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Trolltech Releases Qt 4.0
lypanov writes "Trolltech has released Qt 4.0 both under commercial and GPL licenses for X11, Mac OS X and MS Windows. It is the first time that a MS Windows GPL edition is available. To celebrate the release Trolltech employees have created a song and a music video (Bittorrent download, Ogg Theora version). Read the Qt 4 Overview and the online Qt Reference Documentation for more information. You can download Qt from ftp.trolltech.com or from one of its mirrors. Work on KDE 4 has already started with making a development branch of KDE compile and run with Qt 4."
I just had two stories disappear on me... one about amazon patenting user/browser histories and some other goof-off story..
Will the KDE library be available for windows now?
Where does the name TrollTech come from?
Get your own free personal location tracker
Trolltech sounds so...dubious. I mean, when I think of Trolltech, I think of spyware. Hell, anything that is profession with the name "Troll" rubs me the wrong way.
I can imagine their future... "The current stock value of Trolltech rose to 300 dollars a share..."
Life is not for the lazy.
I've worked with my fair share of windowing APIs and QT's OO approach to the problem is very well done. On the one extreme we have the heavy MFC which has grown out of control into a mammoth mess. wxwindows, pretty much a clone of MFC, shares the same issues as MFC. WTL seems hopeful, if only anyone was using it and it had any sort of support.
The Win32 and Gnome APIs are written in C, so though they are fast, they doesn't get any of the programming benefits of Object Orientation.
Thought it has a funny macro kludges in certain places, the QT API is absolutely a joy to work with.
A slashdotting, to bittorrent, is lifeblood. A true swarm.
SIGSEGV caught, terminating
wait... not that kind of sig.
VLC crashed for the first time ever n000
I agree. QT is good and liked by all the developers I know who work with it. It is expensive to use commercially, though. For a developer's license that includes integration with OpenGL and other things we need, it runs $4950 USD.
Have you used Qt before? Their APIs and particularly the way that they handle event-driven programming (signals/slots) is very well done.
The guy who did most of the icons for the new Qt Tools is one of us. He's a pretty cool dude, once you get past the ego and the constant attempts at world domination.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
1) QT doesn't suck
2) QT is GPL'd, not LGPL'd, so whoever wishes to use it in closed-source software must buy a license to do so. This means TrolTech can afford to continue developing it full time, while still getting it well-used in open-source projects.
3) The commercial license is very affordable.
4) QT is very cross-platform.
5) QT is very full featured, but still fast and light.
6) QT includes a very nice GUI designer.
I'm sorry, I could see how having their BSD/Linux versions open and their windows versions closed could keep them in business; but now that they don't have any income generating platforms left, aren't they going to be out of business next week?
If not, how not? I'm very curious.
I downloaded the movie via BitTorrent, but it does not seem to work. Is this encoded in some funky format?
Anyone actually view this yet? I don't see any comments about it and it won't play under Xine, MPlayer, Kaffeine...at least, not for me...
Everything I need to know about copyrights I learned from Slashdot.
So they could kill GNOME.
:-)
Hmm... I never thought of it, but I wonder if the inverse is true. Gnome was created in response to the Qt licensing, no? Perhaps it was the GNOME guys who wanted to play a little naming fun with the Trolltech guys.
Either way, it adds a bit of fun depth to the (constructive) competition between Gnome and KDE.
Haavard and Eirik Eng were thinking about what to call the company for a while. One night,Haavard had a dream where the company was called "Trolltech". In the dream his wife hated the name, so he asked her what she thought when he woke up. She liked it. The rest is history.
As to being referred to as "Trolls", we don't mind. Trolls are something very Scandinavian, and in a way provides a title for all of us to share. It's kind of a bonding thing.
trolls are *large* and gnomes are *small*.
ick.
eric
What problems are you experiencing with kicker/kdesktop? I run FC3 on my desktop and uptime is measured in months through multiple suspend/resume cycles, without ever logging out, and without kicker or kdesktop ever faltering... and I have piles of child panels and files piled on my desktop. KDE3 is rock solid for me.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
I consider a huge ego a prerequisite to being cool. It's a warlord thing, so lesser beings might not understand.
As for attempting world domination, that just comes along with the super powers. You get some free time, you get that old itch to conquer, and one thing leads to another.
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
Obviously, if they're hiring, being an actual troll would certainly be a positive side to emphasize, wouldn't it? *ducks*
I have a really elegant proof for Fermat's last theorem. If this sig was only a bit longer...
would be a story about how KDE can be cross-compiled on linux to run on wine or natively on windows.
at present, the only way to compile KDE for windows is by compiling it under windows (which requires that you have windows).
and that means you have to utilise a specialised forked version of kde source code, which has a bastardised version of configure, called configure.bat.
yerk.
does this mean inputting accents on qt applications will finally be fixed? kde and lyx have been unusable for me since qt-3.something...
I might be just an ignorant troll, but if it wasn't qt-3, I don't know why else i can't write accented words on anything using qt.
...the latest in digital technology for trolls, which allow such things as Remastered Versions of GNFOS.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
It get my vote for "most disturbing dance video ever".
A bad analogy is like a leaky screwdriver.
I mean, you must've gone to an awful lot of work to copy that blurb verbatim from the Dot.
</sarcasm>
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
--Aristotle
and replace them with other less known programs just to get a semi-decent x-windows running
You're not a very good liar... Please get a life.
bash: rtfm: command not found
...and as such, it's awfully sticky. If i catch myself humming it in the car someone's gonna die, i swear!
"Oh, uhm... would not time be better spent at kde.org fixing the many bugs in KDE 3?"
What makes you think they won't? Migrating to a new version of the Qt framework doesn't require rewriting all of the underlying logic, therefore allowing for bug fixes in a major portion of application code. Not to mention, there are plans for another release in the 3.x series (development can happen in parallel). Also, you should be happy to know that the things you complain about, kicker and kdesktop, are slated to undergo a major overhaul for the KDE4 release.
With free alternatives like gnome, java and wxwindows
How is QT *not* free?
THey just finished saying that their code is running on several platforms (for non comercial use) for free.
I'm not a prophet or a stone-age man,
I'm just a mortal with potential of a super man.
Excellent comments. May I add another few:
7. All versions (commercial included) come with source. This proves very handy when sub-classing widgets.
8. Qt has the only C++ string class worth using, QString. Who couldn't love
str = str.stripWhiteSpace();
9. Regex support!
Also, it's Qt, not QT.
Does this come with a native Win compiler or do you have to use the framework as a plugin with MS Visual Studio/C++?
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
Ahhh... eurodance lives forever!
If you don't make enough money from your commercial software business to afford a one-time expense of $2000 (the light version includes everything you need in a toolkit), you have no business writing commercial software. I mean, that's only about two weeks of one developer's salary. You'll spend about 5 times that in lost productivity if you use VC++ alone. The $3000 version includes XML, databases, networking, and a ton of other stuff which is definitely worth it if you need it. Not to mention you get full source code.
Troll indeed.. Let's see.. you're comparing a cross platform GUI toolkit against:
1) A toy programming language
2) A C++ compiler and IDE
That's not apples-and-oranges. Those aren't even fruit!
The legal jargon surrounding the use of scripting languages and Qt is still kind of vague. Buried very deep in their FAQ section is the question Can I develop commercial applications with PerlQt or PyQt or other Qt wrappers? which isn't that helpful.
It still doesn't discuss in-house applications that are meant to solve production needs, but will never be sold or given away because the code is: too customized, reflects a particular business model, and/or not well polished. Perl/Qt is so much better than Perl/Tk, but we tolerate Tk because it's free.
Now I don't object to the core developer of applications needing a license, since that is what corporations do with Visual Studio, but scripted languages is kind of fuzzy. I think the best way to solve this is to officially support some of the language wrappers, like Perl and Python and provide some mechanism that determines an elegant way to "lock the interface layout" unless a developer license can be had. For example, only precompiled QtDesigner User Interface files could be added run-time, or something like that.
Then distribute it with ActiveState's ActivePerl or ActivePython. That version would only allow GPLed applications to be built, maybe through a variable like $main::LICENSE="GPL" to be declared, or something like that. You would have to purchase ActivePerl Pro Studio in order to develop commercial applications with the Qt widget set, but again the same "lock it down without a license" could be had.
Official support for scripted languages is the only way to sort out the need for quick, small programs for which C++ is inappropriate.
AFAIK some people is interested in getting a native windows version of KDE (not the cygwin crap) out with KDE 4.0.
I guess that has been one of the major reasons to extend the GPL licensing for the QT-windows-version. Really, there's a lack of decent freeware software in windows (advertising/spyware-free, etc), most of the decent software in windows is comercial.
A windows version of all KDE apps means lots of people will use those apps, and unlike most of the 3rd party software, KDE software is (and feels) more "integrated" (same UI instead of one UI for every program, etc). If the windows version of KDE is succesful lots of people will want to use QT for their commercial apps, I guess.
$2500 for Rational Rose (sorry, no link), and that draws pretty pictures.
(Okay, so it does a lot more than draw pretty pictures, but I would make the argument that if you were doing x-platform development Qt could be a lot more beneficial to you than Rose.)
> 8. Qt has the only C++ string class worth using,
> QString. Who couldn't love
>
> str = str.stripWhiteSpace();
wxWidgets wxString has this:
wxString str = " hello, world! ";
str.Trim().Trim(false);
> 9. Regex support!
wxWidgets got ya covered here too, baby! See wxRegEx.
Have you ever used KDE?
wxWidgets: Qt: Notice that Qt manages to do it in a sane fashion, with a single, readable method call. wxWidgets requires two calls, one with a boolean parameter? This leads me to number 10: Sane and readable APIs.
Do not click on the link in parent! This is a troll which makes your browser go nuts.
Have you ever used a Qt program on a light desktop environment?
Qt is ok (not exactly light), it's KDE that sucks for being bloated as hell.
Same goes for GTK and Gnome.
If you followed the link to Trolltech you would'nt have to ask.
As the filename ends ".mov" you could have it deduced yourself.
If you need encoding details: H.264/ AAC (=Quicktime 7)
Just because it's about Trolltech, you don't have to be a troll and call H.264 a "funky" format!
In short: No
In long: No. It's GPL. That's the license you acquired it under, that's the license that you need to use it under. If they release a new version, it's perfectly within their right to not release it under the GPL. But what you can get now, it's GPL, use it as such. That's really all there is to it.
It's like people are jumping at shadows any more because of all these lawsuits and such... sheesh
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
If you're after something that is a cross platform GUI toolkit, non commerical / commerical with LPGL license might i suggest Wxwidgets.
http://www.wxwidgets.org/
I have been using wx for a few months and love it.
Cross platform (Win32, MacOSX, Linux).
Very mature (12 years old) platform filled with lots of classes for most things you could think of.
And the seller point, no need to give away your source if you want to write something commercially at zero cost.
This doesnt mean QT isn't any good, but Wx has been around longer and really fills a need - try it out!
I'm using a Windows development platform Dev-C++ with all the hooks of wx: http://wxdsgn.sourceforge.net/
what is the difference between mingw and a cygwin installed gcc/g++ environment ?
MingW is a native windows app that doesn't require the cygwin dll and creates exes that are standalone in windows.
I was quoted out of context in my autobiography...
Wow, I always thought it was Q-T pronounced like cutie, but in the video they say it like 'cute'.
I've been so wrong all these years, oh what else have I been wrong about?!
I just went through this whole song and dance of deciding which toolkit to use. I wanted to use Qt because I perceive it as more established than many alternatives. But the reality is that they do not support many platforms. Sure, the desktop platforms are supported. But in this day and age, everything interesting is happening in the embedded world. So wheres the support for Pocket PC, Palm, and all the smart phones? Sucks, but at least I realized it now, when I've only invested $39 in Qt rather than the full $6K... lol.
Have you ever used KDE 3.X?
From here:
Haavard Nord, Trolltech's CEO, and Eirik Eng, Trolltech's President, had been working together with various cross-platform GUI tools back in 1991. We were both very disappointed in their quality and were sure we could do it much better. Haavard went on to write his Masters thesis on GUI design, while I wrote a C++ GUI toolkit for a Norwegian company. In 1993 he called me up and suggested that we should join forces and use our experience in GUI design to write the toolkit that would be the king of toolkits. We had no customers, no funding and a lot of enthusiasm. Luckily we were both married to wives who had full-time jobs. We used some savings to rent a small office and hacked away for a year while our wives fed and cared for us.
Personally, I find the entire thing rather neat and almost romantic. If you told your spouse/sig. other "I'm gonna go work on something and make absolutely no money for a year and you're going to support me...do you mind?" (s)he'd probably say something along the lines of "hell no" or go packing. The company name comes from a dream one of the cofounders had about their wife as well.
I dunno. I don't see that many couples that're close or stable enough to do that.
There's more important things "chicks" can have than a "hot" body. Like...helping you realize your dreams?
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
From the /. summary:
I think what was meant here was proprietary licenses, not commercial licenses. This is a rather common misunderstanding that stems from not seeing the GNU GPL as a license under which one may do commercial work. But many developers and distributors have done commercial activity involving GPL-covered works over the years. What the GPL prohibits is distribution of proprietary derivatives, hence the GPL is not a proprietary software license.
Digital Citizen
If you think about it, $5000 is pretty cheap -- that's ony the cost of about a month and a half or so of a developer's labour; a good tool can easily increase productivity enough to regain that month and a half in additional productivity.
I use Ratpoison you insesitive clod!
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
The Ogg Vorbis+Theora version works in Totem and Helix Player (better in Totem than Helix Player on my Fedora Core 4 GNU/Linux machine, actually).
Thanks to whomever made this version available. I appreciate distributing something for FLOSS users in FLOSS codecs.
Digital Citizen
I must now kill everyone involved with video for implanting that inane song in my head.
Can somone please help me out how to install qt on windows? (Yes, this version, not the cyg-win version).
I got it extracted to c:\qt\4.0.0 but running configure.exe does not do anything. It just makes me accept the license and tehn nothing. I tried the configure option "-qmake" which didnt do anything either...
Ermmm... I am lost.
Yes, but you haven't.
I've come for the woman, and your head.
With full MVC support, Qt is finally on par with Gtk and Swing in my book. Only it's better!
Depending on the economics of your business, it may be worth the money, but "very affordable" it ain't.
If you think $6600 to allow for the productive development of software on all three major platforms, simultaneously, is EXPENSIVE, you are lacking in experience.
$6600 is a midline wage for a single coder for one month. Any decent sized project goes on for YEARS, and usually involves at least 2-3 coders.
$6600 is a drop in the bucket if it saves even 5% of developer costs over the long haul! A single sale can pay WAY MORE than $6600 when you are talking about custom, vertical apps, and that sale might well be made on the back of "*nix/Mac/Win compatable"...
Cross-Platform is a selling feature again!
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Sorry, my firefox doesn't seem to care much, it just gets a page that auto reloads every 10th of a second or so, and flashblock takes care of whatever the animation may be...
"The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
Well, it certainly doesn't comply with the Open Source Definition. "No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor" and all that. So the development tools themselves are certainly not "free".
Symbiotic Harmonic Adaption Matrix Extention technology?
sounds like a fancy term for having a dance partner and copying what they do.
It's been a long time.
I don't remember having Gnome crash on me. To me the issue with KDE is that it doesn't "feel" right. It also is quite cluttered. Gnome is far more useable, atleast for me. And if you take a look at the interfaces, KDE mimics Windows, Gnome Mac OS.
aargh.... it does not matter what you use anyway as long as you're happy.
Why would I get modded down for posting a warning?
It's GPL. That's the license you acquired it under, that's the license that you need to use it under.
Just to clarify - technically, it's the licence under which it was released, and it is the only thing that allows you to distribute it. The GPL says nothing about use, only distribution.
I think you're viewing this from the point of an individual. For a large company, that is one months salary for their lowest employee. Won't take long for a decent product to pay itself off at that price.
"a restriction that's incompatible with the GPL"
How is saying that you can use this as long as your code is distributed under the GPL for free, against the terms of the GPL? Maybe against the terms of a BSD lic. but not the GPL.
If you want to keep your code closed, then pay or use a different toolset. If you are going to profit and not give anything back, then why should trolltech give you anything? Sounds hypocritical to me.
If you do private non-distributed development and they want to require a "commercial" license call is beta code. Who is going to know if it isn't distributed?
Now that I have defeated your complaint, QT will be release under a GPL lic. on Windows. --RTFA
I guess you also hate MySQL and hundreds of other open source projects that dual license their code.
Actually it would be harder to fuse the two together then it would be to make a whole new DE.
Gnome said it was about the licensing, and that has been resolved for how long now? How many years?
And in that time a nice desktop was made that many people use....so why not keep it around?
Linux needs a standard desktop - user's don't want to be forced to choose -
Why? I like that I have a choice. Only a fool likes things to be decided for him.
app writers don't want to have to choose and no matter what - lose some customers - and Gnome is bleeding away resources that could go to KDE.
Who says those resources would go into KDE? If anything, if Gnome died the momentum would be picked up be XFCE.
Why does it offend you that Gnome exists? I HATE the way KDE looks, and I'm so glad Gnome is around. In your world where the choice is made for me (KDE only), I would chose not to use Linux.
Open Source Sushi
Ouch. My condolences :-(
It's The Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
There's more important things "chicks" can have than a "hot" body. Like...helping you realize your dreams?
What if my dream includes chicks with hot bodies?
It's The Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
They've released a song?! Don't they remember the dancing bits of Hitachi and how unbelivably mindblowingly cheesy that was?
*shudders*
Gnome is bleeding away resources that could go to KDE.
A wise man once said: Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
It's The Golden Rule: "He who has the gold makes the rules."
Why must we fight? I could pick out a hundred billion things I can't stand about both GNOME/GTK+ and KDE/Qt. Neither's a good solution to the problem, and evangelizing one over the other is really what keeps the mythical Linux Desktop from existing.
That being said, GTK can't be folded into Qt due to licencing issues. GNOME might be able to, but that's a hell of a lot of developers to contact, and the bets are on that many would say no.
Why can't we simply build a system where programmers are allowed to use whichever programming paradigm they want, and it render to the same outcome, be it GNOME or KDE? It works under Windows (Win32/C preceeded the MFCs/C++, and both generate an application that looks and feels the same). WxWindows is almost that, but they decided to make their own widget system, which I believe to be a total failure; we need a unified widget system!!!
Constant look and feel is absolutely the number one goal we should be working towards, and yet its the one thing that nobody wants to work at. Everyone harps about choice, but the only thing users get to choose is which developmental faction to follow.
That being said, the ONLY reason I chose GNOME over KDE is that it looks closest to something I'm used to (Mac OS X). I felt the KDE toolbar to be a bit clunky for my tastes (even after a few hours of poking at configs), which is a jab to me, especially since I love WebCore and Konq.
Sometimes I wish I'd wake up in the morning and hear that Y-Windows has completed a complete recast of a windowing environment, and that both GNOME and KDE would port or die, simply because I can't stand the politics of the situation. I'm a user and don't want to be a developer. I don't want to be on either side of that war. I just want a working system.
I'll just stick with my Mac for now.
"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is." G.W.Bush
1) QT doesn't suck
Is it really that much better than wxWidgets? I can't find it right now, but somewhere on the wxWidgets website there is a comparison presenting some basic GUI functionality in Qt, MVC and wxWidgets, and the wx code is by far the shortest and most readable.
The point is that Trolltech --READ THE FUCKING PRESS RELEASE-- is releasing the QT under the GPL. ++PLUS a closed source license for those that want it++
Are you just stupid or are you retarded?
> $6600 is a midline wage for a single coder for one month. Any decent sized project goes on for YEARS, and usually involves at least 2-3 coders. $6600 is a drop in the bucket...
You're forgetting that the licensing is per developer. If it's hard to understand, just imaging not receiving a paycheck for one month. Now go and rethink your post.
The problem with Qt is that you cannot buy floating license.
.rc with C++ code.
Rational Rose for instead you can buy 1 or 2 floating license for 50 software engineers.
One of the problem in the current market is called:
"Free" MSDN Universal DVD license
Hire a developper or a MSCE, is the same thing,
except you get free licenses per MCSE.
Maybe we need a QTCE group license?!
Ask your boss to buy more Rational Rose license... please use Visio XP.
Ask your boss to buy some Qt license... please use Microsoft Visual Studio.NET
Why?
Boss: "Stop wasting public funds will ya!"
Seriously 6600$ is lots of money,
just multiply this by 50-100 employees
and you get a whopping 330,000-660,000$ US!
That's like asking your boss, please buy half M$ of Qt license.
There's no "cheap company wide" licensing.
A volume price of 660$ per seat would be more reasonable.
As far as the RAD part of Qt, anyone who used VCL/C++ Builder or Visual Basic will tell you
how much it sucks.
RAD Programming in Qt is as hard and tedious as Java, if not more.
One problem with Qt is that automatic code generation is insufficient.
Want to design right-click menu... please write C++ code.
Want to design a KApp... please write a
Want a standard menu... the default one is incompatible with KDE and no default KAction.
Qt and KDE needs to work closer together, because currently the integration just sucks.
The other problem with Qt is that you buy a library without a built-in IDE and multi-platform debugger.
At least, if it provided a Visual Studio debugger equivalent. Don't get me started on extremely painful gdb or ddd.
Qt Designer is NOT an IDE.
KDevelop sucks -> not user-friendly and no debugger.
It might be less painful than GTK or WxWindows, but it still far from useable than VCL.
> I HATE the way KDE looks...
Considering how configurable the look of KDE is, this is really ridiculous.
Huh, lack of decent freeware software? You are kidding right? There is a ton of decent freeware software (some is advertising supported, and some not).
. You are talking anywhere from 3000 to 5500 USD. Those people doing shareware or freeware, and who DO NOT want to give out the sources will not invest that kind of money for an SDK. You still will most likely need to buy an IDE, and compiler. And the moment you purchase Visual Studio you don't need a GUI toolkit.
I use Linux, OSX, and Windows, and if one thing can be said Windows has momentum BECAUSE it has all types of software freeware, and commercialware.
Developers on Windows will not use QT for their commercial apps. The main problem is the cost. http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/pricing.html
The argument of cross-platform does not spin either because it means a 5500 USD investment, which has to pay off. If were doing cross-platform using C++ I would use either GTK, or wxWidget.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
(Equally all Fields can buy a commercial/proprietary license if they like it better. But that does not claim to be free/open source any more.
I'm GNOME junkie, but KDE is quite superb desktop envorement (my taste is just different) and Trolltech are really doing good and professional job here. Desktop wars aside (we have nothing to fight each other about), I love lot of KDE apps like K3b, Kbabel, etc.
Congrats to KDE and QT teams!
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Ultimate++
It is BSD licensed, it comes with IDE on both Linux and Win32, and it kicks ass for productivity.
See comparison with Qt.
Ragarding Qt vs wxWidgets comparison, you may want to read this: http://freshmeat.net/articles/view/928/
To me, this seems like an interesting catalyst to learn a GUI API. Not only is cross platform is a welcome positive; the Qt structure is intriguing. Particularly see the Qt Object Model for a great read. I had little idea that Qt used a signals model and was tending towards strict use of the MVC paradigm. Perhaps comprehension of Qt would increase my chances of bothering to learn the almost entirely alien Cocoa/Obj-C rhetoric.
Actually, having downloaded Qt4 for Windows I've found that the GPL version doesn't "support" VC++. Only the makefiles for mingw are included. The configure "script" (which is actually an executable) just seems to display the GPL (which you can edit in an accompanying text file so you don't have to hit enter repeatedly), ask if you agree and then bail out. Perhaps that's because I don't have mingw installed; I'm not sure, because it didn't give any kind of error.
It's quite annoying that it doesn't come with the makefiles for VC++. I don't use the Visual Studio IDE, but I always use Microsoft's compiler (CL.EXE) and have a big collection of libraries already built for it which I don't fancy having to rebuild to switch compilers just to appease Qt. No doubt I could, if I had enough knowledge about Qt and the time to do it, create my own makefiles for CL based on the ones supplied for mingw, but that TrollTech didn't include them when they clearly have them for the commercial version is a little annoying. Why are they mandating which compiler open source developers must use? It's not like I'm suddenly going to plonk down a $4000 licence fee just because I want to use a different toolchain. What difference would it have made?
There is no discrimination against fields of endeavour in the GPL, which is the Qt license. Furthermore, the GPL is clearly listed on the OSI website as an OSI-compliant license.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
This has happened to me multiple times.
Also, I have been seeing lots of posts that seem like obvious responses to threads, but the wrong threads, they are then marked incorrectly as offtopic.
I suspect the slashdot article ids are getting messed up somehow and people's replys are getting stuck under the wrong parent.
Strangely enough, I thought that was how all couples should behave.
If my wife would decide to take a year off to work on a personal project (or go to graduate school) I would foot the bill gladly. In fact, I'm almost doing so now (just almost, because she has a scholarship...).
Thanks, it was an interesting read. It seems very favorable for wxWidgets and maybe a little harsh on Qt: "If you're not an API purist, you can choose among the three huge toolkits, FOX, Qt, and wxWindows. I personally think Qt is made irrelevant by both of the others because they are not missing anything Qt offers."
I think one of the comments is worth noting. It says:
"Pretty good summary overall, although I feel compelled to point out a few things I've noticed about the toolkits and have heard from others:
- Qt is by most accounts the best designed, fullest featured, and fastest to work with C++ GUI toolkit out there.(...)"
Notice that the commenter honestly admits, that he's repeating things he heard from others. I have also many times heard that Qt is best designed, fullest featured etc (at a time I even used to repeat it myself, as something obvious). However, I haven't seen any actual facts to back up this statement, especially regarding the comparison with wxWidgets. So, I think -- maybe we all "know" that Qt is the best toolkit, simply because Trolltech PR guys made such statement printed so many times that everybody believed?
Clever signature text goes here.
I know based on having tried using GTK, Qt and Wx. Qt was the best. The rosegarden developer does a good piece on why it's better than gtkmm from the point of view of someone trying to actually write a program, though I haven't seen a similar thing for Wx.
I am trolling
I find the feel of KDE better. Yes it is overloaded with options, but that means I've got a choice about things, rather than having choices I don't want forced on me. I think KDE doesn't try to mimic anything specifically, but rather be as configurable as possible - you can get it to be very macos like, more than I've seen gnome being.
I am trolling
I couldn't resist firing up a vmware instance of Windows and try it with Internet Explorer. I even took a snapshot of the image before entering the address, real paranoid like.
Nothing. It displayed a blank page which reloaded itself at a moderate rate. I clicked stop and it stopped.
...ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
http://www.trolltech.com/download/opensource.html
"Add a notice to your program that it is GPL licensed when it runs"
The QPL seems to be gone. THis is new. So what if I use QT but want to release my own code as BSD?
Ummm...
What you don't understand is that this is how marriage works. My wife left a good job so I could make a career move. I supported her as she went through grad school and the process to become an Episcopal priest. Right now, she is at home with the kids while I am presenting at a conference.
We have been married 23 years, and I claim that this sort of thing is more typical than you might imagine. We have both realized dreams because of the support of the other.
$6600 is a drop in the bucket for any company that deserves to stay in business. Regardless, the ecomonic benefits of using Qt far outweigh the costs--a cross-platform development toolkit saves massive amounts of coding time, and time is money.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
Wow, I always thought that people who omit the apostrophe in "Hallowe'en" were just wrong (I'm Scottish). This is getting dreadfully off-topic now though.
Have you seen their per capita income? That's easy for them, that would be impossible for a Brazilian like me. Well, unless my wife had already a very high income.
-- "Usefulness arises from what is not there" - Daoism saying
This begs for the standard reply: "You must be new here."
:-(
Of course the answer is: stupid moderators that don't browse at -1!
Matt
News about the Kettle Open Source project: on my blog
Just built it. Yea, it's more lightweight, but don't remove QT3 just yet. The new designer lacks the project manager, code editor, etc. All that's left is the.. designer. While yes, this is more lightweight, etc, the main reason for using Qt over Gtk2 at times was that Qt3 lets you create a working gui app, FAST. I mean, generating the functions for all the signals, etc. Qt4 does not do this anymore. I have no problem with generating all the stuff by hand, but isn't the whole point to "Code less, create more?"
The 3D widget is somewhat cool, though.
$2000 is two weeks salary... in the US!
And meta moderating to get rid of them doesn't seem to do any good. I keep having hope though and have been meta moderating for over 2 years. Eventually it might do some good or get me mod points but I don't have much hope in either.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I - I took the one the bus load of girls just went down.
That's why years ago I stripped out KDE and replaced it with Gnome.
I would dismiss this as technically impossible but nonetheless conjecture that if KDE dumped QT and moved to a community developed widget system that did not use something like moc but still had the structural and functional benefits that KDE fans keep extolling then Gnome possibly would cease to be. QT may well be the technically better solution but for a consensus this isn't wholly relevant. As it is, QT's centralized, commercially driven development, it's history and it's use of pre-compilers invoke many hostile reactions from a broad spectrum of developers. QT will NEVER be accepted as the de-facto Linux widget set simply because to hard core ideologically driven members of the community it just represents (rightly or wrongly) something that is contrary to the spirit of the community. Though QT is GPL, it is resented by many because of it's licensing structure. People see the Linux desktop as their own and do not see why it should be Trolltech that be the one to tax proprietary software on it when so many others put just as much work into creating the whole system, especially since QT was happy to be proprietary itself for a number of years.
This is not a troll meant to insight rage; this is not meant to be a bikeshed topic that I feel I am insightful for bringing up but am not; I am simply expressing an opinion that is widespread within the community. QT is fine as an optional tool to have on the desktop, but to assume the position of de-facto standard it would have to represent something that is agreed upon by the whole OSS community, technically, ideologically and historically.
If one is looking for unification candidates, GTK+ is a marginally better alternative since it has been community driven from the onset, is supported by more languages including it's excellent c++ port gtkmm. However GTK+ too has gained a foul reputation from the KDE camp. What I can say is that if someone associated with KDE wrote a new widget toolkit, it wouldn't be long until GTK+ could run using it just like it can run using the windows buttons with gtk-wimp. Why QT never started using GTK+ as it's backend under linux is beyond me, that would have been more consistent to the overall QT strategy and it would have really helped their bottom line since they probably don't make much profit on their linux port anyway.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
Ya .. I would agree that wxWidgets' API is not the prettiest thing in the world. But the advantages of wxWidgets far outweigh any disadvantage, IMHO.
You need to ask yourself this question. Why do you hate the Mac?
I get mod points all the time. Its sort of a feedback loop you get way over 50 karma + good meta mods and you get to mod a lot.
Let's not forget that he's also comparing this against the cheapest version of Visual Studio. I don't think that many serious developers are going to be using the Standard Edition. Last time I checked, Standard Edition had a crippled optimizer. Any serious developer is going to be using at least pro, which is around $500. The Enterprise Architect version, which is what we use where I work, seems to be around $1,200.
You gotta hand it to them for picking an appropriate name for their product. :)
Never mind those, when do I get PHPQT?...
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
In Scandanavia "chicks" don't take offense at the word chicks.
They may, however, take offense at you implying that most women would leave a man because he wasn't making money.
--
Don't just make shit up. No, it's not taken from one particular license that I know of, and it's certainly not from the GPL; the GPL doesn't contain the words "field", "endeavor" or "endeavour", or any form of "discriminate."
Yeah, sorry, misremembered something. I thought that Qt had something with a "no commercial use" clause on it. As long as it's just GPL, that's alright.
What disturbs you so much about GNOME?
Of course, you may object that actually GNOME and KDE do the same things, and in two different ways. But I'd say, that's a good thing.
Both have pros and cons, and this way everybody can choose what better fills his needs. Plus, I'd like to add, what made me love linux is the fact that I can choose. I can make MY system. A system that suits my needs.
Of course the average dumb user will never need this, but I don't think Linux should lose its spirit to run after people that aren't intrested in it.
There's already Microsoft providing single packaged, totally uncustomizable, elephant sized operating systems (for uncustomizable but really better OSes, there are shiny Apples).
Think different... or wait, just think. It's enough.
nbody2002:If you can read this you may be addicted to the internet
I wouldn't say I don't understand how marriage works, nor would I say I do.
Success depends on a lot of factors, like duration of marriage thus far and culture. In my country (the US), about half of marriages end in divorce and thus one could say any other outcome is sadly "above average". I fully agree and embrace the ideal I put forth as the template for marriage (i.e. supporting one another for better or worse in all each other's aspirations) however, I was simply pointing out having a healthy relationship is actually atypical, both statistically and in my personal experiences thus far (but I'm only 23).
Also, there's a huge difference between "making a career move" to something like a priest and starting your own company in an unproven market with no income from your product for over a year. In the former, there is a good chance you'll get positive income at the end (therefore, more of a matter of willing to wait for income later). In the latter, it's very probable you'll make absolutely no money even after a few years.
I'm glad your experiences were positive, and though I think it is how marriage should work, we ought never to impose our ideals on reality. Instead, see it for how it is, for it is because of this descrepancy that dreams are possible.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
It took advantage of opening a terminal (I didn't know a web page could do that, I filed a bug with apple). Sounds, picktures, infinite browsers.... a real pain under safari.
There also used to be some bizarre language in the license FAQ stating that you were not allowed to use the GPL Qt to develop a commercial app, and then buy commercial licenses once you were ready to distribute commercially. Basically, in their eyes, any code developed with GPL Qt is forever tainted and can't be used any way besides GPL.
Here's the link that says basically that.
Their motivation is pretty obvious: most startups fail, so they want to get cash from any company using Qt right away before they go belly-up. But that's more restrictive and viral than even the GPL, isn't it? With the regular GPL, nothing is stopping me from developing my prototype using GPL code, and then replacing the GPL bits with something non-GPL at the last minute before distribution.
I guess the difference is that they're the ones selling you the commercial license in the end, so they can make the terms of the commercial license whatever they want. I.e. they can say that you're in viloation of that license if you initially developed your code under GPL Qt.
You didn't read the license correctly.
m l
You MAY NOT SWAP license in and out.
You buy an individual license PER DEVELOPPER.
"It is a per-developer license.
The license is assigned to an individual. It may be transferred,
but only every six months and within the same organization.
To transfer a license, or if you need a more flexible licensing agreement, please contact sales@trolltech.com. "
http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/licensing.ht
Not a bunch floating licenses for the entire company.
It's not like you are getting:
5 windows floating license
5 linux floating license
5 mac floating license
1 cross platform floating license
"My gut reaction is this would be suicide if they did that, so I find it very unlikely they did."
That's what they do and that's why I'm complaining.
They are saying that floating licenses
do not make sense for a library.
So, unless your organization builds software on a single platform, then you need 6600$ multiplatform license.
You're forgetting that the licensing is per developer. If it's hard to understand, just imaging not receiving a paycheck for one month. Now go and rethink your post.
That changes almost nothing. Remember the "years" part of my post. It's not atypical for such a programming framework to save much, much more than a month in a 2 year project, and then there's maintenance after the fact.
Sorry. If you think that $6600 is unreasonable, you are lacking in experience.
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
That changes almost nothing. Remember the "years" part of my post. It's not atypical for such a programming framework to save much, much more than a month in a 2 year project, and then there's maintenance after the fact.
Loosing even one month's paycheck out of two years is enough for me. Besides, read the licensing scheme carefully. If you want support you'll pay on the annual basis. If you compare it to offerings from other companies, it won't sound that reasonable for you.
Sorry. If you think that $6600 is unreasonable, you are lacking in experience.
Hard to believe that a man with experience can say something ignorant like this.
You didn't read the license correctly.
You're right, I didn't read it at all. And from the link you gave me, neither did you. If you actually found the license on the site, link to it and we'll be able to settle this instead of speculate on what it does or does not say.
You MAY NOT SWAP license in and out.
You buy an individual license PER DEVELOPPER.
Reread what I wrote earlier. I didn't say switch the developers' licenses, I just said give everyone ONE licenses for his or her preferred platform and have them stick with it.
In other words, I'm not saying swap the license, I'm saying swap the code you're working on. As long as the license doesn't forbid compiling code written on a different platform under a different license, you would be more than able to do this.
That's what they do and that's why I'm complaining.
They are saying that floating licenses
do not make sense for a library.
So, unless your organization builds software on a single platform, then you need 6600$ multiplatform license.
No, you don't. You could have one dev working on a Windows version, one on a Mac version, and one on X. Single platform -- $3300 -- for each, but you can build on all three platforms.
You have yet to show me a page saying they forbid this in their license.
If you metamoderate all the time, why would they give you regular mod points? It's harder to get that thankless job done, and people who do it, you don't wanna lose them. When they stop metamoderating, then you sweeten the deal and give them mod points, so they keep at it, it's like free work. (But it's not really work when it's fun doing.) All in all, they say the system randomly assigns mod points, but if those in charge 'care' about the quality of moderation, they might cut a few corners that give the system more efficiency at the expense of fairness and decency to human beings (Especially if they don't know they are being treated unfairly. I'm not saying they are cutting corners, but it could be a possibility, ya never know.) What matters though, metamoderators, is that you/we should feel proud, because we are the ones who really carry the weight, who keep the system in check, and that's why we come here, it's our collective work. I said 'we, metamoderators' but I'm guilty of being lazy too, because lately I've been getting a lot of mod points, and I don't really meta-moderate much when get regular mod points. By the way, mandatory joke: Don't ask what slashdot can do for you, ask what you can do for slashdot! :)
Where exactly did you find that lame "definition" anyway?
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Way to be about seven years behind the times. The OSD is courtesy of the Open Source Initiative and serves as one of the best expositors of what "open" actually is. Before it was the OSD, it was the Debian Free Software Guidelines, governing what could and could not be included in the Debian main distribution.
Give it up already. Just because an organization defines something doesn't mean that they are correct, and can exclude everything else from the actual definition. They can exclude things from their licenses etc., but they can't redefine the English language!
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