember when standards were simple, when it was easy to write code to interface directly with printers, with video cards, and so on?
What happened? Microsoft introduced Windows.
After a while, Windows became an indespensible component of the PC. Applications depended on it, and hardware manufacturers had to support it. And there was only one supplier of the Windows component, namely, Microsoft.
Soon, Microsoft started using its control of Windows to make itself the winner in the applications market. And today, Microsoft (with a few accomplices) also dictates the standards for PC hardware, its BIOS, its peripherals, and its network protocols.
What was special about Windows? It was proprietary middleware!
Windows sat in the middle, in between the applications and the PC. Any applications that wanted to access PC hardware used (and became dependent on) Windows APIs. And any PC manufacturer that wanted applications had to support Windows APIs. Bill Gates once said that by controlling the APIs, he controlled the industry.
Likewise, PC users became locked in. They could replace their hardware. They could replace an application. But they couldn't replace Windows. As the PC became cheaper, Windows became more expensive, as did the Microsoft applications that Windows "encouraged" users to use.
The proprietary version of Qt is just like Windows. It is proprietary middleware. It sits between the applications and Linux. The applications that use Qt are dependent on its APIs. And if Linux wants to be able to run those applications, then it has to support Qt.
What applications are we talking about? Applications like Kylix, Hancom Office, Opera, the professional versions of Quanta and Rekall and various other TheKompany products, ATI's setup utility, Quasar Accounting, Adobe Photoshop Album, and so on. If a Linux distribution wants to be able to run those applications, then it must support the proprietary version of Qt.
So how bad is it? Has Linux been taken over by proprietary middleware, the way the PC was taken over by Windows?
In other words, Have we reached the point where the proprietary version of Qt, with its single supplier, is an indedpensible component of Linux?
If this article is correct, and Novell is standardizing on Qt as the foundation of its desktop and development environment, then things are very bad.
Others have also argued that it has become almost impossible to have Linux without proprietary Qt...
In their paper Conquering the Enterprise Desktop, a group of developers argued that Bruce Perens' UserLinux would have trouble succeeding, unless it included the Qt Library in its basic install. Were those developers just talking about the GPL'd version of Qt? No, as shown by these statements:
I've used Swing on small projects, but never used GTK, Qt or GNUStep.
I had a job for part of which I spent about four or five months writing WxWindows. It seemed fairly easy to pick up, entirely reasonable as a development platform, and the quibbles I had with the functionality and documentation only came up a couple of times (one of the class docs was misleadingly written at one point, and one of the classes, WxListBox or something, turned out to only work on the Windows platform). Is Qt "better" than it? I wouldn't know. All I know is I had no objections to WxWindows whatsoever.
Most of the stuff I do is not GUI. However what I do all of my personal GUI development in is Cocoa, one of the two Mac OS X GUI libraries, which I consider as elegant, complete and (usually) well-documented as I could possibly imagine a GUI library to be. From my perspective, it is generally a joy to use. And, um, well, it doesn't cost me anything to use. The development tools came free with the OS. Now, given, I had to pay money for OS X itself, and anyone who uses my programs will have to have paid money for the OS as well. But, um, you know what? I don't really mind paying for the OS so much. Personally. I feel like I'm getting what I paid for there. And I CERTAINLY prefer paying money to use the OS and then getting dev tools and a lovely dev library that I can do anything I want with to either YOU WILL USE THE GPL PERIOD or having to pay, um, what appears to be a per-year, per-developer, per-platform fee of at least either $500 or $1500, i can't tell which, to develop software. What I'm currently getting just sounds like a better deal to me, so personally I'm going to stick with it.
(And since Cocoa is what GNUStep aims toward, who knows, if I really wanted to I think I could probably port my software to GNUStep without *too* much trouble. I know GNUStep is woefully incomplete, but this is why I mentioned it.)
But this is of course totally just my opinion. And it isn't entirely germane. But hey, you asked.
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
You should be modded +Inf Very Very Funny.
Have you seen -- because you certainly have not used -- the current version of those widgets? (as in Gnome 2.6 or KDE 3.2?) They are *far* smoother than any version of Windows -- including XP.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Am I the only one that would rather use Windows.Forms? I mean, true cross-platform support for Mono means Windows.Forms suppot, which is supposedly still under development.
My question is what about the interapplication communication issues. GNOME uses CORBA and KDE (Qt?) uses DCOP; then there is also DBUS, an extension (superset?) of DCOP. Is Novell planning on causing GNOME to move away from CORBA and toward DCOP/DBUS? Are they planning to add CORBA support to Qt? Are they ignoring this issue and hoping it will go away?
Is it really so hard to fix one thing before moving to another?
.NET/Mono.
Not hard, just boring and not great for your CV, like say wanking about with up-to-date buzzwords like
We need to conquer the desktop by making OPEN Gtk better for users than MS Windows / Mac OSBSD / Solaris, then worry about bolting proprietary crap on top of it.
To sell a commercial product using QT, you just pay the commercial license, one per developer.
True, but:
You forgot per new Qt version. The proprietary license you purchase is only good for that particular version of Qt. If you want to use a newer version then you have to buy the license again. This sort of turns it into an annual revenue model for Trolltech.
You also forgot per platform. Unix, Microsoft, Macintosh, and Embedded all require a separate license. So if your product is truely cross platform then that is 4 licenses you need to purchase.
You also forgot per product. It is not a blanket license. The Qt license you purchase is only good for one product line. It isn't floating and it doesn't follow a developer around the company.
That is a heck of a lot of per's.
So a large company with a large number of active "proprietary" products will be buying Qt licenses over and over and over again, eternally. Not a bad business model to have. Hat's off to the trolls. Though it is kind of sad that this is the only type of open source business model that actually works.
Not everyone is drooling at that prospect.
To quote my favourite anarchist collective
"The nature of your oppression is the aesthetic of our anger."
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Maybe programming will suck no longer!
At first I read this as 'Maybe programs will suck no longer!"
Good luck with that one, given the direction of the current corporate development climate.
Probably applies to programming also, same reason.
Glonoinha the MebiByte Slayer
In Soviet Russia, Slashdot trolls You!
Yes, but Gtk+ doesn't restrict you to C, whereas Qt is almost entirely C++ (except for some scripting language bindings, like Ruby, Perl, and Python).
I despise C++. Hate it. It is an abomination both to C, and to OO programming. The syntax extensions to C are complex, as is the OO model. The only thing I think C++ did right is the templating system.
I prefer Objective C, which takes a minimalist approach, and the late dynamic binding makes templating irrelevent. It's a much cleeaner language.
So, the issue comes down to choice. I know a lot of people prefer C++ to Objective C. You can't account for taste-- it seems more people prefer Budweiser to any other beer, and McDonald's to any other food source, and MS-Windows to any other desktop OS. But the point is, there is choice. I know I don't want to declare a single standard language for all programmers to use, and I distrust anyone who does.
If they standardize on any one toolkit, we are screwed as developers. Instead, they should concentrate on standardizing protocols. And, from a comment Nat Friedman made somewhere along the line in this topic, that's exactly what Novell is doing.
Anyway, just my two bits.
- Tony
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
What is preventing Novell from purchasing TrollTech outright? They did it with Ximian, I think all these liscense questions go out the window, if they just purchase TT and add it to their open source offerings. Plus they get a bunch of skilled Qt developers in house.
-G
"Immolation is the sincerest form of flattery."
IMHO it raises an interesting question.
The blurb says that they 'settled for Qt', which implies there was a better option that did not work out. This probably should have read 'settled on Qt', which simply means they came to a decision.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
All I can think to do at the moment after having
waded through piles and piles of crap comments
that have basically nothing to do with the topic
is rip my hair out and howl at the moon until my
brain explodes..
JEEZ you people! Havent you ever heard of MONO!!
Get with the friggen picture here.
Novel loves GNOME, this is all a bunch of FUD.
[favorite blog] http://planet.gnome.org/
I like c++, and my toughts about it are just the way around yours: I don't like the template syntax (but the rest of the language left no other choice); I like the OO model, but I think it could be better (when they introduced RTTI, they should have introduced metaclasses instead); and I loathe ObjectiveC because of its dynamisms (templates are *so* much efficient, and can even *prevent* code bloat if you use'm right!)
Now, about standardizing protocols, I think I would go the Y-way: put a lot of functionality in the display server, very, very extensible protocol and *in the server* you plug in the stuff you want. Fast, remotable, etc. etc.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
Sure you can. The GPL does not require that you *RELEASE* your software to the rest of the world.
Hmmm... Thinking about that one...
Yes, you don't have to release to the rest of the world, but you have to release to your internal users, right? And by the GPL you cannot restrict your users from redistributing the software. Sure, they may be your employees, but technically you'd be violating the GPL by telling them they could not release the software to others.
Now, most internal software has limited if any use outside the company in question, expect for some cases where such software might contain trade secrets or other information that a competitor might profit from. Thus releasing internal software under the GPL may very well negate ones claim to those trade secrets because now your license says anyone can have them and distribute them.
So, you end up with some disgruntled employee. He takes your software and sends a CD with source code to your competitor. Well now you're in a bind. First this probably violates some contract the employee signed. However, such a restriction probably violates the GPL, meaning you either need to rewrite your software or comply and in either case may loose some "effectively" propietary information in the process.
Long story short -- I wouldn't use the GPL for internal development unless you would have no problems releasing it into the wild anyway.
Who said Freedom was Fair?
Dialog boxes, widget sets, choosers etc are still in the Win 3.x world.
What Windows are you using? It can't be Windows XP, because it still has dialog boxes, widget sets, choosers, etc.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
As correct as your argument is, it's pointless on slashdot. Half the people you are trying to convince a) have never even visited trolltech.com to read the license let alone read through it throughly. b) programmed using either QT or Gtk. c) Worked on a project using QT that fell under the commercial license d) ever had to compile gnome from source (with it's 5,000 packages) e) understand that the only reason closed source software can link to Gtk is because it's LGPL and in fact the GPL DOES NOT allow closed source apps to link to it.
Many slashdotters don't understand that the world will never be 100% open source and that dual licenses are the best compromise we have. QT's license is one of the most open of these dual licenses because in fact it is GPL, unlike Gtk+ which is LGPL.
At $1500-2500 per, you are well into MSDN territory as to price. Even the full MSDN Universal can be had for $2200 (with $300 DVD rebate).
Gimp: Well, yes it uses Gtk. It's not the GNOME tool kit. And that's a great VERSION NUMBER TOO LOW, MUST BE BAD PROGRAM quip at the end there.
The problem IMHO is not that the version number is too low, is that because of GTK, (it's the GIMP ToolKit after all) they had to rewrite the whole thing... *BUT* GIMP beats anything in KDE for image manip, so GNOME 1 x 0 KDE
So Gaim is better than Kopete. I'm not sure how this is an example of how GNOME apps are more primitive.
Now *that's* a twist. Let me put a word in this for you: I tried both, Kopete beats Gaim. GNOME 1 x 1 KDE
So Rhythmbox is better than Juk... yes, yes, I can think I can see your point now...
Your twisting abilities in use here, but less. But really, Rhy beats Juk, for a nose, but GNOME 2 x 1 KDE.
So you don't like Galeon because it's based off of Mozilla, which you don't like. The facts, the irrefutable facts, I drown in them.
I, personally, hit a draw here. In one hand, Gecko renders CSS beautifully and has the most polished JS machine... in the other hand, it's a drag (KHTML is fast, fast, fast) and is less IE-quirks compatible. I still use Konqui all the time, and FireFox in the cases it does not work. G 2.5 x 1.5 K
Nautilus can drag and drop across many protocols, but I won't argue that its better than KIOSlave, which is nice and functional.
No words needed: G 2.5 x 2.5 K
Congradulations, you have pointed that KDE has better DnD than GNOME. Therefore, GNOME and gtk are silly things.
I don't remember the parent saying GNOME and GTK being silly things. Parity problems, maybe.
Tie-breakers (to me:)
CD burning = almost a tie, but K3b has amazing functionality that Nautilus doesn't.
Customizability = I am a KDE-fan in this item; it's my *personal* preference.
The themes = KDE's themes (plastik in special) rules.
KOffice.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
As far as I know, you can use Tk for anything, commercial or no.
*sigh* back to work...
There _are_ ways around the GPL, if a person really tries hard enough, and there's nothing that even the most avid supporter of the GPL can do about it without stating that every software developer in the world that has ever made a non GPL product that can in any way interoperate with a GPL one (even if such interoperation is nothing more than using a common file format that both can read and write, and regardless of which came first) is in violation of the GPL. Talk about viral!!!!
There is a GPL version for writing your GPL code, and there is also a commercial version for writing commercial apps.
:)
Both versions are cross platform, and they share a common design and look-and-feel.
I don't see how this could possible be construed as "annoying."
I'm not sure I agree with the parent, but it's definitely an interesting post and clearly not a troll. Please undo the abusive moderation and mod up.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
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.
I'm not a big windows fan by any stretch of the imagination, but I fail to see how this practice by Trolltech is any different from any other company not porting their software to other OS's.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
What's really funny is that the 'G' in both "GNOME" and "GTK+" stands for "GNU". They're both GNU projects. Sometimes the hypocrasy is deafening.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
Anyway, I wonder what in the world would make Novell pick QT? I don't have a problem with the QT license since it is free for GPL'ed code and if you want to do closed source, you pay, just like the rest of the world. I am fine with that. What I don't understand is what is Novell's game plan concerning all the Ximinan "IP" that they bought? There is no acceptable QT based groupware application that is ready _NOW_, while there is GTK+ based Ximian Evolution that even works very well with MS Exchange. There is Mozilla that is GTK+ based. Novell is not going to get all those users to switch to konq when, IMO Konq is not standards compliant enough yet and the rendering engine is not up to snuff with Gecko. What about OOo? Again, it uses GTK+, I cannot see Novell porting that beast to QT. These three apps are critical to the Linux desktop, everything else is fluff in comparision.
Maybe they plan to do some good QT/GTK+ integration? I hope so, since the two tool-kits have issues with simple interoperation such as drag-n-drop and copy-n-paste, not to mention how different the widgets look. I personally don't want a Linux desktop that has no consistency between the widgets. This is the main reason I always look for Gnome apps over KDE apps to keep my desktop consistent (with the exception of K3b, since it is one great app).
Oh, there is also the issues of the different technologies that the two desktops use. What sound server are they going to use? arts or esd? Are they going to make the coding changes to to the all the other apps or do they expect a user to have both running? DCOP or Orbit? etc vs etc. IMO, Novell should have picked one desktop and then ported any of the very good apps from the other desktop over. It would take a long time to port Evolution, Mozilla/Firefox and OOo to QT and have it be stable.
Since Redhat dropped interest in the desktop, I was hoping for Novell to help push Desktop Linux, though this move makes me less optimistic.
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
How about the SUSE boys that contribute to KDE? The 'kiosk' configuration in KDE? The KWin rewrite? Etc.
Only use of QT? Doesn't SUSE' latest offering have a KDE desktop that is based on QT? A pretty good one at that.
Derek
News at 11:00!
Seriously, the only threat that Qt provides to the Free status of Linux is thanks to non-Free code built on top of it. If you build GPL code with Qt, then you can always from now until the end of days use the GPL version of Qt. The only products that can be screwed by an about-face attitude from Trolltech are the ones that Free Software advocates AREN'T USING IN THE FIRST PLACE. If Trolltech turns into a monster, the GPL Qt libraries can be forked and Trolltech can be told to go hang themselves.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
"Where you do need to buy a license is if you are doing any of these things: ...
* developing an application against Qt/Windows, Qt/Mac, or Qt/Embedded. (Even if you're not distributing it.) (These versions are not available under the GPL at all.) "
Qt/Windows is the only version not available under the GPL, see:
http://www.trolltech.com/download/index.html
... for the reply. I enjoy reading the developer discussions, but I mostly never understand them adequately. I've come to the conclusion I am not linear enough to code. I've looked at the beginning pages of various languages, etc and get lost within minutes unfortunately, much to my embarrassment, and as much as I wanted to dabble in coding. Oh well... I can run apps, file bug reports, and follow simple instructions on the command line for minor tweaking, and that's it. Double sigh... My brain tends to work sideways too much I guess for coding, that and rote memory (getting older, harder to remember *brand new* things). Images I can remember, complex text typing- nope, ain't happening.
So does Microsoft.
Bliss = Python + wxWindows
What's the difference between an orange?
If GNOME/Gtk is REALLY a friend, let's see them place everything under GPL (for true software protection) rather than the LGPL.
But it's about freedom of choice. Hasn't that been the free software movement's cry for years? The bottom line is that GNOME/Gtk gives me more freedom than Qt. Heck, even Microsoft gives me more freedom than Qt.
Why should Trolltech be more entitled to make money from software than anybody else?
Is someone suggesting their software business plan is only to sell like 10 copies of their software, so they can't afford to by a real development license??
Have you ever worked in a commercial software environment? Probably not.
(1) You're not likely to be using a cross-platform library unless you're making applications on at least two platforms (say: Linux and Windows). A Qt licence for two platforms is $3000. This is significantly more than the cost of an entire new computer. Try asking your boss to replace your computer equipment for you now - or else. Yeah, didn't think so.
(2) If you're planning on a shareware-type scheme, at, say $20 a pop - you now have to sell 150 copies just to make back your investment on the QT licence before you see a dime (not counting bandwidth, hosting & support fees, etc). Low key, shareware-type projects generally don't sell that many copies. Plus: hey, buddy, can I borrow $3000 for a Qt licence? I'll pay you back if my software sells 200 copies, I promise.
(3) Even for commercial development, $3000 is far too much. A full copy of Microsoft Visual C++ Professional (which includes the MFC framework) costs $600. For one $3000 Qt seat licence you could outfit five developers with top-of-the-line Microsoft tools.
The larger the software development environment, the worse the problem because the $3000 per user adds up very, very quickly.
This has to do with QT development -- ie, you can't develop proprietary internal apps with the free Qt version.
If that is true, then Qt is not covered by the GPL--the GPL clearly gives you the right to do whatever you want with GPL'ed software internally. The right to use software internally and not distribute it is a fundamental right of users according to RMS. Anything that imposes such a restriction above and beyond the GPL is not covered by the GPL anymore.
> The only products that can be screwed by an about-face attitude from Trolltech are the ones that Free Software advocates AREN'T USING IN THE FIRST PLACE.
The risk is far greater than you suggest.
You are correct that proprietary Qt developers are at risk, and I see no harm in warning them of the danger.
But Linux users are also at risk, as are, as the subject line states, corporate Linux supporters.
Let's say that the Trolltech promoters succeed in hiding the danger (as evidenced by the many posts in support of Novell basing their desktop on Qt).
Thus, many corporate users, such as GM and Walmart, come to depend on proprietary Qt-based applications for their business. They also run those same applications on Linux on IBM mainframes.
Now, let's say that Trolltech changes the proprietary Qt license, or adds some secret API calls (like Microsoft did), so that proprietary Qt will only run on Trolltech Linux.
Due to the demand by GM and Walmart, IBM would be forced to run Trolltech Linux on their mainframes.
IBM would find themselves in the same position that they did earlier with the PC -- IBM may have created the hardware, but someone else controls the software that runs on top of it.
Thus, IBM would gradually lose control of the mainframe market, as Trolltech (backed by Microsoft?) made deals to favor IBM's competitors.
Proprietary Qt is insidious, because, like the OS kernel, many applications depend on its APIs. And all it takes is one of those applications to lock a business.
The dangers of proprietary middleware are too great to be ignored. We can sound the alarm now, while the problem is still small. Or we can wait until the Linux market has been split, with most business users forced to run proprietary Qt and Trolltech Linux -- or, worse, Microsoft Linux!
how can the first post be redundant?
I am going to metamod right now. I hope I get this one.
Same old FUD.
Meanwhile we have at least some comments from MS saying that the important core parts are licenced RAND and royalty free and Novell are apparently working to get that stated more unequivocably.
At the end of the day Novell/SUSE's interest in being safe here lines up with the communities. They don't want their asses sued either (and as principal developers on it at the moment their ass is first in line).
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
lol. I think that's why people invented volume licensing... seriously. MFC also holds no candle to Qt in ease of use, stability, features or documentation, and cross-platform development is right out with MFC.
You pay a lot for Qt because it's a very powerful tool.
I'll let you in on a little secret... we have done our main app here in Win32 because MFC is shit. MS doesn't even use it for anything important. We are working on porting to Qt very soon though, because it'll be a lot easier to do cross-platform development, rather than using an API interface toolkit to make a Mac version.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
I'll go you one further, I hate QT/KDE! I would actually switch to MS windows before I did to KDE, those QT widgets have always felt fiddly and awkward to me. Appearance (I dont mean skinning) and response have never seemed right. QT/KDE seem popular amongst 13 yr old windows refugees, witness the fanboys! My main apps all use different GUI toolkits, this simply IS NOT A PROBLEM and I wont ever be installing mono either!
buying *Ximian* (gtk/gnome experts) and then standardizing on Qt?????
...
There's lots of other companies they could have bought but I guess the gtk/gnome part is just gonna be shut down? They likely wanna plug Mono into Qt and make it work on Windows too
Gnome had a rough past, therefore dual-liscensing is the way to go. WHAT?
These "zealots" hated that KDE would not go GPL for years. That's why Gnome started...we can't have an OS that uses software released under a restrictive liscense that's could change in the future, and where there is nothing you can do about it. At least with GPL, you can ALWAYS use the old code. RMS is about building a base of code for everyone to use, but to share if they release programs with it. He is against the LGPL because he thinks the GPL is fine for commercial use.
Ugabuga
I am really missing the point of all of this. We have a link to a German article that is uninteligble to the majority of posters here, and a lot of people talking absolute nonsense. Why?
When the previous article about Novell merging KDE and Gnome I immediately thought, which platform will they use as the base. I guessed KDE since the KDE people are already doing all the work whereas the Gnome people don't seem so interested. Nobody asked that fundamental question. Why?
Now, assuming that article says what it is claimed, I am left wondering why people think Gtk is being dropped, and scratching there heads over the Ximian aquisition. Why do people think that Gtk is being dropped, and what does integration mean to you anyway?
When Novell say *they* are standardising on Qt why do people then say that everyone else must now develop their apps in Qt too? How do you explain the fact that Gtk apps have long worked under KDE, and now Novell wants to integrate them more tightly?
To me this all sounds like Novell are going to make more use of Qt for their own future development, are going to use KDE as a base system for their OS, but are going to continue and extend the work being done in the KDE camp so that Gtk based applications work flawlessly in KDE (print dialogs, file dialogs, look 'n feel, font settings, control center options, etc).
The only question I am left wondering is whether they will also offer a Gnome desktop and do the exact same integration the other way round so that KDE applications work flawlessly in Gnome. Anyone care to comment?
If you boil Nat's comments down to the core, it really is just No, No, they don't like Qt more than Gtk, really! and when he somewhere deep inside realizes that they actually do, he pushes out a squeaky But, but, but... ok, alright, Gtk sucks, but so does Qt, damn it!.
In the real world, egos matter, but not as much as money, and it is quite obvious that for commercial applications, Qt is viable and poplular, at least for some. For some even more so than Gtk. Novell will put focus on either Qt or Gtk; everything else is juste a waste. Nat is certainly in a position to know what, and his comments make it obvious that Novell will not push Gtk into the limelight.
So, Nat, take a deep breath, get acquainted to the idea that Qt is not yet another incarnation of evil and stop whining!
impossible to have Linux without proprietary Qt...
that a Linux distribution must include support for proprietary Qt
In effect, they are saying that proprietary Qt is to Linux, as Windows has been to the PC.
etc.
There's a BIG difference between windows and Proprietary QT here, and the difference is that Windows costs money per-user. So to use the windows middleware, your *users* have to pay Microsoft.
However, with Proprietary QT the only cost is per-developer. So to install opera, hancom office, etc, I don't have to pay a penny to Trolltech. Only the companies developing these proprietary apps need to.
For that reason alone, trolltech is not going to fall into the control of trolltech.
> If GNOME/Gtk is REALLY a friend, let's see them place everything under GPL (for true software protection) rather than the LGPL.
If glibc is REALLY a friend, let's see them place everything under GPL (for true software protection) rather than the LGPL?
If openssl is REALLY a friend, let's see them place everything under GPL (for true software protection) rather than the BSDish?
You are simply wrong. Why Trolltech could be the only company which you have to pay license fees when you are developing something commercial software for "de facto" Linux Desktop?
GPL is not a suitable license for software libraries. LGPL and BSD is. Qt should not be used until it is licensed under either of those. Gtk+ (and GNOME) is the way until that happens.
The real answer to a commercial Linux desktop would be a "Forked" version of KDE based on WxWidgets rather than QT for the following reasons.
1. Greater FreePascal/GNU Pascal/Python/Perl/C/C++ integration.
With a WxWidgets based desktop you can appeal to developers that like old languages like Pascal and C who can continue to use the GTK library that WxWidgets is built upon under Linux yet still allow developers that want to graduate to C++ or Mono to do so using WxWidgets. (Even though there is NO way I trust Mono knowing the company originally behind the technology the way I do. It's Nothing but a patent suit waiting to happen.)
2. Free for proprietary developers.
KDE itself is curently under the LGPL but small proprietary developers can't take advantage of that because of KDE's QT dependency. Translate KDE's LGPL code over to WxWidgets and problem solved. (Before you GNU zealots out there say "leach" I really don't think the term applies here as developers place their libraries under the LGPL PRECICELY so that it can be used in proprietary ware. Furthermore many of the shareware and small company coders are good coders who would more likely VOLUNTARILY contribute code, money and other development necessities to a project that allows the free proprietary use of their work than one that does not. However I think the biggest thing that shareware developers will contribute to Linux is
increased popularity as these small time proprietary developers are the ones that produce the Apps average users want but GNU zealots and other Open Sourcers find "uncool".)
3. A truely common user interface.
Since Both GTK and WxWidgets basically use the GTK widget set. (One directly and the other indirectly as a C++ wrapper.) Apps developed in Pascal, C, C++, Pearl
and Python will finally assume a common look to them that they do not have now with two diferent desktops and desktop libraries. As a bonus GTK and by extension WxWidgets also gives more "eye candy" to home users allowing appearance competition against OSX's "Aqua" interface and Windows's XP interface.
4. No dangerous vender lock in.
As voluntary projects under the LGPL GTK, WxWidgets and the Proposed KDE/WxWidgets fork would bot be subject to hostile actions that can result from questionable companoes like SCO or Microsoft buying out Troll Tech before a linux friendly company like IBM or Novell can. (It is a fact of business life that little companies that assume a great deal of importance on some computer platforn are eventually "eaten" by somebody larger. This cannot happen to voluntary open source projects that use the LGPL rather company status and duo licensing to make themselves proprietary software friendly. On this one point the LGPL is just like the GPL. The basic project stays an OPEN SOURCE project and can not be "bought out".)
5. Modern true cross platform GUI design.
Instead of using "drag and drop" which often produces differing results on different platforms
Both GTK and WxWidgets use the more modern container (sizer in the WxWidgets lexicon) method
of making GUIs which produces more consistant cross platform results. This method of GUI design is also used by Java and presumably Mono making it the more modern method of doing so. (I actually find the "slot and connection" method that QT uses to try to duplicate this modern approach to GUI design will still retaining "Drag and Drop" in QT designer to actually be very confusing and that's why I am also looking to WxWidgets for my development needs both GPLed and otherwise.)
Yes, Nat can you provide actual evidence to back up your claim that Novell has not standardized on Qt?
Gtk# is a language binding for the GTK+ toolkit in the C# language. Qt is a toolkit. The two cannot be compared directly.
Now my experience developing with Qt is limited and with GTK+ almost non-existent, but if you want a fair comparison of toolkit bindings maybe try Gtk# vs. PyQt (Python bindings for Qt). PyQt is what I'm currently using to teach myself Qt, and I can tell you it eliminates the most frequent complaint developers, especially C coders, raise about Qt: the MOC. It isn't necessary with PyQt. Python also removes the need for the sometimes cumbersome creation of a C++ object hierarchy.
Now I'm not trying to bash Gtk#, I'm guessing it's a great combo, but I know that Qt is a great GUI toolkit (I do have experience with other toolkits, so I feel valid in my evaluation despite limited experience, much due to how fast I'm picking it up), so lets keep the comparisons real, okay?
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This doesn't even pass the smell test. Novell owns Ximian, which makes it's money selling GNOME and GTK based applications. For them to all of sudden move to Qt would cost lots of money and splinter the Gnome business away from Novell. Before this would happen Novell would purchase Trolltech in order to make sure they could continue to sell propiertary applications without the license from a third party. As a final note, if Novell had planned on using Qt, they would have purchased the Kompany rather than Ximian.