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In-Depth With Qt 4.4
QtPi writes "Trolltech has announced the availability of Qt 4.4, the cross-platform software development framework. Ars Technica has an in-depth look at the release, which include an integrated WebKit-based HTML rendering engine, the new Phonon multimedia framework, support for Windows CE, and significant improvements to the QGraphicsView system. 'Qt 4.4 brings a lot of rich new capabilities to the toolkit that are sure to please open source and commercial software developers. It sounds like Trolltech already has some nice plans for Qt 4.5, and we will hopefully get to hear more about the long-term roadmap after Nokia completes its acquisition.'"
Why does Qt get such kudos?
Its mad, it doesn't bear scrutiny. And yet I find time after time people holding up Qt as wonderful, often in open source circles, whilst at the same time doing down Microsoft. But for the cost of one license for MSDN you can only license one application for Qt development, both per year. MS provides more value for equivalent fees.
I'm not knocking Qt's technical merits. I'm sure its great. We have customers telling us they use Qt and its great etc. No problem with that.
But, per application, recurring per year, its expensive, and yet Microsoft is attacked for its licensing while Qt is seemingly venerated, left right and centre, but Qt is the more expensive. MSDN professional costs the same (no matter how many applications) and you get shed load for that.
Just to give you an example: For MSDN we pay £563.xx (approx $1116) per year, but for Qt, our licensing fees would be $42,000. And should we port to Linux and Mac OS/X, our licensing fees for MSDN would be £453 (approx $1116) and our Qt fees would be $126,000).
So why does Qt get such veneration when the value for money is so poor compared to the industry pariah (sic), Microsoft (I've excluded Apple because so many of you seem blind to the proprietary hardware lock-in on every Apple product past and present).
Even if you want to just do open source, you can have the platform SDK and Visual Studio Express for free, which is greater value than Qt. Thats not what I'm discussing, but I had to include it to stop the "oh but Qt is free for Open source" replies that miss the point.