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KDE Developers Discuss Merging Libraries With Qt
An anonymous reader writes "A proposal has been brought up with KDE developers by Cornelius Schumacher to merge the KDE libraries with the upstream Qt project. This could potentially lead to KDE5 coming about sooner than anticipated, but there's very mixed views on whether merging kdelibs with Qt would actually be beneficial to the KDE project, which has already led to two lengthy mailing list talks (the first and second threads). What do you think?"
Keep the specifications as they are. Fix all the current issues and make a SOLID product. It's good, but could be a LOT more stable and tight. When that's done, then go for the big merge and add new features.
Tamran
Why don't we finish some unfinished projects (Quanta) that many people are waiting for before changing things again.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
I'm sure it would be convenient for the KDE folks, but wouldn't this be a little superfluous for everyone using Qt on non-KDE platforms? Qt is a pretty massive runtime as-is...piling in the KDE libraries seems to me like it would be adding a lot of weight for relatively little benefit to anyone other than KDE. I don't use KDE myself, but I have been developing for Qt for a while...anyone who knows more about the KDE libs feel free to correct me if there's actually some great benefit I'd yield from having the KDE libs included in Qt...
No! No! No! I enjoy having Qt free from other stuff! It's big enough already! If you want, just make a system better of find a way to communicate better, but DO NOT FUCK MY PRECIOUS Qt!
I'll fork it if I have too!
Have you heard about SoylentNews?
After seeing the last attempt at cooperation over Phonon - which was half-implemented in Qt, then Nokia went with Qt Multimedia while KDE continued evolving Phonon but all the new things aren't in Qt I wouldn't want them to try. Some of the functionality that exists on the KDE layer should be pushed down into Qt, but most should stay out otherwise there will be far too much platform in the toolkit.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
KDElibs is LGPL and has always been LGPL, common libraries in KDE have always been required to be LGPL so that they could be used by "unfree software" (as you write). Only KDE applications are usually GPL to protect themselves better.
KDE considers yet another massive reorganization and new version! Certainly this won't affect usability or the long term future of the project at all, just like the transition from KDE3 to KDE4 didn't!
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
You do not know what you are talking about.
First of all, Windows Vista and KDE SC 4.0 has lots of differencies. KDE SC 4.0 was first release of the fourth generation of the KDE Software Compilation (KDE Plasma Desktop, KDE Platform, KDE Applications, KDE Development Platform. Does not include OS, System libraries, application libraries and most of the KDE or Non-KDE Apps) and in other corner, Windows Vista was a software system with NT operating system, Desktop, Application programs, Application libraries, System programs etc.
It is like comparing a motorcycle and bicycle which one is faster!
Secondly, Amarok does not belong to the KDE SC. It does not neither follow the KDE's own release schedule or release numbering. KDE and Amarok developers are two different communities, where Amarok developers just use what KDE developes itself and release in KDE SC.
You should drop down that stupid "KDE 4.0" whining and about Amarok 2.3 whining as well.
KDE idea to mimic a Windows Vista or Windows 7 is as saying that Leonardo Da Vinci was copying a 2000 century modern artists when doing a Mona Lisa painting. Both use(d) paint and canvas and thats it.
Basically, there's three phases of software:
1. Software that's in development. Sure, there's bad decisions made, but at least things are changing. After a decade of neglect, Windows seems to be back in development mode. KDE is definitely in development mode. Developers love this, because nothing has to be "finished" or "bug free." Everything can be a quickly hacked-together proof of concept.
2. Software that's in support mode. Almost nothing happens, except for a few patches. Mac OS X seems to be in support mode these days, same with Gnome. Support mode is actually a good thing for users who are used to the product, but developers will get bored.
3. Software that's dead. No patches, the developers abandoned the project. Eventually the users will disappear as well.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
How about they fix the steaming bloat-fest that is KDE4 before thinking about KDE5?
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Stop spreading lies. Nokia takes lots of KDE to MeeGo and helps KDE a lot. KDE also uses GLib in many places.
MeeGo IVI is not based on Clutter. It uses Qt. See http://meego.gitorious.com/meego-ivi-ux/ivihome/blobs/master/launcher.cpp
MeeGo Netbook uses Clutter because it's just the continuation of the older Moblin GUI which was based on Clutter and Intel found it pointless to rewrite it.
Nokia is probably the biggest (at least one of the biggest) corporate sponsor of KDE -- for example Aaron Seigo in employed by Nokia just to work on KDE. Nokia brought KOffice to Maemo/MeeGo, sponsoring a smartphone GUI, improve file format converters, etc.
MeeGo Handset will also use KCal for example.
Nobody at KDE is getting desperate. The "merger" is just an idea by a single guy and nothing KDE as a whole is actively pursuing. Considering how many of KDE are against that idea, I don't see how it could become reality.
KDE is one of the healthiest FOSS projects of all. According to Wikipedia KDE is the 2nd largest FOSS project after the Linux kernel.
KDE has no reason to be desperate. Even if MeeGo was only using Qt and no KDE code at all, GNOME still got the boot while a KDE-related technology (Qt) got in. Some back-end services remain but everything related to GUIs was deprecated. Even MeeGo Netbook uses "Mx" as its toolkit, not GTK (though some applications still use GTK). And now GNOME is in the middle of the Shell vs. Unity battle with the weird result that now even Canonical is a bigger contributor to KDE than GNOME even though their "GNOME distribution" is the premier one.
No, KDE is healthy and not at all desperate.
(PS: My post may seem anti-GNOME but it's not meant that way. GNOME is a large community that will survive current events and probably become even stronger after their platform was renovated with their 3.0 release.)
What's actually wrong with Gnome?
I love it. It's not changed massively in the last few years, true, but I don't really get why it should. It works, it looks fine, it's pretty responsive and light enough for general use....
Using imagemagick: .jpg`.jpeg; done;
for f in *.jpg; do mogrify -profile sRGB.icc $f; mv $f `basename $f
You'll need to supply sRGB.icc, but otherwise it seems to work just fine for me.
This is a quote from the Qt licensing FAQ:
"Can I switch from using Qt under the LGPL to commercial afterwards?
"No. Users of the LGPL versions of Qt need to comply with the LGPL licensing terms and conditions. Qt's commercial license agreement contains a restriction that prohibits customers from initially beginning development with the LGPL-licensed version of Qt and then transitioning to a commercial version of Qt."
Four sections earlier, the FAQ says this, in part:
"... If you are uncertain as to whether or not you will be able to comply with the LGPL requirements at the time you begin your development, our recommendation is that you purchase a commercial license as it gives you the flexibility to decide licensing (commercial or LGPL) at the time of distribution."
It seems to me that it would be easy for a company to create a legal mess for itself. What a company will do in the future cannot be foreseen.
What would happen if a developer at a company who did not have a commercial license, but was using a free license, contributed to a commercial project? Often there are discussions about architecture, and someone may contribute ideas for an architecture that are later adopted. The sociology of programming is not as clean as Qt licensing apparently considers it to be.
Note that this problem was not created by Nokia. It existed when Qt was owned by Trolltech.