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TOra Project Looking for New Maintainer

Posted by michael on from the if-you-build-it-they-will-come dept.

cerberusss writes "TOra is a GPL'ed, QT-based Oracle/PostgreSQL client, one of the most full-featured for many years. The lead developer Henrik Johnson was hired by Quest Software to work further on TOra. After some time of inactivity, Henrik has put a request on the developer list, saying: 'I'm sorry for not being able to spend that much time on TOra as I should. I am now working full time on future versions of TOAD by Quest. (...) I am wondering if someone on this mailing list is willing to step up as a new maintainer of this project.' Also interesting is that the GPL'ed code base compiles for both Windows and Linux, but compiling for Windows is not allowed anymore because of the license of Trolltech's QT."

3 of 45 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Trolltech the reason? by Keith+Russell · · Score: 2, Insightful

    TOra's license is GPL, straight, no chaser. The GPL specifically prohibits linking with non-Free 3rd party libraries, like the commercial versions of Qt. Such 3rd party libraries are a vendor lock-in trap.

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  2. Can't port to windows? by mikefe · · Score: 2, Insightful

    This is exactly why QT should not be used in an OSS project. If you want to get real penetration into the desktop today, you have to work on windows. Mozilla knows this, Open Office knows this.

    It's really that simple.

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  3. Wrong: Quest, not Trolltech, the Reason by kupci · · Score: 2, Insightful
    TOra's license is GPL, straight, no chaser.Not quite. If you read the threads on SourceForge, it is an additional clause Henrik and Quest have added, expressing their interpretation of the GPL, that is causing the difficulties, not the Trolltech license.

    The GPL specifically prohibits linking with non-Free 3rd party libraries, like the commercial versions of Qt.

    Right. So Henrik simply bought a copy of Qt to compile the binaries. According to Henrik, for the distribution, the GPL allows you to exclude libraries, which he did for the Oracle libraries, but chose not to for the Qt libraries. And he has added wording to this effect to the boilerplate to clarify this.

    It seems, from reading the threads, that Quest is not keen on the idea of a Windows version of TOra. And from what other posters on this /. list have commented about Quest, I can see why.

    * Specifically you are not permitted to link this program with the
    * Qt/UNIX, Qt/Windows or Qt Non Commercial products of TrollTech.
    * And you are not permitted to distribute binaries compiled against
    * these libraries without written consent from Quest Software, Inc.
    http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/message.php?m sg_id=9969216