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Feature: Is Open Source for Windows Less Important?
The following was written by Frank Faubert
With the release of Qt 2.0, Troll Tech has been kind enough to license the Unix/X11 version of their flagship product under an open source license for use with other open source projects. Why are they doing this? According to their web site it's because they "have a strong dedication to the free software movement" and "believe that it is the most interesting alternative to Microsoft's near-monopoly situation on desktop software". What do they get out of it? From the same page, they hope to "spread usage of Qt around the world". This is all well and good, and looks like a win/win for everyone involved, but I have one lingering question... What about Windows?
If two of the goals of the Qt Free Edition are to help the free software movement and spread the usage of Qt, why not release the Windows edition under the same license? There are many open source projects which run on Windows as well as Unix (Apache, Mozilla, Perl, CVS, and AbiWord just to name a few); why should these packages be discriminated against.
Consider Apache for a moment. Porting Apache to Windows has helped it capture roughly 57% of the web server market which has caused Microsoft no end of aggravation. However, if somebody wanted to write a cross platform GUI configuration utility for Apache using Qt, they would not be able to release it under Windows. I fail to see how this meets the goals of the Qt Free Edition.
Like it or not, Windows has a monopoly on the desktop market, and it is going to take quite a while for anything to change that. Having more open source software that runs on Windows as well as UNIX can only help facilitate that change. Releasing the Qt Free Edition for Windows would be a big step in that direction.
Open source software that runs on Windows is no less open than its Unix counterparts, and should not be treated that way. I ask anyone who is reading this to either tell me that I am insane, or to write to Troll Tech and ask them to consider releasing the Qt Free Edition for Windows. Questions 20 and 21 of their FAQ prove they often get requests for this. If more of us ask...
Ed: Me personally, I believe that Troll Tech has the right to market their product in whatever way they wish, and I honestly believe that Qt under Windows is a huge achievement and wish them the best in its development. However, what about the folks that wish to port their Open Source Qt Application from Unix to Windows? Does development under Windows intrinsically cut a developer off from a few of the most important resources found in any Open Sourced project (those being right tools for the job, and the programming minds themselves)? Is there even a good solution for this situation?
Porting Apache to Windows has helped it capture roughly 57% of the web server market which has caused Microsoft no end of aggravation.
Really? What percentage among those servers (ones that are visible from "the outside") runs on Windows? 0.1%? 0.01%? What percentage of them are even administered by people who have Apache for Windows elsewhere?
The only thing, Windows port of Apache did, was slowing down the development of Apache and its modules -- look at Apache or mod_perl source and count #ifdef'ed Windows-isms and various hacks made to deal with them. The same applies to almost eveyt other unix-project-ported-to-Windows.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
It's not whether Open Source for Windows is more or less important than Open Source for Unix. The issue is more properly defined in terms of the respective marketplaces for products on the two operating systems. The right question is "Is Open Source less important in a commercially-driven marketplace than in a freeware/shareware/public domain marketplace?"
The obvious answer is yes, Open Source (at least as far as it is defined with respect to the GNU Copyleft definition) is not only less important, but almost undesirable in the commercial marketplace. There are certain areas where commercial advantage can be gained by "open sourcing" libraries, protocols, and other building block technologies. But companies with millions in revenue and hundreds of employees to support will not be able to build a credible business case for engineering based on a concept that boils down to "whatever innovations we create will be made immediately available to our competitors."
Contrary to popular myth, companies that open source their product line don't survive in this industry (in any meaningful way). They simply cannot generate the revenue required to compete with all the companies that retain their competitive advantage.
On platforms where the commercial developer community is small (i.e., Linux et al.) relative to the industry as a whole, open sourcing makes a lot more sense since most of the products are still small enough in scope to be engineered by a handful of individuals sharing technologies. At the point a 20 person team is required to engineer, distribute, and support a Linux app, you'll quickly see how little of it ends up being open sourced simply due to the economics.
And I'm not talking about 20 people hacking a Linux kernel in their spare time. I'm talking about a full time staff of engineers, tech writers, QA personnel, tech support, and management. You can't make that sort of enterprise function without revenue and positive cash flow.
Shut up and eat your vegetables!!!
I have opinions on both sides of this issue. On one hand, I think open source software on Windows is a good thing, because open source in general is a good thing. I won't waste my time telling you why, because most of you already know why.
On the other hand, some of the advantages of open source don't apply to Windows, because the OS itself is closed. One of the greatest advantages to open source is that the open source community can fix bugs from the kernel level upward, which allows us to avoid kludges and workarounds from bugs in the OS. On Windows, if you find a bug in the OS that affects your program, you have no choice but to kludge around it. Under Linux, BSD etc., you can try to find the bug instead of working around it. Actually, you are less likely to have these type of problems in the first place, because someone else may have already done this.
I guess my point is, that open source software on Windows is a good thing, but many of the advantages of open source will never exist on a closed source platform.
Peace.
--- "So THAT's what an invisible barrier looks like!" - Time Bandits
I was one of the people who petitioned Troll Tech to put Qt under the GPL. I would have preferred that, but the QPL is not really that bad, when you get down to it.
And the non-free status of the Windows port is all for the better.
Wake *UP* people - they are doing us a favour! They are funding development which helps the cause of Linux, BSD and friends, and they are doing it at the expense of the Windows market *only*.
This solution is not only acceptable to me - it's damned near ideal. If the windows port was open-source, then it would retard the cause of free software in two ways:
1. It would deprive Troll Tech of revenues which allow them to *pay* engineers to work on the *free* X11 port.
2. It would allow Windows users to use cool, free software that normally runs on *nix platforms - thus reducing their incentive to switch. We want to drive the application availability situation to the advantage of Linux, etc. people!
-- Mike Greaves
Remember that as a community, we Open Source folks get our strength from building off each other's strengths, and sharing our own for what I hope is some kind of greater good. Part of that greater good, I hope, is alleviating the need for developers to reinvent the wheel, as there are so many things that developers need in common, that we can benefit from sharing and improving common tools and libraries. The other part of that greater good is to help people like myself, when I was younger and more naive, and scraped together enough money to buy a computer only to find I could not afford the software to do anything useful. Open Source, and at that time shareware, was the only way I could claw my way out of ignorance and learn how to program to harness the power of my machine.
That has nothing to do with Microsoft, and I know that restricting Open Source technology from the Windows platform certainly does not strengthen any Open Source ideals. It is not going to make anyone ``switch'' away from the Bad Way. In fact, it can only serve to do the opposite, to paint the picture of the Open Source movement as a bunch of elitist and closed(!) minded individuals, who are willing to share only if you agree with their ideals! How is that going to help people join the cause?
On the other hand, let's imagine that someone that has never experienced the Open Source Way, using his/her Evil Operating System, discovers a ray of hope in some small library, or some other project. Suppose he/she benefits from it, or submits a change and discovers what Open Source is really all about? Then won't that have been part of the greater good?
Open Source is about creating, not about destroying, whether it be closed-source development, or Microsoft. Make sure that people realize that, and that we're not just a bunch of petty Linux and BSD bigots.
My Freakin Blog
Many people use both Linux and Windows and would like to have the same tools available on both, including tools and software they develop themselves.
And making free Linux/UNIX software like the Gimp available on Windows makes Windows users more familiar with Linux software. That makes it easier for Windows users to transition onto non-Windows platforms, and it makes it easier for institutions to deploy a single set of tools across all platforms.
As a developer, I look carefully at where I invest time to learn new tools. A tool that is free on only some platforms and costs lots of money on other platforms is not very attractive to me.
I believe that Qt could probably succeed as well as it does if both its UNIX and Windows versions were released under GPL (not LGPL), with separate commercial licenses for commercial developers. I still find the current licensing situation of Qt to be a major obstacle to using it.
Choices are:
1) Release both X11 and Win versions under a Free Software license. Result: severe and fatal drop in revenue. Would you spend even 10$ on a free software library? Can you name even one person who paid for GTK? Some large corps will pay for it but few others. Under Qt you don't need support at all. It's built too well to need it. But Linux users will still complain. As long as there exists a price list for Qt, they'll bitch about it. They don't want Free Software, they want freeware. "Why should I pay $1000 for Qt?" is the same as saying "Why should I pay $80 for Redhat".
2) Release both versions as Free for Free development and proprietary for proprietary development. Result: possibly only a slight drop in revenue. This option is probably optimal. However, the bitching won't stop because the average Linux user is an irrational creature. They don't want to create Free Software, they want to destroy proprietary software. Their zeal in condemning any and everything that isn't 100% GPL is proof enough that they don't want choice. They could care less that Qt is Free Software. If Troll went out of business and Qt transferred to a BSD license, they would still bitch about it.
3) Continue as they are, X/11 Free, Win non-free and proprietary usage non-free. Result: same as today. People irrationally bitching about it. Any valid argument for additionally freeing the Windows version is drowned out in the cacophony of hatred.
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
There is one serious practical problem with Open Source on Windows.
What do you use to compile it?
Using Microsoft tools is problematic, as they don't support familiar makefiles, they change often and there are a number of grungy places that require even more #ifdefs than you would have with Unix-like systems.
Also, I think that Open Source is not advanced by requiring a pricey language platform purchase before you can get started. Open Source, in my observation, has greatly benefitted because people with few resources can really contribute, and contribute right away.
There is cygwin, but it's not entirely mature. Also, there is the issue of cygwin.dll licensing. I personally feel that releasing a library under GPL and selling another licensed version of the same library is against the spirit of Open Source. It is explicitly granting a license to one group of users that another group does not hold. This license issue probably frightens away a lot of potential workers to improving cygwin. Has RMS ever weighed in on this issue?
There is a call for people to help with the cygwin project, currently. If the tools were really mature, the split licensing wouldn't bother me so much as I believe that a ton of Linux software would be ported to Windows if cygwin could really do it. One really great benefit to this is that people would upgrade more often from Windows to Linux when they compared their poorly performing Open Source code running on Windows/cygwin to what they could be doing on Linux.
It might help if a commercial Linux distro, or perhaps a Power Tools CD, included the full cygwin package, complete with all the known ported releases of Open Source software. You could cross develop cygwin on Linux with a Windows target. Such a thing might be used to spread GPL software through the Windows community more. A good free X-Server might be handy here too.