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Free Software Faces a Test With Qt

Posted by Unknown on from the here-code-pick-me dept.

An anonymous reader writes with an article in TechRadar. From the article: "Thanks to Nokia's jump to Windows Phone 7, from the frying pan into the fire, its Free Software darling, the Qt toolkit, has been left living on vague promises and shell-shocked, hollow enthusiasm. Nokia has pledged some continued investment, bonuses for developers who stick with the platform and even a phone or two that might use it. But the truth is that Qt is deprecated, the project has stalled, and its future is uncertain."

39 of 177 comments (clear)

  1. In completely unrelated news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    Nokia today restated their sales and profit projections for this quarter and retracted the full year prediction completely. They report seeing strong competition in emerging markets and pricing pressures around the world. The stock's price fell over 14 percent on the day and plumbed a new full-year low. On the upside there is increasing confidence they'll be able to ship at least one WP7 product before the end of the year.

    1. Re:In completely unrelated news by Compaqt · · Score: 4, Insightful

      In a statement Stephen Elop, Nokia's CEO, said the company must "accelerate the pace of our transition"

      Hilarious. Translated: March faster to oblivion.

      What fool would buy a Nokia smartphone after all the jerking around of customers and developers? The sad thing is Nokia had the best actual phone technology in the business (i.e., actually making calls with good voice quality).

      --
      I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
    2. Re:In completely unrelated news by catalina · · Score: 3, Funny

      On the upside there is increasing confidence they'll be able to ship at least one WP7 product
      A WP7 product is an upside?

  2. er... by brennanw · · Score: 2

    ... hasn't QT been LGPL'd? I don't see the problem.

    --
    Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
    1. Re:er... by jonbryce · · Score: 3, Informative

      The problem is that development is funded by the people who pay for non-free licences. If that income dries up, the KDE project would have to put their own development team together with volunteers or donation/grant funded developers.

    2. Re:er... by MrHanky · · Score: 5, Informative

      It has. Also, anyone bothering to check facts, such as the public git repository, can see that it's still actively developed.

    3. Re:er... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      ... hasn't QT been LGPL'd? I don't see the problem.

      Some feel that Qt's superiority stems from its corporate sponsorship, and that being "demoted" to a sponsorless open-source project like GTK will result in a loss in quality. Others (like me) think that a lot of the quality is in the product design itself and that while development may slow down post-Nokia, it will still provide a superior open source toolkit for the forseeable future.

    4. Re:er... by mirix · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It was GPL/commercial dual licence for ages, and more recently LGPL'd.

      Development is continuing, this is a complete FUD non-story. Qt isn't going to disappear even if Nokia did.

      --
      Sent from my PDP-11
    5. Re:er... by EsbenMoseHansen · · Score: 2

      No, you are just seeing the effect of the "fear of change". Qt development will be slower paced without those payed developers, but it will still happen. Especially given that Qt is probably the best GUI x-platform toolkit presently available, and the best available in the linux world, with GTK as the closest runner-up to the best of my knowledge. What I fear most is that the win32/64 and OSX paths suffers, given that so few OS-developers use and intimately know those platforms.

      --
      Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by rulers as useful.
  3. No by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

    It hasn't.

  4. First comment on referenced article by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    From the first comment on the linked article:

    You obviously have no idea what you're talking about, and have not been following the Qt project's development lately.

    Development is steaming ahead, releases are coming out, and they are hard working on Qt 5. They are also putting Qt into open governance, so even "outside" people may take "ownership" of certain parts of the project, and be more involved in the development of the project.

    Qt is, in other words, no way near its end of life. (Also, KDE wouldn't *need* to fork, if Qt did come to its End of Life. Obviously you haven't heard of the KDE Free Qt Foundation, which was set up very early on between KDE and then Trolltech (and updated when Nokia bought Trolltech). Should Nokia discontinue the development of the Qt Free Edition under the LGPL 2.1 and the GPL 3 licenses, then the Foundation has the right to release Qt under a BSD-style license or under other open source licenses. The agreement stays valid in case of a buy-out, a merger or bankruptcy.)

    So please, stop spreading FUD.

    This is a lot more accurate than the article or the Slashdot post. Seriously, folks, Qt existed a long time before Nokia. KDE never needed Nokia's support, and Nokia didn't use KDE. Keep calm and carry on.

    1. Re:First comment on referenced article by eldepeche · · Score: 2

      blah blah windows 98 blah blue screen blah

    2. Re:First comment on referenced article by ThePhilips · · Score: 2

      I tracked KDE 4 versions, starting with 4.0 and up to 4.3, via VirtualBox'ed Aptosid (at the time called Sidux) installation, and never had seen such problems. There were early problems upgrading KDE3 to KDE4, and in KDE 4.0/4.1/4.2 many vital pieces were missing - but otherwise, I have never seen the "crash every 10m" behavior you mention.

      --
      All hope abandon ye who enter here.
    3. Re:First comment on referenced article by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I can only agree. Just take a look at all the (FOSS/non-FOSS) projects that currently use Qt (from wikipedia):

      Qt is most notably used in Autodesk Maya, Dassault DraftSight, Google Earth, KDE, Adobe Photoshop Album, the European Space Agency, OPIE, Siemens, Volvo, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Skype, VLC media player, Samsung, Philips, Panasonic, VirtualBox and Mathematica.

      Maybe it will be developed by other people, but it's probably safe to say that it won't die so soon.

      PS: Skype uses Qt? Could be interesting to see what Microsoft will do about that...

    4. Re:First comment on referenced article by Kjella · · Score: 2

      But things aren't going to go back to the way things were. Qt is LGPL'd, they'd have an extremely hard time going back to a dual GPL/commercial license which is what funded Qt before Nokia bought them. Is "the community" going to pick that up with just as many full time developers to replace them? And with my experience with Qt (excellent) vs KDE (very mixed), do you want KDE teams taking over? And isn't their developer resources spread pretty thin as it is?

      Face it, Nokia is going tight with Microsoft. I don't see how they could possibly want hold on to Qt as a sideshow to that, it's going to get sold out somehow or die a slow death starved of resources and priority. That they're keeping all the wheels turning right now is to try to make an exit on their $153 million investment, if they flat out halted everything the value would quickly drop to near zero. I just can't see it in their long term strategy, one way or another they'll go different ways.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    5. Re:First comment on referenced article by Christopher+Fritz · · Score: 2

      Opera's actually removed its Qt dependency since 10.50:

      Like Opera for Mac, the Unix version will have some big changes under the platform hood: it will no longer be necessary to have Qt installed.

      It means [Qt] is totally removed and no longer required at all. Hence UNIX [Opera] required a bigger rewrite than the other platforms.

  5. Troll? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    Sometimes I get the feeling that all you need to do in order get on Slashdots front page is to post an inflammatory article about open source.with no real basis.

  6. ...so? by betterunixthanunix · · Score: 2
    We have some options here:
    1. Fork Qt, let the community maintain it.
    2. Ditch Qt, use any of the dozen other free/libre toolkits out there.
    --
    Palm trees and 8
    1. Re:...so? by MrHanky · · Score: 5, Insightful

      3) Stop believing in crap opinion pieces by random know-nothings on the web.

    2. Re:...so? by MrHanky · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I said stop believing, not stop reading. If you stopped reading Slashdot, then how would you know whom to flame?

  7. Another one of those cases... by hardaker · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ... where a reputable news source would have checked its sources for accuracy first. stagnated and stalled? Hmm... Just two weeks ago we had very different news.

    In reality, even if Qt stopped dead in the water with no development from anyone, it'd still be one of the best documented GUI libraries out there. I've never been a fanboy of any particular software suite, but the more and more I've dove into Qt in the last year the more I'm truly impressed with the design and documentation of the toolkit. Somehow I don't think it's going away.

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    The next site to slashdot will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and start slashdotting it early!
  8. That's not a huge problem... by brennanw · · Score: 2

    KDE is already involved in the changes it wants for QT that are KDE-specific, aren't they? It's not like that would stop development cold. Hell, it might even make it easier for them to get the changes they want put in. Whether that adversely effects the rest of the developers who use QT for other things... well, I can't speak to that.

    --
    Eviscerati.Org: All Hail the Eviscerati
  9. Wow, how can you be so far off the mark? by t_hunger · · Score: 4, Informative

    Since the windows 7 announcement the following things happend in Qt land: The Qt SDK had mayor update, Qt Creator had a new release, Qt had some minor updates, the open governance program is in full swing, Qt 5 was announced with open planning, there is a Contributor Summit coming up to discuss all these changes with non-Nokia developers...

    Yeap, Qt has all the hallmarks of a dead project!

    --
    Regards, Tobias
    1. Re:Wow, how can you be so far off the mark? by suy · · Score: 5, Informative

      Exactly, just a quick look at the dev blog shows the following updates with respect to new features (some stable releases, some tech preview):

      • QML Scene Graph in master branch
      • Qt Webkit minor releas
      • Qt 4.8 tech preview
      • Updates on Qt Creator, and its integration on the SDK
      • Updates on the open governance
      • Qt Quick 3D
      • Qt Mobility 1.2
      • First plans for Qt 5

      This is only during May. If anything, I see Qt more alive than ever.

      There is also the misconception that only the Qt developers do interesting research and add features. That's very wrong. Lots of KDE ideas were implemented in Qt at one point or another. Also note that companies like Digia or ICS (and several others) are now way more involved in Qt than ever, and will be more once the open governance transition finishes.

  10. Re:The future of everything is uncertain; thats li by ensignyu · · Score: 4, Informative

    Qt is actually LGPL now. Furthermore, if Nokia decides to stop developing Qt, the KDE Free Qt Foundation can vote to release Qt under a BSD license.

  11. Quicktime is dying? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    ITS ABOUT DAMN TIME!

  12. You Can Just Use It As It Is by oldCoder · · Score: 2

    Regardless of what the Qt developers do, the toolkit is very good and available. You can just use it to build your software and let the rest of the world jump in a lake. The worst that can happen is that Qt development will be slow and steady.

    --

    I18N == Intergalacticization
  13. An alternative to reliance on a single toolkit by byuu · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I hate to come across as advertising, but for those worried about the possibility of any specific API going away ...

    I've found that most small to mid-sized GUI applications only really need the basics: windows, menus, buttons, check/radio boxes, list/tree views, sliders, scollbars, combo boxes, and something to render graphics (Direct3D/OpenGL/raw pixels) onto. It won't get you Photoshop or Quark Xpress, but that's enough for most CLI frontends, emulators, text/hex editors, office tools, etc.

    I put all my eggs in the Qt basket and got burned by a lot of platform-specific bugs. So I took all the core features and wrote a unified wrapper around all of the major toolkit APIs: pure Win32, GTK+ and Qt. In this way, there are no 4-10MB run-time library dependencies, the code is much simpler, and I feel my applications are more portable: the wrapper is so small one could port it to eg Haiku, Cocoa, etc in roughly one weekend. I can also target any platform (Win32, Win64, Linux, OS X), and any toolkit available on each, with the exact same codebase. Eg both Gnome and KDE users gets 100% native apps.

    Doesn't have a snazzy public name, but internally I call it phoenix, and it's available here, if anyone is interested. There are, of course, obvious downsides: if you want a complex GUI, you would have to add the higher-order, platform-specific (floating docks, grid views, tab bars, sheets) controls yourself. And it also targets C++0x, which is great for lambda callbacks, but bad for portability at the moment.

    1. Re:An alternative to reliance on a single toolkit by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 3, Insightful

      So I took all the core features and wrote a unified wrapper around all of the major toolkit APIs: pure Win32, GTK+ and Qt.

      It sounds like you reinvented wxWidgets?

    2. Re:An alternative to reliance on a single toolkit by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 2

      But you don't have to dynamically link to wxWidgets - use static linking and full-program link-time optimization, so that any unused code gets discarded. I bet you could get at the same 300Kb figure in the end, so long as you use a similarly restricted feature set.

      I see your point about being easy to port, but how often is this, realistically, a requirement for most typical projects? Win/X11/Mac is usually good enough.

    3. Re:An alternative to reliance on a single toolkit by byuu · · Score: 2

      But you don't have to dynamically link to wxWidgets - use static linking and full-program link-time optimization, so that any unused code gets discarded. I bet you could get at the same 300Kb figure in the end, so long as you use a similarly restricted feature set.

      It can get that small? My attempts at statically linking Qt with a six-line-long --no-bla configure line, -Os build flag and upx --ultra-best could only get my executables down to an added 4MB or so. I will admit, that's very respectable indeed.

      To be honest, I kind of fell in love with the Qt API. Mine is basically Qt sans a few inconsistencies, with references instead of pointers, with less std:: reimplementations (but still a few), and with C++0x enhancements. I haven't used wx because it seemed rather MFC-ish, but if sizes get that small it sounds like a great choice for more complex apps.

      but how often is this, realistically, a requirement for most typical projects?

      Kind of depends. Eventually someone would port over anything, even to new targets like OS XI. Qt is on Haiku, GTK+ is on OS X, etc. Go too far in the future and the entire UI paradigm we use could be thrown out.

      You could end up with an embedded project based on QNX or something where the Qt run-time size becomes a bigger issue. Or maybe you just want to be 100% in control and able to modify the toolkit directly yourself. The library is ISC licensed.

      Who knows, I'm definitely not saying phoenix is for everyone. But I do feel it's as small, as easy to learn, and as portable as you can possibly get while still being useful.

    4. Re:An alternative to reliance on a single toolkit by byuu · · Score: 2

      Yes, it does both. All GUI strings are in UTF-8 on all platforms (*not* UTF-16/UCS-2 on Windows), and it also has block-buffered file (FILE*) / filemap (mmap/MapViewOfFile) / directory (opendir/FindFirstFile) / dynamic-link library access (dlsym/GetProcAddress) wrappers that take UTF-8 as well. There's also a handy callback to grab a UTF-8 argv[] list on Windows (I do not hijack main.) And lastly, I provide some RAII UTF-8 UTF-16 transformations for when you absolutely need that on Windows.

      Windows 64-bit was the other major reason I wanted to move off of Qt. You can pull it off in Qt, but it takes some source hackery and is unofficial, last I checked anyway (4.6.x)

      If you're interesting in audio-visual stuff, I have a library called ruby (I'm great with this naming thing, huh?) that wraps DirectDraw+Direct3D+OpenGL(wgl+glx)+GDI+SDL+X-Video, XAudio2+DirectSound+PulseAudio+PulseSimple+ALSA+OSS+OpenAL+libao, DirectInput+RawInput+XInput+SDL+Xlib cross-platform as well. Like SDL but with pixel shaders, hardware scaling, multi-mouse, etc.

  14. Meanwhile..... by diegocg · · Score: 4, Informative

    ...QT continues developing announcing cool features, like the QML scene graph (post from today)

  15. "the truth is that Qt is deprecated" by volkerdi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The only truth here is that the article was written by a completely ignorant asshat.

  16. Re:Dear Submitter, by GigaplexNZ · · Score: 2

    That's a feature, not a bug.

  17. Re:The other option by jedidiah · · Score: 2

    No. Some changes cause more backlash than others.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
  18. Re:DOES ANY ONE HERE REMEMBER? by walshy007 · · Score: 2

    They made gtk back when QT had crappy licensing conditions, since QT 1.4 (around 1998) then these conditions have been remedied and qt is distributed by gpl (or commercial if you feel like paying).

    Is it possible less developers will use it? sure, but that isn't a problem with licensing, qt is gpl and lgpl licensed (with commercial available if you pay). I fail to see the issue as this was resolved well over a decade ago.

  19. Qt is the furure of software development by scorp1us · · Score: 2

    Here's why.
    Qt5 will have the maturity needed to accomplish the following:
    Whole client-side programs written in Javascript (QML) that use OpenCL/GL and web resources. (Better than Flash)
    LGPL (Better than Flash)
    Client and server apps (Better than Flash)
    One platform for Web, Phone and desktop (same as AIR)

    Qt went 4.8-rc-1 recently with all these features, but when Qt5 comes out it'll have the maturity it needs. SceneGraph went into mainline today.

    Awesome is coming.

    --
    Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
  20. Re:Nokia PR and Qt development are different by oiron · · Score: 3, Informative

    Thanks for the tasty FUD!

    Some comments here claim Qt is not dying because Nokia made some announcement and the Qt blog is hyperactive.

    But look at the facts:
    -the IRC channel they used: #qt-labs, has almost no activity since February

    Looks like there's quite a bit of activity from just the last week

    -the brand new Qt Developer Network has been deserted by the trolls

    It'd be great if things were deserted by the trolls, I guess... Anyway, it doesn't seem deserted by the users

    -the blog posts on Qt labs are just about future project, never anything concrete for the current library

    Of the five posts on the front page, two are about merges of experimental features (the QML scenegraph and Lighthouse), two about conferences and summits, and one's about the release of QtWebkit 2.1.1. Not current enough for you?

    -the plans for Qt 5 announced recently are ridiculous, no troll was involved in those

    I'm not even going to reply to that one!

    -the development on qt.gitorious.org stalled since February

    If there is not quickly a fork of Qt, we will discover in 2 years that Qt is outdated and there is no longer any professional GUI library for Linux.

    Latest commit is dated Jun 1 2011

    Now, WTF are you talking about again?