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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."
Microsoft, Borland, etc. usually have an entry level version of most of their programming products (with which you can still write proprietary code) that is less than my car payment. Entry level on QT is more than my mortgage.
Yes, they support open source, but unless you're an open source coder or a well-funded enterprise coder, they basically tell you to F off. I don't like that and it detracts from any excitement I could have about these announcements.
- Greg
Start a happiness pandemic
I predict three types of comments here...
1) BeOS was a great multimedia OS
2) Trolltech's licencing schemes suck
3) Gnome vs. KDE
Take off every sig. For great justice.
I was just wondering if it's at all possible for you guys to change your name from Trolltech to something less pleasant sounding. No, wait.... Not possible.
Maybe.. Goatsetech?
I dunno.
But fire the guy who came up with that name, anyway.
Sincerely,
Common Sense
the license does not allow you to use code you wrote with the free version in the paid versions.
Sure it does. It just doesn't allow you to distribute that code. You can sit down, write all the programs you'd like with the free version, test it out yourself, then switch to the commercial version when it's time to release.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
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.
as aposed to people who troll for arguments which is
"Religion is the most malevolent of all mind viruses." - Arthur C. Clarke.
I thought it read "Original BSOD Developer". Hehe...
Does Trolltech incorporate GPL-ed contributions into their commercial release? If yes, what gives them the right to re-license those contributions under a non-GPL license? Else, what do they get out of open sourcing their software other than publicity?
I wish I could select uneditable text (like error messages!)
I wish the QT supported full reflection and serialization so that drag and drop could be fully intergated in KDE.
I wish they would make QT thread safe so that when web plugins and konquerer tabs crashed they didn't take all my konqueror windows with
them.
and finally I wish that new guy would read my comment.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
GTK is LGPL, so as I understand the license it should be okay to use it in both free and proprietary projects.
IANAL, this isn't legal advice, etc....
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
I get it! So a troll is either good or bad, and either big or small. Thanks, that clears a lot up.
I am Spartacus
Sure it does. It just doesn't allow you to distribute that code. You can sit down, write all the programs you'd like with the free version, test it out yourself, then switch to the commercial version when it's time to release.
This is actually *NOT* the case. As per the QT license, you must BUY the licence before you start coding the application.
Refer to the license FAQ: http://www.trolltech.com/developer/faqs/index.htm
"Can we use the Open Source Edition while developing our non-opensource application and then purchase commercial licenses when we start to sell it?
No. Our commercial license agreements only apply to software that was developed with Qt under the commercial license agreement. They do not apply to code that was developed with the Qt Open Source Edition prior to the agreement. Any software developed with Qt without a commercial license agreement must be released as Open Source software."
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.)
...HaikuOS has a paid developer for a few weeks.
Axel's development blog is available, as is the story on OSNews where I found the link.
Apparently, Haiku should have a bootable CD image soon.
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?" `":" #");}
Trolltech is headquartered in Oslo, Norway. Trolls are a very central part of Norwegian popular culture and folklore. See the Wikipedia article on trolls for more information about this Scandinavian cultural element, and this article about the Troll Oil Platform for another example of Norwegian companies using this tie to their folklore.
Out of all of the people that presented at the various Be Dev Conferences, he's the one that was the least impressive. He seemed to be cut from the same cloth as JLG when it came to attitude, with nothing to really back it up.
Hmm, where to start?
As far as soft real time? Back in the day I ran Be on a P2 350 2xx Megs ram. I could easily play 10-20 mp3s at one time with all playing smoothly while I ran several other programs. Sure there was no reason to do that, but it looked cool. Same goes for video. I remember the cool thing at one time was to play 50 or so copies of the Phantom Menace trailor.
You really could run the full system to 100% and still have damn good GUI responce. There's still no system (that I've found) that runs as smooth as Be did in 1998.
The great thing about programming was that the threading was to embedded in the system that you didn't know you where even using it. Take some time to browse the BeBook. It was a great api.
Ah, yes, but the original developers of BeOS are still great engineers, so it's newsworthy to hear about their new pursuits. As a former BeOS hacker and an intern at Be in 1997, it's great to see what's happened to the various engineers that I used to work with. Dominic Giampaolo is now at Apple where he is the chief architect behind Spotlight and other cool stuff, and several Be engineers, including myself, are now working at Danger, Inc., the company behind the Hiptop/Sidekick and Hiptop2 smart phones.
I remember Benoit as an über-hacker who wrote something like 50% of the original BeOS single-handedly. It was great to hear about his new job while I'm waiting for KDE 3.5.0 beta 2 to compile on my Gentoo box.
--
Jake
No it doesn't. Play around to your hearts content. When you're ready to code for real, then buy the license. Simple. If you're not playing around, then you need to make up your mind quickly if you're going to release it open source or not.
To be blunt: If you're writing code you intend to release under a proprietary license, you need to buy the proprietary license. Of course, that's exactly what Trolltech just told you, but it didn't seem that you heard.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
Why is $1800 considered a lot of money for a programmer?
.NET+VS-Enterprise. In other words, it's overpriced compared to the alternatives. Whether a company can in principle squeeze the money for paying for the overpriced product into the budget is not relevant.
Because it's about $1800 more than Cocoa+XCode, $1800 more than Gtk+ or wxWidgets, or $1000 more than
"wahhhhhh, why does it cost $500 an hour to record in this studio?"
The proper question is "why does it cost $1500 an hour to record in this studio without a sound engineer, when it costs $500 to record in that other studio with a sound engineer included?". That's the question people are aking about Qt.
Why is $1800 considered a lot of money for a programmer?
Maybe because in some countries it's the yearly wage of said programmer?????? Hint: a high-pay programmer in my country makes circa US$ 10000/yr.
It's better to be the foot on the boot than the face on the pavement. ~~ tkx Kadin2048
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.
The best thing about QTopia is that it has a *superb* web browser, namely Opera and if you don't like that browser you can use Netfront, too. These are both optimised for handheld browsing and are one of the two reasons I stick with Qtopia...
There are alternatives, too. If you don't like what Qtopia offers, try PdaXRom. If that isn't available for your device, they might be interested in moving it onto the device so just ask.
And if you want to run X applications, use PocketWorkstation or better still a combination of X/Qt and Pocketworkstation, which gets rid of the frankly sucky use of VNC.