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Original BeOS Developer Now at Trolltech
UltimaGuy writes "Benoit Schillings, co-creator of the Be operating system and former CTO of Openwave, has been appointed to the newly created position of chief technology officer (CTO) at Trolltech. In the meantime, Trolltech has also joined the new mobile OSDL initiative."
So wait, your biggest problem with trolltech is they don't have a price point for you?
It's their software, right? They have the right to make money off of their own work, right? And license it however they choose?
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Perhaps, but we have the right not to use it.
Ewige Blumenkraft.
The community of BeOS loyalists just keeps shrinking it seems. I was reading on a popular BeOS news site that Microsoft hired some former Be programmers to work on Windows sound. Now trolltech has one of the co-creators of the BeOS. It really makes me wonder how much longer the small user base of BeOS users will last, especially since Zeta hasn't taken off due to its price.
This MLI that Trolltech, Motorola, and WindRiver are forming looks to be another one of those biannual mailing list groups. By which I mean that there is a lot of initial interest and a bunch of people join the group and get included on the mailing list and after a month or two of email flurries, the list dies down to an automated email verifying the list recipients every two years.
These things come and go so fast that it seems to not even be worth the trouble to discuss.
On the other hand, Linux as a mobile platform is a reality, and it isn't just that handful of companies listed in the article that are involved in embedded Linux development. About half the selection of mobile phones for the Japanese Docomo network are based on Linux. Many home entertainment device makers use Linux in their home electronics products. And the number of private Linux "homebrew" projects is huge due to the relatively low cost of entry.
Linux in the "mobile" market is booming, and doesn't need an Initiative to help it. Indeed, the software aspect is only one component in the embedded market. Hardware considerations are much more important. Should OEMs go with XScale or OMAP? OMAP or Alchemy? These initial hardware decisions pave the roadmap for future software needs. Standardizing the software from the outset only limits the choices that OEMs can make.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Well I don't see the problem. Either you "Contribute to the continued development of the product by purchasing commercial licenses from Trolltech", or you "Contribute to the Open Source community by placing your application under an Open Source license (e.g. the GPL)." What is the problem? That you don't want to contribute your code to the GPL, but you want to use a GPLed codebase? Isn't that akin to stealing? So you don't want to use the GPL? Then pay for the commercial license. Sounds like you want it both ways, to me. Ok, how about this? You get the Free version and play with it. Any work you do would be GPLed if you distribute it, and isn't available for use later with the commercial license, but you can testdrive it. If you like it, then pony up the cost of the commercial license, and don't use the test programs you wrote. No big deal.
Why is $1800 considered a lot of money for a programmer?
If you're looking at producing something commercial, then it's a perfectly fine investment.
plenty of other industries and interests have costs similar or much larger than that - and they don't have the same prospect for making the money back as a good commercial application does.
By the way - to get your sea legs under you, there's an evaluation version. You can also talk to Trolltech about your specific situation and your possible options.
Every time a TrollTech article comes up, there's the same whiny troll about the price of the license, well guess what? It's a fucking GOOD thing that you can't afford it, because we don't WANT your crappy $15 shareware anyway.
And god help you if you ever want to be a musician: "waaahhhh, why do guitars cost so much?" "waaaahhhh, why do I have to pay $5,000+ for sequencers, effects and soft-synths?" or alternatively - "wahhhhhh, why does it cost $500 an hour to record in this studio?"
Trolltech most certainly has the right to price their product at whatever point they want to, and to impose whatever restrictions they care to. I don't have any argument at all regarding that, but I don't feel that *for me* it's anything resembling a reasonable price, given my specific needs. For someone else that needs to have their cross-platform capability or other features that Qt offers, TT's pricing may represent a drop in the bucket compared to what development would cost for rolling their own or using someone else's libraries, and thus it would be a good buy for them.
Everyone considering Qt needs to weigh the costs against the benefit of using it, and proceed accordingly. For my particular requirements, Qt is simply too expensive to consider, and since I can't use it professionally, any OSS stuff I happen to release will pretty much be guaranteed to be non-Qt as well. I doubt this will make the slightest difference to anyone but myself, but I can't imagine I'm the only developer in the same situation.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
To highlight, its the commercial license wording that excludes developing under the GPL and getting a license at the last minute, not the wording of the GPL (which many people assume after reading the F.A.Q.)
No, you can't. You can't "switch" code you developed using the GPL version to the commercial version. It's not against the GPL; it is against the commercial license that TrollTech sells QT under. You can write all the programs you'd like with the free version, but you can never ever use any of that code with the commercial version of QT.
The reason for this is that QT has no run-time licenses or per-copy royalties. You only ever pay for the development you do. After that you never have to pay TrollTech again, no matter how many copies you distribute. Obviously if you could develop all your code using the GPL version, buy one commercial license, compile once and release, then TrollTech would be out of business in short order.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
Plus, even if you were to develop an app for internal use you cannot go from open source to closed. Trolltech's commercial license is setup this way - once open source, always open source.
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http://www.trolltech.com/developer/faqs/index.htm
I don't know any full time professional US/EU software developers that make less than $50,000. Most get paid a heck of a lot more than that. Surely they can afford a tiny $1800 license.
Qt isn't for part time shareware authors.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
What's ethically dubious about it? They tell you upfront what they're going to do with the code!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
or you "Contribute to the Open Source community by placing your application under an Open Source license (e.g. the GPL).
Actually, I want to contribute to Qt under the GPL, but Troll Tech won't let me.
It makes no difference to me as a customer how much it costs to develop the library. There are plenty of good alternatives that I don't have to pay for (beyond what I already pay for the OS in any case): Swing, wxWidgets, Gtk+, Cocoa, MFC, .NET, etc. It's unfortunate for Troll Tech that they can't subsidize their development with other revenue streams, but that doesn't make me any more inclined to pay lots of money for their stuff.
Furthermore, if I'm going to pay $1800/developer, then I'm going to pay that money for improving an open source toolkit like wxWidgets or Gtk+, where I get specific improvements for my money and where I don't have to pay over and over again.
I don't know any full time professional US/EU software developers that make less than $50,000. Most get paid a heck of a lot more than that. Surely they can afford a tiny $1800 license.
Qt isn't for part time shareware authors.
And not for anyone who has made a project, only to then want to go professional. If say BitTorrent had been written using the Qt library, it doesn't matter that he just got $8 million in funding. That code is still ineligible for a commercial version (unless you port it to a different toolkit, or Qt is willing to give you a special license). It also depends on what you use Qt for. If 95% of your program is non-GUI logic that needs a simple GUI, paying $1800/seat for that is a joke. Qt Commercial is (IMO) a fairly niche and lucrative market. Nothing wrong with that (queue the "Trolltech are dying" like "Apple are dying" trolls), and as a GPL toolkit it is excellent. The problem is that once you're hooked on the Qt toolkit, there's a broad range of projects you'd like to use it for, but for which there's no sensible license.
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