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Trolltech Adopts GPL 3 for Qt
Funkmaster F writes "At the KDE Developer Conference today, Trolltech CEO Havaard Nord announced that its Qt application development toolkit will be released under GPL 3. 'Here at the KDE release event, Nord's announcement was met with applause. Like Trolltech's initial decision to move from its own QPL license to the GPL, this announcement and the company's more recent decision to adopt the GPL for all platforms rather than just Linux, demonstrate the company's ongoing commitment to openness.'"
So the complaint that KDE is not as "open" as Gnome is no longer valid?
I simply find stupid the idea of having two different installed toolkits on the same computer
Why? That makes no sense whatsoever. Unless you really can't spare the extra ~5mb of ram, what's the issue? You realize that Windows is probably running about 5 different toolkits at once right?
less importantly but still somewhat relevant, OpenOffice
You do realize that Openoffice uses its own toolkit called VCL, right? Which means, that your computer has two different toolkits installed! Egad! Quick, uninstall Openoffice!
The only reason it integrates into Gnome is because there is a GTK compatibility layer, just like there is a Qt compatibility layer for KDE.
Not to mention Firefox uses XUL and XBL. GTK can be used to render some interface widgets, but that is minor in comparison.
Actually, you can develop all your software using the GPL version (without distributing it) and then decide to distribute it under a commercial license.
The GPL actually requires that when you distribute a software you distribute the source code with it.
If you never distribute the software developed with the GPL version of Qt, you'll never have to give away your source.
When you have the finished version ready, you may purchase Qt license and distribute it commercially as closed source or anyway you want.
All of them running over Gtk.
.gtkrc* and do it, it will reflect on every software using Gtk
Over GTK? No, the exact opposite. GTK is a shell on top (Openoffice also has a Qt shell). And you think that doesn't contribute to bloat? It's worse, because now you've actually got two whole toolkits loaded in memory at any given time. So don't think you're really saving anything.
I can go to
Well when I'm running KDE, I change the colours and fonts, and those colours get applied to GTK apps if I tick the box..
Every GNU+Linux distribution (which includes Ubuntu and Red Hat) already ships a bunch of GPLv3 applications. From the perspective of companies that distribute general purpose operating systems, GPLv3 is strictly better than GPLv2 because of the internationalized wording and the "contributors can't screw the community with patents" provisions.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Consider very carefully what the actual potential costs and benefits of such a clause are before deciding not to use it.
One of the key advantages to using any version of the GPL is that your code can be combined with other code that was written separately and also released under the GPL. "Version X or later" code can always be combined. When the next version comes out, "Version X only" code will be uncombinable. That basically means that - unless your project is Linux sized and can get away with having its own license - "Version X or later" is the only answer that will allow your project to outlive your personal work on it.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
My goodness, it's almost as if you had some way to make companies who don't want to participate in the development of free software participate by funding it! That's so... evil?
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As the developer of an Open Source package based on GTK called LiarLiar, I am very pleased that Trolltech decided to offer the Linux community such a powerful and easy to use toolkit; however, I chose to use Gtk+ because I may decide someday to release a Shareware version of my application. I receive nowhere near enough income from my app to even pay 1/10th of the license fee and I suspect many other developers are in the same boat. While the big commercial developers can afford a license, the thousands of small shareware authors would never be able to justify the license fees to be able to release their software. Thus, they will end up sticking with the windows API's.
Now if Trolltech decided to release Qt as LGPL, that would make cross-platform development of many shareware applications possible, but would likely hurt Trolltech's bottom line.
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This is supposed to be a bad thing, I take it? As I see it, the alternative for the software house would have been to just release their code. Open source, or pay up and fund future open source development. Seems like a pretty big win-win for the community to me.
I think you're missing my point somewhat - I can't, as a small developer who doesn't even know if his software is going to be released commercially, start coding now and then purchase a license later. I'm a small game developer and my editor may be of no interest to anyone but me. But if it does turn out to be useful to release it, and I don't want to release it open-source, I can't simply buy a commercial license and be done with it.
Why should Trolltech mind if I bought a license later rather than sooner? They're still getting the license. One way just forces me to decide much earlier, when I may simply not have the information that I need to determine which is the right course of action. (Which, in this case, turns out to be "don't use QT".)
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
If you don't distribute during development, there's no way trolltech could know if you did the actual development with the GPL version or a commercial version... Once you want to release it just buy a commercial license and wait say a month and release it proprietary.
This is obviously violating a term of the commercial license. However if you're a small fish with only one developer, there's no way trolltech will know or care for that matter. The term in the commercial license is there because they don't want big companies with many developers to just buy one commercial license. Which is fair enough...
But IMO, if you don't want to release free software don't base your applications on free software libraries! How hard can that be to understand.
I build a shiny widget, and release it under the GPL. Lots of people use my shiny widget - it becomes the gold standard for shiny widgets. Then some software house cuts a huge deal for software development with [insert name of immense multinational here]. The only trouble is, they need a shiny widget as part of the code. And damn, your one is the standard.
They come to you, and boy, you have them over a barrel. Because you were cunning enough to use the GPL, you can hold them to ransom, and charge them $1M for a limited license that lets them use your shiny widget in their new project. And whats more, you can sell it all over again the next time someone needs your shiny widget in a non-GPL setting.
Great imagination, laddie, shame about your grasp on reality.
The maximum value of any piece of software is what it would cost to do a clean-room reimplementation from scratch. Remember that a lot of the original GNU software was clean-room reimplementations of pre-existing UN*X utilities. On the whole it's always easier to do a clean-room reimplementation than to build the original system, because the re-implementors have a complete functional specification and a working prototype to test against.
In the past I've needed bits of commercial functionality which weren't available open source, so I simply reimplemented them from the specifications. It isn't hard to do - and it isn't hard to do the other way round either. So, sure, if you spent $1.5M equivalent in programmer hours developing your implementation, you might just get your $1M license fee. If it's something you knocked up in a weekend, they'll pay a programmer for a weekend.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
> Even Microsoft doesn't get to collect extra fees for commercial software development on
> Windows.
They recoup it by collecting extra fees for using windows. (_Both_ from you and all users of your software.)
> GTK is much better suited for a general-purpose library on Linux than QT simply because it
> allows you to develop "anything" using it.
The only difference is that GTK allows you to close code up and sue your users who share it with other people. Kinda weird for a "free software" library to faciliate proprietary lawsuits.
>However, I do have an objection to supporting their attempt to make QT central to Linux
>software development.
They dont make it more "central" than any other toolkit out there.
- software encumbered by patent law,
- software encumbered by anticircumvention law, or
- software that nearly everyone is presumed to have seen, making it prohibitive for a room to be made clean.
The third item is what made it difficult for Compaq to find good reverse engineers for its IBM PC BIOS cloning project: too many developers of application software for IBM PCs had already read through it, raising a rebuttable presumption of subconscious copying. This also causes trouble for developers of musical works, who are presumed to have heard their competitors' works on commercial music radio: see Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music and Three Boys Music v. Michael Bolton.That said, if you can't afford Qt, then you just shouldn't be using it for a commercial product. It's a full featured and very good quality C++ library, and those don't come cheap. There are always other simpler, "budget" alternatives, such as wxWidgets.
Yes you can. If software does not see a public release, it has no license; the GPL explicitly differentiates between private software for your own use and that which is made available to the public. Trolltech make the same distinction.
You can develop the software using the free library, as long as it does not see the light of day outside of your own use. There is no need to license software that will never leave your desktop or be used by anyone outside of your company. If you need to entertain a commercial release, then you can buy the commercial license and recompile/distribute that software with the commercial library.
I know a couple of projects which have especially done it this way; the software used was internal and used the free, non-commercial Qt library built from source. When it was decided to be released, due to licensing of other parts of the software it needed to stay closed source. So a license was bought.. and the software was released. Trolltech, nor any software company, would fault you for not planning to use commercial software, and there is no API difference in the commercial Qt and free Qt which means you must code for one and not the other.
So, don't be stupid. Just code it for free, now, for your own use (the licenses permit this) and then get a commercial license *IF* you see the need for a public binary release at the time. But you do not need to plan that ahead.