Interview With Trolltech's CEO and CTO Eirik Eng

jlp2097 writes "There is a great and lengthy interview at the The Dot with Eirik Eng, CEO of Trolltech, and Matthias Ettrich, founder of the KDE project and CTO of Trolltech. They talk about the recent X(Free86) trouble, accessibility in QT, Trolltech's finances, Qtopia, the OS X Port and a GPL'd Windows QT - it's probably not going to happen. And, did you know that Qt is pronounced 'Cute' by its creators?"

Comments

"Cute"

[harlows_monkeys]

At work, we went through a phase once of calling people who were doing X "X-boy". E.g., I was doing some email stuff, so people called me "email-boy". Well, one programmer was learning Qt, and as he left one evening, someone called out "Goodnight, cutie-boy!". Man, was his face red when he realized what that sounded like. :-)

Re:"Cute"

[Anonymous Coward]

Is this why I'm known as 'furiously masterbating in the bathroom all day-boy' at work?

Re:"Cute"

[benasselstine]

I think it's pronouced "Kute".

GTK+

[3Suns]

And, did you know that Qt is pronounced 'Cute' by its creators?

I also heard that GTK is pronounced "Gittuk" by the gnome hackers...

cute?

[taj]

Another project where the creators don't event know how to pronounce the name of the project? I run into this all the time.

Re:cute?

[m0rphin3]

Another project where the creators don't event know how to pronounce the name of the project? I run into this all the time.

Did you ever consider that the project creators are not from English-speaking countries? Hence, their pronounciation is correct as far as they are concerned.

Qt in Norwegian would sound something like 'ku-teh', or 'cute' to untrained (e.g. non-Norwegian) ears.

This sounds familiar

[PetoskeyGuy]

Hello this is TrollTech, and we pronounce QT as "Cute"

a la Linux

Re:Visual Tool

[AKAImBatman]

While I agree with what you're saying, I do have to say that companies like Sun have a point. They simply can't embrace a toolkit like QT without forcing their customers into unexpected costs. QT is far superior to GTK (although Sun is helping GTK catch up), but the Unix companies already did this once with Motif. They're unlikely to do it again.

That being said, TrollTech should continue to serve their customers and develop a great product. Those who are willing to absorb the costs of QT will find themselves with a great product.

Definitely needs a non-commercial Windows license

[BestNicksRTaken]

wxWidgets has a huge following because it is truly cross-platform, with the same [free] licensing.

I would be using Qt/PyQt if it had a non-commercial (or preferably GPL) Windows license, but for now I'm stuck with wxPython - which really isn't as nice as Qt, although sometimes looks better due to native LnF.

I don't see the point of having GPL Linux *and Mac* versions without Windows, just because of the lame excuse "well Windows isn't GPL", it really bugs me, I don't want to write free software that won't work on Windows (and I'm far from a M$ advocate).

MacOSX isn't OSS, it's proprietary Apple stuff that they hacked on top of an OSS OS, so come up with another excuse TT....

And before anyone mentions the non-commercial Qt with the book - that is a very limited version (personal use, non-ditributable), doesn't work with PyQt, and is out-of-date already.

Argh, rant over!

Chicken and egg . . .

[AshtangiMan]

As some people mentioned on the dot, it has partly to do with finances, sales and Trolltech's business model. Another point is the fact that Windows is a closed source Operating System. There is no community for Free Software development under Windows. The situation is very different from Linux, as you know. On Windows development usually happens as shareware or commercial software and we don't see that community evolving into producing Free Software.

This is a bit backwards. Right now if you use Visual Studio (and any windows library) you are suposudly prevented by the EULA from creating GPL'd code. So, in the windows world, if there were a good alternative that allowed for GPL code creation/distribution I think it would be used.

Re:Chicken and egg . . .

[negacao]

Perhaps we should correct this blatant, failed attempt at trolling.

The code you write is YOURS. The EULA of the compiler and provided libraries doesn't even TRY to control your licensing scheme.

In fact, the GPL isn't even mentioned in the EULA for MS Visual Studio 6.

The only thing you're prevented from doing is giving away the provided libraries, header files, or source code that come with the compiler and tools.

Don't get me wrong, MSFT sucks big floppy donkey dick, but FUD in either direction helps none of us.

All of my questions have been answer and my

[pair-a-noyd]

worries lain to rest.

PF: Somebody mentioned that the Canopy Group & SCO owns some parts of Trolltech.

ME: Sorry, we don't have any influence on them.

PF: Do they have any influence on you?

ME: Not really. They have a 5.7% stake in Trolltech. Historically Canopy became an investor because we cooperated with Caldera. As you might know we made and delivered the graphic install, which was the first graphical install for Linux, for Caldera Linux. The Canopy Group as the main investor in Caldera was so impressed by the work we had done that they wanted to invest in Trolltech, to make sure that Trolltech could become a solid company that could continue to deliver software to the Linux community. It's pretty ironic to see what has happened historically after that of course. But they don't have any influence on Trolltech. Trolltech is employee-owned, 65% of the shares are owned by the employees and we control the business so they have a small stake in us and that is it.

PF: You haven't talk about this complicated with SCO on Linux

EE: The patent issue or the corporate issue?

PF: The thing that SCO is asking and preparing to sue everybody about some code they pretend they own in Linux.

EE: I can tell you that we do not support these actions from SCO. Trolltech in many ways is dependent on the success of Linux. We think Linux is a Good Thing. We support Linux in many ways. On the other hand everybody has the right to bring his case to court. In this case it is very strange that they have not pinpointed exactly where in the code there is a problem and we feel that if they really had a problem with this, they could have acted very differently in presenting this to the community. So again we do not support these actions.

PF: You have any position on software patents? Especially since in the EU there is going to be a law to be passed soon.

EE: Trolltech is against software patenting. We think it is a bad thing and we see with horror what is happening to the US software market because of the patent policy over there. From my limited understanding of the subject, US patent law isn't that bad, it's the actual application of that law by the US patent office which is the problem. We sincerely hope that we will not get a parallel situation in Europe and we think that would be a catastrophe to the software industry in Europe. We think that we are well protected by copyright laws and other laws. we think that software is a very different product from other types of commercial production products. And we think that it is very important for innovation that people can continue to share ideas and that companies are not allowed to patent things which are very obvious.

I feel much relieved now...

Accessibility in KDE

[frodo from middle ea]

I find the accessibility features of KDE far more superior and useful. e.g. the KmouseTool which enables auto clicking.

If I am not wrong you need to buy seperate s/w for that kind of thing in windows . ( windows users correct me if I am wrong).

Besides adding accessibility features makes KDE very much a candidate for use in Govt. work and any other place where accessibility features are a must.

Re:Cute

[Erratio]

I like to pronounce FAQ as Fa-Q

Windows Developers

[brolewis]

I am a developer who believes in cross-platform development. However, I do most of my development in a Windows environment. I write code in Windows, test in Windows, and release it from Windows, and everything I've worked on is OSS. However, according to Trolltech, I don't exist. Why do they assume that because the OS I happen to develop on isn't open source there isn't an open source community in that niche? They comment that most Windows users perfer shareware, however, that is not the case. I find that there are a number of Windows users who are wanting to use open source programs for their own work and yet here Qt is preventing us from using their tools because they feel the users aren't there. I find this an unfortunate development.

Re:Definitely needs a non-commercial Windows licen

[Soul-Burn666]

" just because of the lame excuse "well Windows isn't GPL""

That's _NOT_ the reason they give. The reason they gave is that too many commercial companies used the GPL version of the library in their commercial software instead of using the pricy commercial version of the library, and they said it's impossible to go and sue all of them.

What????

[LWATCDR]

"EE (laughing): As some people mentioned on the dot, it has partly to do with finances, sales and Trolltech's business model. Another point is the fact that Windows is a closed source Operating System. There is no community for Free Software development under Windows."

Well it sure as hell will not evolve using QT! This is just a load of monkey muffins. I use
Eclipse
Netbeans
FireFox
Thunderbird
Open Office
Perl
Python
DevCpp
GCC
and MySql on my windows box. No free software comunity by butt.

Re:Linux

[Anonymous Coward]

Feel Free to write your own Toolkit and license it any way you want. Trolltech is a business and if companies want to develop commercial or closed source apps they can pay.

"QT being commercial/GPL is a hinderance to commercial software for Linux."

No it isn't, companies who want to take advantage of Trolltech's work without paying like they normally do on the Win32 platform are the problem. Sorry but your arguement has been debunked about a billion times over. If you can quote one big commercial company who said "The license fee for QT is too expensive so we won't be developing any commercial apps for the Linux" I'll eat my hat.

And Lastly as another wise person once said here, very sorry I don't have your name I just have a bunch of quotse from the last gtk vs qt debate.

" The cost of a license for commercial development is not a valid argument. If a company develops an application for sale, the cost of a license is a fraction of the overall cost to develop, market, and maintain a product. As far as development kits go, the decision on which dev kit that gets chosen is based on quality, which will drive the cost of development in the long run, and company politics."

Cross-platform OSS is very important!

[Qwavel]

I know that some people are against having Windows versions of OSS software, but I don't agree. It is important to get Windows users to use cross-platform stuff like OOo and Mozilla. This will help prepare them to switch to another OS when the time is right for them.

The same could be said for developers. If Qt was a viable option for Windows developers then many would use it and they would be better prepared for, and more likely to switch to, another OS.

This seems like a fairly straight-forward argument, which is why many important OSS projects make a big effort to work on Windows as well as Linux. I realize though, that none of this is within TT's mandate. They are a company, not a project, so their job is to make money. Sometimes this coincides with doing what is best for the OSS and Linux communities, but I am amazed at how often this is not the case.

So, though I am a C++ developer, and I believe that Qt is much better than GTK, I'll have to side with GTK for Linux.

Re:Canopy Representatives Sit on Trolltech Board.

[haavard_nord]

Good questions that deserve to be answered. I'm co-founder, CEO and Chairman of Trolltech and should be able to give fairly accurate answers. (To avoid confusion, Eirik's title is President, not CEO as Fremy writes).

What is Ralph J. Yarro of Canopy infamy doing on the Trolltech board of directors?

Early 1999 Trolltech had helped Utah-based Caldera to create their award-winning graphical Linux installer. Around the same time we also started developing Qt/Embedded for the embedded Linux market. Lineo, another Utah company, was the king of embedded Linux at the time, and they needed a product like Qt/Embedded for Linux-based consumer devices.

Canopy was a major VC and stakeholder in both Caldera and Lineo. Ralph Yarro, President and CEO of Canopy, recognized that Trolltech could help two of their porfolio companies succeed and decided to make an investment in Trolltech.

I met Ralph Yarro in Utah in August 1999 and we agreed on an investment term-sheet (with very reasonable terms for Trolltech, by the way).

Did we do the right thing? Definitely. Canopy was the first investor in Trolltech and their investment made it possible for us to grow the company and build new products. Canopy was later followed by Borland and a syndicate of three Norwegian VCs.

As part of the investment agreement, each investor got a seat on the board: Ralph Yarro from Canopy, Dale Fuller from Borland and Ingar Ostby from Northzone. Ralph Yarro has been on our board since late 1999.

Sorry, sitting on the board means "influence".

Ralph Yarro has about zero influence over how we run the company. When you have a person on your board that might have a conflict of interest in certain areas you will make sure that this person does not participate in all discussions or get access to all company information.

What is financial relationship between SCO/Canopy and Trolltech?

The deal in 1999 also involved a stock swap with Caldera. As all of you know, Caldera became SCO a couple of years ago and changed their Linux agenda. Trolltech owned stock in SCO but we decided to sell them last year after the interview took place. But SCO still owns a tiny portion of Trolltech shares.

Does Trolltech owe money to SCO/Canopy?

No.

Does Canopy have contractual rights to seats on the board?

Yes, this is part of the investment contract we have with all our investors.

Does SCO/Canopy have warrants or other agreements to take control of Trolltech later?

No, are you nuts? We would be pretty stupid to sign an investment contract that would give a minor (or even major) shareholder the ability to take control of our company.

Do I support Canopy's or SCO's actions? No way.

Haavard