Qt Becomes LGPL

Hello Moto by Dupple · 2009-01-14 02:34 · Score: 2, Insightful

Let's hope Motorola sign up. Their UI is consistently inconsistent and awful

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Re:Hello Moto by kb · 2009-01-14 02:46 · Score: 1, Insightful

People who adapt their business model to their choice of UI toolkit deserve to fail miserably anyway, so where's the damage?
Re:Hello Moto by FishWithAHammer · 2009-01-14 03:23 · Score: 1, Insightful

The GPL is inherently corrupt and restrictive, so this is a great move.
(The LGPL isn't the best of licenses--the BSD license in a perfect world, or the CDDL/MPL otherwise--but it's a hell of a lot better than the GPL!)
Bravo, Nokia, and thank you.

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"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Re:Hello Moto by Anonymous Coward · 2009-01-14 03:48 · Score: 3, Insightful

You mean copyright law is inherently corrupt and restrictive?
Re:Hello Moto by gparent · 2009-01-14 04:00 · Score: 4, Insightful

You wouldn't be able to do anything if it wasn't from the author. He's not restricting you, either, just sharing the product of HIS work. Once you understand that, you'll know why most people don't care about your freedom that never existed in the first place.
Re:Hello Moto by Nick+Ives · 2009-01-14 04:04 · Score: 5, Insightful

No, the GPL just presumes to attempt to restrict what I do with my code that has no GPL code in it.
Flat out wrong. The GPL restricts what you can do with other peoples code who have chosen to license it under the GPL. If you don't want those restrictions on your code then don't creative derivative works from GPL code.
Don't bitch because you can't leech other peoples code: Your code, your rules means their code, their rules.

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Nick
Re:Hello Moto by ShieldW0lf · 2009-01-14 04:55 · Score: 3, Insightful

I'm confused -- until this moment, wouldn't they have been hoping exactly this would happen, and cursing the fact that they had to deal with the GPL?

The whole point of the GPL is to strengthen those who are materially sharing your ideals while diminishing those who are materially acting against them. I personally believe in the ideals behind the GPL, and I personally think it sucks to see that those who are materially acting contrary to those ideals are sharing the benefits of this code.

I would like to see the day arise where the closed source commercial software industry dies because it's forced to re-invent more and more wheels that open source software developers do not have to re-invent and is unable to remain competitive. That day just got further away.

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-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Re:Hello Moto by FishWithAHammer · 2009-01-14 05:13 · Score: 1, Insightful

Of course they can license their code under it. I didn't say they couldn't. That said, it's an immoral license. I do not use GPL-based code for my own work if I ever have any intent on distributing it. I license my own code under BSD and MPL/CDDL, which are both ethical licenses. The former because there are no meaningful restrictions to use of the code; the latter because it is a true quid pro quo, as opposed to the false one of the GPL (the GPL isn't "give back your changes to my code", which would be fine, but rather "give me your code") and the problematic one of the LGPL (no static linking reduces where code under the LGPL can be practically used).

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"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Re:Hello Moto by FishWithAHammer · 2009-01-14 05:16 · Score: 1, Insightful

I didn't say that they don't have the right to license their code under it. I said that they're wrong to do so, but I would not presume to take that right away from them.
Had he the authority, Stallman would take away my right to write code that was not under his perverted idea of "freedom".
MIT/X11/BSD, MPL/CDDL, Artistic. Even the LGPL (though the problems with static linking make it kind of suck for some applications, it's still head and shoulders above the GPL). Those (and some others, of course) are ethical licenses, because they don't presume to tell you what you can do with your code.

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"You can either have software quality or you can have pointer arithmetic, but you cannot have both at the same time."
Re:Hello Moto by Nick+Ives · 2009-01-14 05:25 · Score: 2, Insightful

It's a bit of a stretch to call it immoral though. You don't like the terms so you don't use it and that's fair enough.

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Nick
Re:Hello Moto by Anonymous Coward · 2009-01-14 05:36 · Score: 1, Insightful

You don't have any inherent right to prevent other people from using your work however they like. The *only* reason you get to do so: the people as a whole *let* you do so for a limited time because we think that will give us more works to use.
Re:Hello Moto by gbjbaanb · 2009-01-14 05:41 · Score: 2, Insightful

I used to be with you here - public domain licences are better than the GPL (and to an extent I still think that, be altruistic and give your code away under a BSD licence is the ultimate is philanthropy), however, the GPL does have an important part to play in opening up software to the world in general. I think that, because the GPL mandates the subsequent free-ness of derived works, its asking for a kind of payment for using the code licenced under it. Obviously you don't have to pay that 'fee', but if you do, the cost to you (of re-using someone else's hard work) is to be similarly generous.
If everyone released code under the GPL, all we'd have to do is find different ways of being remunerated for it (probably in support and maintenance licences, which is where my company, a software house, make most of our money anyway), but the benefit of being able to use lots and lots of library and other code makes that an attractive proposition in itself.
We write a lot of code for windows, and I know if it wasn't for Microsoft producing a lot of libraries and frameworks, Windows wouldn't be nearly as attractive a development platform as it is. The GPL is nature's way of making Linux similarly attractive.
Re:Hello Moto by ceoyoyo · 2009-01-14 05:53 · Score: 3, Insightful

If you want to release your code under the GPL, great, thank you very much. If you want to release your code under a commercial license, or not release it at all, I also support that decision.
Allowing a GPL option for QT was great for the open source community. However, since QT is a library, the LGPL is a very good choice now that the owner of QT doesn't need the income from selling commercial licenses, and has an interest in having the library used more extensively. It's a good move on Nokia's part.
QT gets all the benefits of the open source community development, but is now also compatible with small closed source development that can't afford an expensive commercial license.
Re:Hello Moto by mweather · 2009-01-14 06:29 · Score: 3, Insightful

Use != distribution. That's not hair splitting.
Re:Hello Moto by Kamots · 2009-01-14 07:12 · Score: 4, Insightful

The definition of derivative work is the issue.
I'd love to be able to utilize GPLed code, provide the code, credit the author(s), and create a work that utilized that functionality, intact, as an accoutrement to the rest of the application.
Unfortunantly, a strict reading of the GPL leads me (and my companies OSS group) to believe that this would mean that my entire application is a derivative work that would fall under the GPL. I've gotten around this in the past by having the GPLed code in a plugin form that is dynamically specified and then dynamically loaded so that the application is significantly distanced from the GPLed code.
Perhaps that's not how the GPL is intended to work, but there's enough leeway in interpreting it, that you have to be really careful.
Re:Hello Moto by Hurricane78 · 2009-01-14 07:45 · Score: 5, Insightful

The problem is that you're criticizing the GPL for not living in your perfect dream world.
I think the GPL is way better, because I know, that in reality, businesses tend to rip you off, fuck you in every hole, and leave you bleeding on the street, (metaphorically speaking) if they just can!
It's the rule of profit maximization. The first rule of every business. And more often than not, it's unfortunately the only rule.
And that's exactly why we need the GPL to enforce giving back something. Because in reality, businesses will not give back anything. Why would they? To lose money and then to lose against their competition who is winning because they are not giving anything back? Makes no sense.
But why would you care about your reality, if you can perfectly continue to rant about your dream world not coming true, while ignoring it?

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Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
Re:Hello Moto by ShieldW0lf · 2009-01-14 08:05 · Score: 2, Insightful

The whole point of the GPL is to strengthen those who are materially sharing your ideals while diminishing those who are materially acting against them.

What kind of flawed logic is this? This isn't a game-of-life board, you know. There's nothing "the GPL" can do to "diminish those" who don't adopt it.

How bizarre that the same ontological mistake is made again and again: code is confused with living, thinking, entities (i.e., humans).

It's no different than if I believed that guns should be used for self-defense, and only for self defense, and so I gave away free guns with the restriction that only those not convicted of murder were permitted to use them. Assume for arguments sake that I'm able to enforce this.

Now, all those people who want a gun for self defense will no longer pay arms dealers for the guns. Instead, they will take them free from me.

Now, the arms dealers have a dramatic drop in volume of sales, because only those who are interested in murder and aggression will be buying from them. Maybe 2/3rd of the arms dealers go out of business, and the per unit cost of the guns goes up dramatically.

This scenario strengthens those who agree with me. Some have more economic power in their pocket because they saved money, others have a gun for self defense even though they have no money at all.

But it also weakens those who disagree with me. Indiscriminate arms dealers find it harder to make a profit, and murderers pay more for their guns, leaving them with less economic power in their pocket. Some of them no longer can afford one.

This is how the GPL works. In the general sense, it destroys economic value by destroying scarcity and creating plenty, but it also increases scarcity for those who refuse to be bound by its covenants.

Oh, and with regards to your ontological comments, stop being such an idiot. If I run you down with my car, and someone says "He was killed by a speeding car.", it's not a false statement, and it's not implying that the car is alive. Get your head out of your ass.

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-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Re:Hello Moto by osu-neko · 2009-01-14 08:31 · Score: 4, Insightful

No, the GPL just presumes to attempt to restrict what I do with my code that has no GPL code in it.
Um, no, that's simply not true. The GPL presumes to tell you what you can do my MY code. You are perfectly free to accept the license terms or not. Your own code is unaffected by anything other than your own decisions and their consequences. You're just not allowed to deny me the right to control what's done with *my* code. If you think you should have that right, you're certainly more corrupt and domineering than RMS.

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"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Re:Hello Moto by WNight · 2009-01-14 09:15 · Score: 2, Insightful

How is it not immoral to build a product you know is going to be sold with a EULA that purports to make it illegal to look disassemble, run on the OS of your choice, modify, etc...
That's pretty much trying to steal from the user, take their money and not give them what they expect from a sale.
Very little commercial software actually provides an honest product (no false disclaimers of liability, no exclusions of normal usage, etc). Not none, but certainly nothing that comes with a post-sale contract. Nothing that disclaims any actual use, and all liability.
Re:Hello Moto by Draek · 2009-01-14 17:34 · Score: 2, Insightful

The willingness to contribute code to a common repository must come about out of a rational choice. Because it's advantageous for me and for you. That's how cooperation comes about - when mutual interests are served.
Exactly. Hence the GPL, it specifies what is an acceptable exchange for the original developer to give up control of his work, in this case the code of all derivative works. Don't think it's enough of an advantage to you, then don't use it, you're perfectly free to do so.

The claims that someone who doesn't contribute to an open source project with a business-friendly license would have done so under the GPL are not provable.
But based on the ratio between contributors to GPL'ed projects and to BSD'ed projects, we can deduce a rough ratio. And things *don't* look good for your argument, from what I've seen.

hat's because the GPL as used in Linux regards the production of software by firms that sell per-seat licenses (Red Hat), or, in fact, hardware manufacturers that use Linux for their own reasons, such as competing with other Unices (e.g., putting Sun Microsystems out of business).
So in other words, they use Linux and promote it because it's advantageous for them to do so?. Fuck, remove your dumb "OMG the GPL is a religion with RMS at the head!" comments, and you'd make a great argument *for* the GPL.

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No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
Re:Hello Moto by aweraw · 2009-01-14 17:50 · Score: 2, Insightful

It attempts to force ideological conformity.
Only in the sense that you're being forced to incorporate GPL code into your project.

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5468652047616D65
Re:Hello Moto by aweraw · 2009-01-14 18:24 · Score: 3, Insightful

Under their definitions of "use" and distribute
Their definition - where 'their' is the person licensing the code. Just because they are words which can be used in contexts different from those implied by the licenser, doesn't mean that they are incorrect definitions. In the context of the GPL, they are the correct definitions.

The GPL says that the same terms must also infect any code that links to it. Hence the immoral aspect of it and why I advocate against it.
It's not immoral, because no one is forcing you into that position. You have to willingly submit to the terms in order to be bound by them... i.e. no one is forcing you to distribute code under the GPL, unless you take their GPL'd code and willingly incorporate it into your own.
By your logic, any consensual act you don't like the ramifications of is immoral...

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5468652047616D65

time to port gnome! by SolusSD · 2009-01-14 02:39 · Score: 5, Insightful

Seriously though- Reasons to write applications for the gnome desktop environment are getting fewer every day. When QT4 became available under the GPL on all 4 major platforms- Windows/BSD/Linux/OSX the argument for GTK was weak. Now, I'd argue its virtually non-existent.

Re:time to port gnome! by AlXtreme · 2009-01-14 02:58 · Score: 4, Insightful

When QT4 became available under the GPL on all 4 major platforms- Windows/BSD/Linux/OSX the argument for GTK was weak. Now, I'd argue its virtually non-existent.
The argument was primarily a licensing one: LGPL versus GPL. Going for GTK+ because it was LGPL wasn't a weak argument.
With both QT and GTK+ being LGPL, the argument will be about toolkit quality, third-party support and language experience (C++ versus C). This is a much more useful comparison, and as a developer well-versed in GTK+ I'm looking forward to using both.
From QT4.5 onwards, the best tool for the job wins. Thanks Nokia!

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Re:time to port gnome! by robot_love · 2009-01-14 03:01 · Score: 3, Insightful

I second this. It takes a bit of time to learn to use Qt Designer, but it saved my hours in the long run. And it's not really that hard.

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Re:time to port gnome! by pembo13 · 2009-01-14 03:50 · Score: 3, Insightful

Gtk is mostly a widget toolkit. You get a lot more with Qt. And I find Qt Designer to be much more thorough than Glade.

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Re:time to port gnome! by Hairy+Heron · 2009-01-14 04:12 · Score: 2, Insightful

How about people who don't want to use that monstrosity of a Frankenstein language known as c++ and prefer to program in c instead?
Re:time to port gnome! by JimDaGeek · 2009-01-14 04:47 · Score: 5, Insightful

Firstly, without competition, things tend to languish.
Competition is great, however GNU/Linux should not be competing against itself. There is too much fragmentation in Linux-land, 10 apps that all try to do the same thing, but each one does certain aspects better, yet none get it all right. Instead consolidate all that effort to 2 or 3 apps.

Linux gets to compete against Windows and OS X. Are you old enough to remember the Unix-wars? All the big Unix versions were all doing things their own way whilw MS and Apple were working on more consistent offerings. We all know what happened to the major Unix players.

Sadly, Linux desktop seems to be repeating the past. Constantly reinventing the wheel with tons of yet-another-app-X syndrome.

I have been using Linux since early Red Hat days. Then I used Slack, built my own Linux based on LFS for about 2 years. Then on to Gentoo, then to Fedora then finally Ubuntu.

Ubuntu made things a lot better IMO, however it still suffers with a felling of many apps tacked together instead of a more cohesive product. This was the main reason I switched to OS X 2 years ago and have been happy with that choice.

I still find myself missing Linux and would love to see a more unified final product. I don't want to have to be bothered with looking for a Gnome/GTK+ based app for Ubuntu so it works/integrates best.

There have been too many times I where I couldn't find a good Gnome/GTK+ based app but found it with a KDE based app. However, that one app pulls in a lot of KDE based bloat that I don't want/need. So I would try to switch to KDE from Gnome for a while, but found the same issue where I would have to pull in/use a Gnome/GTK+ based app.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

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Re:time to port gnome! by Anonymous Coward · 2009-01-14 06:26 · Score: 1, Insightful

Linux absolutely should be competing against itself. Fragmentation isn't a problem, it's a natural and unavoidable occurrence.
The root of fragmentation is that there are competing visions into what 'the right way' actually means, this is a social issue rather than a technical issue.
Through fragmentation (mutations?) software evolves, the strongest and most successful solution is more likely to reveal itself, but the really nice part is that less successful mutations will still be available -- it's not the end of the blood line if your project isn't #1, in fact, someone from the more successful product may implement the good ideas from your project into theirs, and that's what makes open source strong.
If everyone were on the same team on a micro-level such as same exact project with same exact requirements and goals, nothing would get done due to in-fighting and politics. Fragmentation keeps inbreeding down and allows for social change within projects without the termination of any blood line of source.
Competition is good, diversity is good. Open source software should not be considered in terms of business (best product is top of the heap), it's an ecosystem fostered by the ability to borrow genes from other software genetic pools.
We've seen what non-competitive windowing systems turn into when everyone plays on the same team, stuff like _Common Desktop Environment (CDE)_. Bleagh!

Hurrah by caluml · 2009-01-14 02:42 · Score: 5, Insightful

Well, thank heavens for that. Hopefully now the horrible, oldfashioned looking, bad file-selecting-dialogs GTK will slowly disappear. The number of times I've had to select something in /usr/bin, and have started to type /usr/bin only to have it try and go to /usr/sr or some nastiness.

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It is a mistake to even think of porting by WindBourne · 2009-01-14 02:46 · Score: 5, Insightful

I use to be a KDE developer, and I have to say that I love QT/KDE platform (and still use it). But with that said, I find that OSS moves faster BECAUSE of friendly competition, not in spite of it.

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Re:Ars Technica report by Anonymous Coward · 2009-01-14 02:56 · Score: 1, Insightful

And there is another analysis of the implications of the lgpl at

http://www.ics.com/files/docs/Qt_LGPL.pdf

Way to go, Nokia! by Dexter77 · 2009-01-14 03:01 · Score: 4, Insightful

I love to see when a company understands that giving something away they will get ten times more in return. And nowadays that happens too rarely.

For a while it seemed that Nokia is about to lose to its competitors, because of Symbian and bad software. This will totally remedy it. I've also heard from Nokia insiders that they're actively dumping everything related to Symbian. It won't take more than couple of years and all their phones use Qt.

Seeing how well Apple has been selling iPhone applications, I can only imagine the potential Qt phones have in future. With Symbian that just wasn't possible, it was a total nightmare for the developers.

That would be a disaster by WindBourne · 2009-01-14 03:09 · Score: 4, Insightful

Think about Xfree. it was basically a closed monopoly. Then X11 grabbed it and opened it up further. Has it improved things? Absolutely. Basically, we NEED competition. GNOME is good competition, vs. say MS's form of competition (involving lots of dirty tricks and legal maneuvers).

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I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.

Re:It's official... by Anonymous Coward · 2009-01-14 03:11 · Score: 2, Insightful

Correct me if I'm wrong (and I hope I am) but since KDE and it's libraries is based on the GPL'ed version of QT, it is itself GPL'ed, which means that you need to GPL your code is you want your app to integrate with KDE..????????

The KDE libraries have always been LGPL.
Read http://techbase.kde.org/index.php?title=Policies/Licensing_Policy for details.

No copyright assignent by dfdashh · 2009-01-14 03:14 · Score: 2, Insightful

From arstechnica:

To further reduce the barrier to participation, Nokia plans to accept code from contributors without requiring copyright assignment.

If they do what this article suggests they will, this is a big step towards better code and community involvement. Go Qt, go!

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Re:Kills any idea of using Qt in our products by oever · 2009-01-14 03:15 · Score: 5, Insightful

So buy a commercial Qt license. These are still available have no GPL/LGPL in them.

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Re:Die Gnome by LWATCDR · 2009-01-14 03:28 · Score: 4, Insightful

I really like Gnome better than KDE. You can run QT applications under Gnome just fine.
What I wonder is if we could see OpenOffice or Mozilla move to QT for the widgets :)

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congratulations to Nokia by speedtux · 2009-01-14 03:30 · Score: 1, Insightful

With this, Nokia has removed a major problem for KDE, Qt, and the open source community. The decision by the KDE developers to adopt Qt under its original license was stupid and has done a lot of damage to desktop Linux. Thanks to Nokia for finally solving this problem.

However, not all is well. Personally, I don't like either KDE or Qt particularly from a technical point of view. Qt programming in C++ is a lot nicer than Gnome programming in C. But Gnome bindings to Python and C# are excellent and have good tools support, and that's probably what matters more these days. And if you are silly enough to want to do GUI programming in C++, you can use Gtkmm.

All things considered, I'll stick with Gnome anyway.

Re:congratulations to Nokia by darkvizier · 2009-01-14 03:55 · Score: 5, Insightful

I'm assuming we're talking about development for Linux, or cross platform here, since this is QT. Two questions:
1) Why would you program in C# on Linux? Mono support is years behind the feature sets that MS is rolling out. There are a variety of languages/frameworks that are better supported than .NET.
2) What's wrong with GUI programming in C++? QT tools seem pretty nice to me, and objects are much easier to work with than a mountain of procedural code. C++ should also be plenty efficient for application space.
So, what advantages are there in using C/Gnome?

Re:KDE is a perfect cross-platform environment by Enderandrew · 2009-01-14 03:37 · Score: 2, Insightful

Yet when Nokia purchased the Trolls people insisted they would try to close up Qt and fight FOSS. Nokia did oppose open formats in HTML 5 for some crazy reason, but maybe Nokia isn't so evil after all.

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Re:Strategy fail by jbolden · 2009-01-14 03:40 · Score: 2, Insightful

People who are picky enough to care about which text editor and which IRC client can handle the notion of different apps using different structures where integration is important. For example on a Mac I use TextEdit when I want integration and VI when I want features.

Re:Jump onboard Firefox and Adobe! by bjkinney · 2009-01-14 03:42 · Score: 3, Insightful

I was thinking the same thing. While Konqueror is a nice browser I could never replace Firefox with it.

There is a QT port of Firefox but when I tried it it was still in the very early development stages and was unusable.

Let's hope both GNOME and KDE lives on... by jopsen · 2009-01-14 03:48 · Score: 3, Insightful

It's great that Qt becomes LGPL, but it doesn't mean that we should stop developing GNOME and GTK...
Seriously there's lots of business that depends on GNOME and/or GTK, and lots of reasons to keep them alive...
Competition among desktop environments is good and having two large desktop environments if probably a good idea... As it drives competition and innovation.

Re:Yeah but KDE doesn't work. by Enderandrew · 2009-01-14 04:20 · Score: 5, Insightful

The Ubuntu devs screwed up their KDE 4 packages in a bad way. That isn't KDE's fault.

Furthermore, KDE doesn't depend on video drivers. If the Ubuntu devs made a certain Nvidia driver a dependency, then they screwed up big time. KDE does not change your kernel or video driver in any way.

I'm not calling you a liar or saying you didn't have problems. I'm sure your box got hosed somehow, but it is more likely the problem was with Ubuntu's packaging.

It should also be noted that the QT 4/Nvidia problems have largely been remedies. Qt 4 used Xrender heavily, and Nvidia's driver had a piss-poor Xrender implementation. The forthcoming Qt 4.5 is supposed to move away from using Xrender all over the place, and the latest Nvidia driver has much better Xrender support to boot. openSUSE even provides a repo with weekly snapshots of the KDE 4.2 branch compiled against the weekly snapshots of Qt 4.5. In theory it is unstable, but I've had good luck with it so far.

I know I'll get modded Troll for this, but I don't care. Ubuntu has got some serious problems, and is very overrated. openSUSE puts out quality KDE 3, KDE 4 and Gnome desktops. They support all 3 currently (though KDE 3 is being dropped in the future).

Novell hires a large staff of developers that make quality packages, fix upstream bugs, backport features, etc. As much as I hated Novell for the MS deal, Novell is one of the best contributors to several upstream projects, and openSUSE is a fantastic distro.

I can't recommend it enough.

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multi-touch by Anonymous Coward · 2009-01-14 04:30 · Score: 1, Insightful

A bit OT, but since we're talking about QT, I'd like to put in a request for multi-touch support. This will obviously be necessary for phone apps, but also for tablets.

Vala makes the creating widgets argument moot by caseih · 2009-01-14 04:46 · Score: 1, Insightful

Fortunately Vala makes this very easy to do. Defining a new widget is just a matter of creating a class and inheriting from some other widget and then adding in your code in a nice, C#-style syntax. And it compiles down to C code so the resulting gobject class can be used by normal C programs and libraries, and easily be wrapped in a language binding. I hope that in the near future most if not all GTK and Gnome programming, particularly when it comes to the GUI and defining widgets, will be done in Vala. Vala isn't really a new language per se. It's nice syntactic sugar that allows things to stay in C where they belong so they can be interfaced with and bound by programs in *any* language. Going forward, it's possible to develop GTK in Vala, all without ruining the purity of having a good C library that anyone can access.

Really Vala is proof that the GTK devs, when they defined the gobject model in pure C, where very forward-thinking. This isn't the kind of thing that could be easily done had GTK been based in C++. C++-based libraries are hell to work with, especially on Windows.

So very soon (within the year), I believe people will be comparing Vala-based GTK code with Qt in terms of ease of use, the API cleanliness, etc. Any arguments about the clumsiness of using C (and it is clumsy to define a new gobject class in C!) and GTK will be put to rest.

Re:Vala makes the creating widgets argument moot by stilborne · 2009-01-14 09:07 · Score: 3, Insightful

"I wasn't necessarily saying Vala was an app development language (although it could be)."
GNOME devs are already writing full apps with it, so it is being used as such.
"If Gtk used some other language like, say, Python, with Python GTK widgets and so forth, then how would Java, C#, or even C or C++ have access to these components?"
yes, i understand that is what has driven Vala's design and implementation. i just don't agree with the "we'll wedge another home grown language in between the C and the other languages" approach. i think it's overly complicated and limits the number of people who can (and will) hack on it.
time will tell if i'm smoking crack or not, of course .. =)
"Vala isn't actually a language in the same sense as Python, C# or Java is. It's really just a syntactic extension of C and produces plain, simple, C code."
that is produces C is both a feature and a bug. it makes debugging much more awkward (and for a while wasn't even possible at all! how do you go from your generated C to your Vala code in gdb? there's a plugin now for gdb, but really .. oy vey!) and you lose all the interesting security possibilities of managed code.
"How will using Javascript help in GTK development or building custom widgets or extending GTK and its reach?"
it's simply a language that is well known. pick a different well known language if you wish. make your own runtime if you wish. certainly add your own sugar on top (see QScript for a really nice example of how that can all be done with JavaScript). there's nothing particularly magical about the Vala syntax, except that it's a new language specific to one toolkit.
which is precisely my point.
"it will be possible to extend and improve GTK to equal Qt while still maintaining the ability to use it from any language binding."
let's do this then: let's come back to this in 2-3 years (it takes time to get these things going, i know) and see if that theory works out.
my theory is that it will just be one more baroque tool that people working with Gtk will have to get their head around (and people complained about moc with Qt; they ain't seen nothing yet ;) thereby limiting the pool of candidate developers. as a non-transferable skill it won't gain much in the way of value that might cause people to learn it "just because", and yet people will write applications with it. i expect to see more and more vala usage in Gtk+/GNOME (because, well, that's already happening =) and it will cause the project to become more insular rather than less.
i do expect that those using it will get more done with vala than with plain C, but not to an extent that will make up for the number of people lost by not choosing a language syntax that is already widely known or a language that avoids compile cycles, dealing with the intricacies of C debuging, etc.
given that it's homegrown, it will also soak up resources maintaining and extending vala itself that could be put elsewhere.
combined, i expect individual efficiency of existing contributors to increase due to vala, but the overall effect on the project to be a net negative. i predict that in a few years vala will get quietly binned. bonobo 2.0 if you will: a cool idea that "just has to work, it's so well designed and advanced!" but which just didn't pan out in reality.
again, i could be wrong. and i certainly don't want to see the GNOME team falter. but vala gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Re:Strategy fail by g2devi · 2009-01-14 05:43 · Score: 2, Insightful

> Which is just not possible. Where is the CD burning program in GNOME that beats K3B? Where is the music player that beats Amarok? In the
> other direction, where is the office suite that beats OpenOffice.org? You cannot avoid mixing GTK and Qt apps on a desktop without hurting
> yourself.

This is the key difference for the desktop split. Why do you mean by "beat"?
If you want a no-nonsense desktop and desktop apps that allows you to do your work without getting in your way, then GNOME and GNOME apps beat KDE and KDE apps. Personally, I can't stand either K3B and Amarok.
If you want a pimped up desktop and desktop apps that allow you to do anything you want, then KDE and KDE apps beat GNOME and GNOME apps.

If one or another need dominates, except for one area, then you have a mix.

I personally have a pure desktop...not out of ideology, but simply because GNOME and GNOME apps works better for me. I'm sure plenty of KDE lovers have a pure KDE desktop for the same reason.

If, for some reason, GNOME decided to migrate to Qt (theoretically, it is possible if GNOME 3.0 moves to be more IDL driven and Qt components could be modified to support any missing feature that GNOME needed), GNOME and GNOME apps would still exist separate from KDE and KDE apps simply because GNOME users and KDE users are different.

Re:meanwhile by Microlith · 2009-01-14 05:45 · Score: 3, Insightful

Whoops, your server just died.

There's plenty of reasons to use GTK and QT, including pretty much every app that has no need for internet access (and some that are using it, but really shouldn't be.)

Never mind the hefty CPU load that AJAX apps can put on a system. Needlessly inefficient, even if we do have dual- and quad-core machines.

QT vs iPhone SDK vs Android SDK by EmperorOfCanada · 2009-01-14 07:12 · Score: 2, Insightful

This all boils down to Nokia having to compete with the other key smartphone SDKs basically being free and popular. If lots of people learn to love QT for the various computer OSs then they will then have the skills ready for Nokia development. But corporate development just doesn't sit well with GPL so the LGPL is the only real option. If anything this might be a huge win. The iPhone makes you use at least some Objective C and Android gets all Java on your ass. But for really cool killer apps you might want to use C++ to do something really cool on the tiny processors found in most handsets. What would be really cool and daring for Nokia would be to make QT for iPhone. Then people might port their apps to both iPhone and Nokia.

Re:Signals? Slots? by Anonymous Coward · 2009-01-14 07:37 · Score: 1, Insightful

Yes, because ANSI C++ is such an awesome graphical toolkit.

Re:How would *you* know? by Vexorian · 2009-01-14 10:19 · Score: 4, Insightful

You didn't get modded down because you said Linux is not good, you got modded down because of saying "Kopete is terrible" and no extra explanations, not to mention the insistent spam on the rest of the thread about your stupid attempt to call the GPL immoral mostly because you don't understand it. So, perhaps the sentiment from the guy who modded you down was not an "I disagree" but a "I hope this is a troll, else my faith of humanity would be gone"

--

Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"

Re:How would *you* know? by Mathinker · 2009-01-15 20:18 · Score: 2, Insightful

> "Troll" is not a synonym for "disagrees with me and therefore is bad".

I totally agree with that. "Troll" like everything else is a judgment call. You came across like a troll. See Vexorian's post for more explanation.

Personally, I didn't judge you a troll for the "I don't use Linux" post; in fact, I have no problem with people for whom Linux doesn't cut it and I am very aware of some of the reasons which might cause that.

The "Kopete is terrible" post by itself also didn't bring you over my threshold, but the combination of the two passed the threshold.

One of the big differences between the FOSS world and Windows / MacOS is the rate at which applications can evolve feature-wise and interface-wise. For some, this is great, for others, a catastrophe. This makes me doubt that anyone who uses Windows (and I assumed Windows without FOSS, given the complaint of your post: "integration") as their primary computing platform would be able to properly pass judgment on any particular FOSS application.

Next time, qualify with "Last time I tried Linux, in Monthname Yearnumber, Kopete was terrible. " and you will be much less likely to be judged a troll.

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