qt 2.0 released

kris writes "Those funky Trolls up there north have released Version 2.0 of the Qt library. Unlike Version 1, this one is available under the QPL Open Source license, which is in compliance with the Debian Free Software Guidelines and qualifies as Open Source. Qt 2.0 also contains tons of changes and improvements, such as Unicode support, better I18N, rich text, theming and thousands of other things. You want to download their stuff to give it a try. "

Comments

KDE release based on Qt2.0

[Anonymous Coward]

The KDE Team tries to have a developers release
of KDE based on Qt2.0 out by the end of this summer.

A stable KDE release based on Qt2.0 can be
expected in the first quarter of '00.

Those who don't mind hacking a bit themselves
can of course always have a look at the
tgz-snapshots or follow KDE development from
day to day via CVSup.

KDE development has been based on beta versions
of Qt 2.0 for some time already. As of today
all development will be based on the released
version of Qt2.0.

Cheers,
Waldo Bastian
bastian@kde.org

Re: KDE release based on Qt2.0

[Gleef]

Sounds great. What's the story with KDE's licensing?

I understand that the libraries are LGPL (which appears to me to work fine with the QPL). I have been told that some but not all of the programs are Artistic, and some programs are still GPLed . How do I find out which programs are which? The FAQ still says that everything is GPLed. I'm mostly interested in the licensing of the core apps: kwm, kpanel, kfm, etc.

Disclaimer: I'm not looking to flame anybody, or to get flamed, I just want to know which things are covered by which licenses.

Don't give up on Harmony just yet.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry about the AC, I'm at work and going through a proxy, so I can't telnet to my machine to get my password.

I've read the QPL. I do like some of it's ideas. First and foremost the requirement that the Free Edition is limited to use with the X Window system is a wonderful idea. But it seems like Troll Tech wants to force requirements on people that it isn't willing to undertake itself. For instance, the QPL states that the author of programs using the QPL has to allow others to make modifications to their programs and they have to allow others to redistribute the modified version of their program. This all sounds well and good, but Troll Tech isn't willing to submit to the same restrictions. Specifically with regards to QT:

people are forbidden from distributing modified versions of QT,

and their programs can't require a user to make changes to QT.

So, while the license is somewhat better, it ain't the GPL (any version); and I still have hope for the Harmony Project.

_____
It's ironic that Microsoft's goal is to write good software and Linux's goal is world domination.

'stuff' URL

[DeadBeef]

It appears that the 'stuff' url on the short description should be ftp://ftp.troll.no/qt/source/qt-2.00.ta r.gz

Debian and KDE, the current situation (IIRC)

[Cyberlink]

Okay, I'm not going to speak in any official capacity here, but after all the conversations I've read on debian-devel and the #Debian IRC channel, here's the situation as I see it:

Debian does not and will not immediately include KDE, even with the release of the DFSG-free Qt 2.0, because KDE's license, namely the GPL, does not allow linking with libraries with licenses other than the GPL.

The GPL also includes this clause:

However, as a special exception, the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed (in either source or binary form) with the major components (compiler, kernel, and so on) of the operating system on which the executable runs, unless that component itself accompanies the executable.

The problem with this is that if KDE and Qt 2.0 are both put into main, then the second part of this clause ("unless that component itself accompanies the executable") comes into effect. I'm not sure exactly about what happens if KDE is put into another section, but then, I'm sure that's been discussed also, and anyway, if it were in another section, it wouldn't be part of the official Debian distribution, anyway.

So one of the following has to happen, I believe, before KDE can be included:

1. KDE is relicensed with a clause that says it can be linked with Qt
2. Qt is released under the GPL
3. The GPL is modified to allow linkage to DFSG-free libraries

I believe 3 has been looked at, and been decided against. I believe that Joseph Carter is working with KDE to resolve that part of the problem, and if they is successful, then it will be included.

Anyway, if I'm wrong in any way, I'm sure someone will correct me... this is just as I understand it.

Re:Debian and KDE, the current situation (IIRC)

[Martin Hock]

First of all, a disclaimer: I am not a lawyer. What I say below is purely opinion. I am not in any way connected with the Debian project, other than through the existence of a package of something I wrote.

I think you're right, annoyingly enough. I spent some time trying to think of a way to allow KDE and Qt to accompany each other. I came up with an idea, but I don't want to relate it here because it would just make me look stupid, mainly because it didn't work. After reading the above post, I realized I had missed that last part "unless that component itself accompanies the executable," which I think probably makes KDE under its current license, sadly enough, undistributable. In order for KDE to be distributable, Qt would probably have to normally come with Linux distributions. This is a little iffy right now, and it still doesn't let KDE be distributed alongside Qt. Of course I want KDE to be distributable; although I personally don't use it, I think it's easy to see that it's a worthwhile piece of software to say the least, and that its creators obviously wanted it to be legally usable and treated just like a normal GPLed piece of software.

I wondered at first why the GPL was written this way, but I've realized that it's because RMS didn't want people distributing his software along with their proprietary operating systems. This is a protection that I didn't even realize was present in the GPL and it makes me feel a little safer; I know that any silly games that I write won't be sold by SCO or something on their CDs.

Now that a free-according-to-Debian Qt has been released, my hopes were renewed, if only slightly. First of all, realize that KDE is now legally distributable, if one can assume that Qt is now "normally distributed... with the major components... of the operating system." However, realize that it says "unless the component accompanies the executable." That means that if ONLY the source form of Qt is distributed along with KDE, the two can be distributed together. Of course this is incredibly annoying to the end-user as he will have to compile Qt in order to install the KDE on his CD. And on a sluggish old Sun IPX this is really annoying. Don't even get me started with Pine/Pico, either.

That having been said, who does this really affect? The answer is probably almost nobody. Debian packages of KDE have been available the whole time on KDE's site. Nearly all of the people who use KDE are going to be using a distribution other than Debian anyway. And though the way most distributions would distribute KDE are probably illegal, nobody really cares. Even if some crazed KDE developer decided to sue, I think sufficient evidence could be shown that the intent of the KDE team is clear enough, and that the license is vague enough, making statements contradictory to the situation like "... the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software" that his case would probably be thrown out. Either way, things would get worse in a way that nobody wants. If it wasn't, distributions everywhere would be struck a major legal blow, and I have a feeling most would disappear. And if it was, the GPL would be threatened, and I'd probably have to switch to a new license for any software I write. It's in nobody's best interest. (Of course, that hasn't stopped people before.)

Qt is nice, but...

[Jerky McNaughty]

I'd really like to see Qt become more of an application framework rather than just a widget set. When working on a Qt project, I got very caught up in just getting a good solid framework created. I still have hardly even started on the project.

(I'm not the type of coder to just bang out code, it's got to be done right.)

Seems like the only free framework we've really got is wxWindows and, while not bad, there are a lot of things I don't like about it.

Re:Well, Qt2.0 has been through extensive beta

[Millennium]

Did I use Gnome 1.0? Nope. Matter of fact, I didn't pick up Gnome till about 1.0.6 or so.

As for Qt getting out of beta, there's one thing. Lots of people don't use betas very much, but everyone immediately grabs for the 1.0 releases. It's as though your testing pool suddenly quintupled. THey'll find bugs you missed the first time, guaranteed. Even the Linux kernel isn't immune to this; if I remember correctly 2.2.1 came out only a day after 2.2.

Re:Well, those are not really themes

[Millennium]

Actually, they still count as themes.

As I understand it, a "theme" is simply one "look" which can be set once such that all apps which support that theme style will then use it.

For GTK, these are Default, Redmond95, Notif, and Pixmap.

This also means that the "themes" we commonly see at gtk.themes.org are, strictly speaking, usually not themes in the strictest sense of the word; rather they are configurations of the Pixmap theme plus the necessary graphics to make the configuration run. I suppose "skin" would be a better term for those types of themes: a GUI widget configuration for one program, which in this case is the Pixmap theme. Because that program is itself a theme, Pixmap skins act like themes.

"Themes" sound cooler than "skins" anyway :)

Re:QPlatinumStyle illegal?

[Millennium]

Actually, it's another abuse of the patent system. This one is called a "design patent" and it really does simply put a patent on look and feel. Apple's got loads of them, including Platinum, Hi-Tech, Gizmo, Drawing Board (I think), and loads of others that no one really knows why they have since even Apple doesn't use them.

If I could remember the patent numbers I'd post links to them. In any case, I'd imaging M$ has patents on the look and feel of Win95 and 98 too (though why would you want to patent such bad stuff?)

Either way, you're discounting the possibility that perhaps they licensed the looks from Apple and M$. Unlikely, to be sure, but possible (little-known fact: Apple actually had purchased licenses for all the GUI stuff they took from Xerox. M$ did not have licenses for what it took from Apple).

Anyway, that's the thing there. Troll might get sued for it. Then again, I don't think either Apple or M$ will bother to do it.

Interesting...

[Millennium]

I won't be downloading it (not because of any GTK zealotry; I'm waiting for 2.0.1 and all the inevitable bug fixes the Troll guys missed). Besides, I have a few questions concerning themes:

1) How compatible are the themes with those from GTK (at least for pixmap-based themes; I know the engine-based themes have no hope of compatibility)? It'd be nice if I could use the same theme for all my apps, and since work on Qt's themes didn't even start until after GTK's was cemented the only reason to make them incompatible is for incompatibility's sake.

2) Assume that GTK and Qt themes are incompatible (which is likely, unfortunately). How easy is it to convert the themes between toolkits? Might we be seeing a program in the future to do this?

3) Suppose the second isn't possible. Might it be possible for either toolkit to eventually gain the ability to read in the other's theme format?

As you can see, my biggest concern is interoperability between the two. While I don't have any Qt/KDE apps (never saw the need for any of the current batch, again I don't consider myself a zealot) it'd really be nice to use them seamlessly with GTK/Gnome apps (this is also why I'm pushing for a common desktop API which both KDE and Gnome could support, so a developer could write the code once and support both DE's. XDND is a start, but drag-and-drop isn't the only thing which needs the help a common API gives).

Re:Interesting...

[Kurt Granroth]

Qt and GTK themes are not compatible and probably never will be.

HOWEVER, KDE and GTK themes will be able to get along just fine! What do I mean? Well, we've essentially abstracted the themeing layer a bit higher than the Qt level. Thanks to the incredible work by KDE developer Mosfet, all theme work can be done at an "rc-file" level. Soon, there will be a easy to use GUI to do all of this in a point-and-click manner.

Mosfet is also now starting to integrate GTK themes into this. I believe he is having troubles finding the official GTK theme specification (I looked for it myself with no luck -- I'm sure it's out there somewhere but it is sure not easy to find). Once this is done, it should be possible to use GTK themes in KDE *AND* to apply KDE themes to your GTK apps.

It is a given that somebody will also code the "other" direction. I would be very suprised if you would not be able to use KDE themes within GNOME someday.

Re:I thought the problem was GPL compatibility?

[Ray Dassen]

Well even if it wasnt it could have been included in non-free couldnt it?

Actually contrib is the place for free-but-depending-on-non-free software.

I thought the problem was the lackluster linking of KDE stuff against GPL'd stuff?

The core problem is the interaction between Qt's license and KDE's (GPLed). It can be solved by changing KDE's license, but that will mean replacing the third-party GPLed code in KDE, or getting it relicensed, which may prove difficult.

And I do remember reading that the QPL although it does conform to the Debian Free Software Guidelines is still not compatible with GPL.

Indeed. Essentially, the GPL requires that code linked to by a GPL-ed piece of software be under the GPL or under a license that imposes no more restrictions than the GPL (like public domain, the MIT license, or BSD without the ad clause), except when that code is part of a major system component (something like a proprietary Motif or C library in an environment where they're always present (think Motif on SUN)).

X doesn't qualify as such a component (you can have a perfectly working Linux system without it, and X is not part of all distributions), so Qt, a layer over X, doesn't either. And Qt's license, now the QPL, imposes more restrictions than the GPL (e.g. the "patch requirement" that modified versions may only be distributed as original code + separate modifications).

Re:So does this change the debian situation?

[Ray Dassen]

Can KDE now be included again in the debian distribution?

No. Qt can (and will) however now be included in Debian proper ("main"), rather than being available in "non-free".

Or are the licensing concerns still as valid as they ever were?

The licensing concerns are that Qt's license is incompatible with KDE's (GPL). This has regrettably not changed with the QPL. Knghtbrd, one of Debian's developers, provided a lot of input to Troll Tech regarding the QPL, but they couldn't be convinced to make the QPL GPL-compatible.

If the licensing issue had been about Qt1's non-freeness by itself, KDE could simply be in the "contrib" section. But the licensing issue is an interaction between licenses that prevents us from redistributing KDE binaries.

Luckily, there are strong indications that the KDE developers will be changing KDE's license to one that does not interact badly with the QPL (e.g. an Artistic-like license); once that happens, KDE can go in Debian proper.

What Qt 2 being free means to Debian is that Qt itself will now become a part of Debian proper, and that Qt-using software that doesn't suffer from the licensing issue (e.g. like pi-address, which is GPL + exception clause) can go in Debian.

Re:Quality product? (buahaha)

[scrytch]

Oh christ, templates again. Look idiot, from Ada to Haskell to variants of Java (Pizza), Generic Programming is a good thing, it's here to stay, and atavists who insist on going back to assembly with drum memory and tape drives for all are not going to change that. Tell me, do you have ANY formal background in CS to qualify your wild assertions about what ideas of programming are good or bad?

Re:QT is free (beer) software

[scrytch]

> QT is an excellent library but it ain't free (speech).

Tell that to RMS, who has blessed it with the Free Software moniker.

Just to neat and clean

[mudpup]

KDE is just to neat and clean. Its getting to be like the rest of this Linux stuff, it works without a hitch. I need software that chrashes and gives me problems so I've got excuses for not getting any work done.

Dennis

Re:So when will we see the new KDE?

[Radiation]

I'd guess that this can answer some of your questions :)