"...it just needs people to understand that they're signing away their life when they buy commercial software."
Okay, who's being naive now? Redhat *IS* commercial software. Perhaps you were typing too fast and meant proprietary instead. In this day and age of enlightenment, do you seriously continue to believe the superstition that Windows users "sign away their life" to Bill Gates? Get real!
I'm sorry, I can't use Linux. Why not? I signed away my life to Microsoft. Nonsense! Just switch over. You don't understand. They have my life. If I use Linux I'll be a soulless zombie...
If naive means that I don't believe that the majority is always correct, then I guess I must be naive. Who cares if every other software company is lobbying their congressmen? If Redhat should do what every other company does, then why in hell aren't they a proprietary software company?
I'm not arguing that Redhat shouldn't be marketing themselves. But if they're going to publish opinion and position pieces intending to add to the laws that I have to live under, I must forcefully disagree.
The natural state of mankind is freedom. Laissez faire is thus the natural economic system. Managed economies can only occur if the government steps in and curtails the rights of certain economic participants. Whether this is right or wrong is a matter of opinion. But it is mistaken to call it freedom. Utopia is not an option.
If Free Software is the natural state of software development, then the government is not needed to curtail anyone's rights to ensure that Free Software prevails. If certain rights are already held hostage by existing laws (patents as an example), then we should demand their repeal, but anything beyond this in the name of freedom is hypocracy. Specifically, mandating the distribution of source code (for sharing can only be done voluntarily) and calling it freedom is hypocritical and orwellian.
This is why I am confused that you call the GPL "important politics". Politics is about laws. Are not the authors of BSD, AL, or other free software entitled to exactly the same rights and laws as all others? Can you really call a law fair that promotes only one license out of dozens? Are not even proprietary software authors entitled to equal justics?
So what would you do with software "inequality"? Send the cops over to the Gate's mansion and force him under penalty of imprisonment to hand over the Windows source code? Will there be citizens spying on citizens, and turning neighbors in to the committee for hoarding their own code? Will the teenager who unwittingly mixed GPL and QPL code together and "shared it with his friend" be fined by the magistrate?
Freedom is the absence of coercion. As long as the GPL remains voluntary I can live with it. But the instant it gains the power to coerce is the first day in an era of unparalleled injustice.
Silicon Valley has a very, very strange demographic.
Like the traditionally liberal university cities (Berkeley, Boston), SV is highly educated and intelligent. Unlike those cities, SV is not an ivory tower.
Like the conservative cities based on a military economy (San Diego, Norfolk), SV has Moffet, NASA, Lockheed, etc. Unlike those cities, it is not a "soldier town".
Unlike any other location, SV is the current center of entepreneurism. There may be a lot of rich corps and financiers around, but it's still the little guy with the big idea that gets things done.
In short, you can't characterize Silicon Valley. If you try to do so, you'll be wrong. SV is quasi-libertarian with smatterings of socialism; compassionate conservatives and hard-nosed liberals; extremist moderates.
None of the current crop of presidential candidates fit this mold.
The following statement from Redhat unnerves me: "projects intended to advance the social principles of open source for the greater good of the general public."
This is political rhetoric, pure and simple. If it came from a government, it would terrify me. If it came from a political organization it would make me nervous. But coming from a distributor of sofware, it confuses me. I want Redhat to distribute software that doesn't suck. I don't want Redhat supporting a "cause".
"Advancing social principles" is a strange phrase. I can only assume it's the "freedom" of Open Source. But this freedom doesn't exist as a social principle. It is not emancipation, liberty or even free speech. It is merely a permission to use and share. "The greater good of the general public" is much more troubling, and I must reject it with every fiber of my being. It presupposes that Redhat is knows what it best for billions of people it knows nothing about. It's also the common prelude to onerous laws and the destruction of liberties.
Get off the political bandwagon, Redhat, you're not running for office. If you want to help society, then put out a better product than everyone else.
"At some point of earning money, I conclude, the possession of more money is fundamentally wrong."
And what point is that? $1,000? $10,000? $1,000,000? $1,000,001? How do you decide?
I would agree that move moguls make too much and teacher not enough. But do you tax the moguls or put the teachers on subsidy?
Of course, if you were the emperor of the known universe you could arbitrarily decide that everyone who makes one dollar more than you is wrong. But you're not the emperor, king or even mayor or anything. Thank goodness for small favors.
If no one was coerced or defrauded in its earning, then it is of no concern of yours how much money someone makes.
"I dislike the idea of others deriving benefit from my work whilst preventing others from deriving benefit from theirs."
But this was not the case with Corel and Qt/GPL. There, the GPL's zealotry against proprietary software worked against a FREE SOFTWARE LICENSE! The GPL is not pro-freedom, it is pro-GNU, and that's a huge difference.
"Whining about not being able to use GPL'ed code in whatever software is paramount to whining that you don't have access to the source code to MacOS, Windows, or any other proprietary work."
So you're saying that there's really no difference between GPL and proprietary licensing?
You've got it all backwards. The GPL says "we want this software to remain free, so we're putting on some restrictions." If it was really about not restricting 'freedom', the GPL would be only a fourth its size.
Furthermore, the clauses that keep GPL code out of proprietary products are the exact same clauses that keep them out of ANY OTHER FREE software product. The GPL was not designed to promote freedom, it was designed to promote the GNU project.
If the QPL (a RMS certified Free License) is what's keeping you from using KDE, you need to get a life!
You don't give a reason why you don't like Qt/QPL, so I can only assume that it's political. Get over it. Your operating system isn't a political party. You won't go to hell if you use KDE. Be your own person and make your own decisions without RMS telling you what to think.
The fact that you say you would "switch from Gnome in an instant" implies that you aren't 100% happy with Gnome, and that you see KDE as being better suited to your needs. Don't let the lack of a non-GNU library stop you. Jeez Louise!
"What RMS doesn't want to see, however, is software that gives free software a definitive edge... being LGPL'ed."
RMS wants exclusivity. He is not interested in freedom for users of proprietary software, he is interested in freedom for GNU. If something gives an advantage to GNU he is for it (rightly), but if it also benefits a non-free OS at the same time, he will oppose it if it's not needed for GNU.
Example: I ran across his article denouncing a standard for open device drivers. I was confused by this, and wrote him asking for clarification. After all, I thought that open source drivers for Windows users is a good idea, since they are the ones most in need of freedom. This sounded too much like "free the free and keep the slaves slaves". He replied and said precisely that: he didn't want open source drivers for Windows because that would benefit Windows.
Application "A" links to libraries "B" and "C". What difference does it make what licenses "B" and "C" are under, so long as "A" is properly licensed? "B" is *NOT* a derivitive of "C".
On a tangent, the purpose of a library is to be linked to. This is not deriving from the library, merely a "use" of the library, and the GPL expressly permits any and all uses of GPL'd code. The only thing it restricts is modifications and distributions. Even if the library was under the strictest proprietary license available, linking to it is still covered under the "fair use" clause of copyright.
The more I see articles like this the more I'm glad I switched to BSD for my own code. That way any downstream developers know they won't get their asses sued off for sharing code with their friends.
The christian bashings I'm referring to are not judgements based on rationality or differences of opinions, or anything like that. What I am referring to is a bigotry based on ignorance or hatred, just like any other bigotry.
Calling Don Knuth stupid for believing in God is bigotry. Disagreeing with his beliefs is not. There are many posts here calling Don Knuth stupid, but he is anything BUT stupid.
Recent slashdot examples of bigotry: assuming that the Jesux distribution must be true because it follows the preconceived notions of what christians are like; belittling those who prayed for the earthquake victims of Taiwan, saying it was a complete waste of time, but expending much more energy in the belittling than the prayers did; and when a certain christian newletter recommended Linux, indignation erupted that christians were using that operating system.
In fact, everytime christianity is mentioned on slashdot, the topic is lost amidst accusations of stupidity, being the prime cause of wars, and inane parodies.
"What really pissed me off with people like the author I'm responding to, and the trend they are a part of, is that they're trying to get people to stop thinking."
What really pissed me off about the responder is his knee-jerk bigotry in assuming that since I'm a christian I must be trying to get people to stop thinking.
"We see many examples of people who believe things without proof. That is faith. We see them do stupid things because of their belief in that faith. That is the proof that faith is bad."
You are mischaracterizing faith. It is much more than blindly accepting what someone else is telling you. It is accepting something because you *know* it to be true.
Every person with faith has strong and compelling evidence for that faith. But just because that evidence is not scientific, or is meaningless to you, does not make it any less evidence. I agree that "blind faith" is not very smart, but a faith bolstered by evidence, scientific or otherwise, is certainly not stupid.
"It doesn't make them a bad person, but it doesn't indicate a very critical mind."
I could go on and on about the great critical minds in history who were people of faith. But I won't, look them up in your own history books.
"It's the underlying slave mentality and world hatred of it all that's so perverse."
What slave mentality? Some religions may have it, and even some christian denominations, but the Bible does not command people to be slaves of others. I am not required in the Bible to submit myself to a priest. Personally, my politics border on anarchism. My life is between me and my God. But the Bible contains more than religious lessons, it also contains descriptions of political and cultural norms. Perhaps this is what Neitsche was refering to. It was a great debate in the early christian church (and detailed in the book of Acts) whether non-jewish christians had to follow the cultural norms of judaism. The answer was no.
As to a "world hatred", this is partially true. Some christian denominations, particularly eastern, are deeper in to this than others. But this is only natural. The world is truly a rotten place. Pick up the newspaper on any given day and you'll see that this isn't a perfect place. But this doesn't deny the good that is also present in the world. In Neitsche's day, the prevalent christian teaching was that this world was thoroughly evil and that our lot in life was merely to endure through to the end. It's no wonder he ended up thinking what he did. But this is not what the Bible teaches (much of what people see christianity as is not what the Bible teaches either...).
Apparently, Mr. Knuth's being a christian has deeply offended a lot of you. My guess would be that you're much, much more intolerant of other people than any imagined intolerance on christianity's part.
Geeks hate being wrong (I know, I am one). But that's what christianity is, telling you that you're wrong, a sinner, doomed. But you guys are so narrow minded that you can't get past that to find out that it also talks about what to do about it.
I could of course mention the fact that it was geeks killing christians at Columbine, but that's grossly unfair. Just as unfair as all these posts here blaming religion for all the atrocities in the world.
Christian bashing is the last refuge of the bigot in this era of political correctness.
It sounds as if you're trying to turn science into a religion. You are making it an article of your faith that stuff outside of science is "dumb".
Science cannnot deal with God, the supernatural, or anything else non-observable. It can't. It wasn't designed to. But neither does it deny the existance outside of observation, it merely states that such knowledge is outside of it's domain. Trying to use science to disprove the existance of God is like trying to use a hammer to saw wood.
$1000 is not that much, even for the small developer. If you plan to sell a shareware app for 10$ a pop, and expect to sell 1000 copies, then you've just grossed $9000! If you don't plan to sell that many copies, perhaps it's time you rethought your whole vocation.
Head on down to your local Mom-And-Pop store on the corner. It doesn't matter what they're retailing. Now take a look at their fixtures. How much to you think it cost them? Real life example: Mom-And-Pop carpet store down the street: Armstrong Vinyl rack = $1000~; each individual carpet waterfall = $50-75$ and there are 25 of them, and this isn't covering the samples; specialized accounting software = $1500 per cpu; carpet roller in the back = $5000; etc., etc., etc. And these are the small guys!!!
$1000 is peanuts for a quality tool like Qt, and it even comes with support and updates. It's nothing compared to what you'll have to spend on quality marketing.
I do indeed wish that Qt were free on the windows side as well. I wasn't arguing against it. I'm very sure that once Troll Tech can figure out the appropriate funding mechanism, they will. After all, their clientele aren't exactly the type that would use and pay for a support-based funding model.
What I was arguing against was the myth that the QPL'd Qt is only free for freeware and that once you charge for your application you must use the professional version.
If you look at it a certain way, Qt is free for NT for you to compile QTSlash'em, you just have to run it under X under NT.
Get a clue dude! Qt is 100% open source and RMS certified Free. Go to Troll Tech and download it! No questions asked. No need to enter in a credit card number.
Yes, the ***Windows*** version is proprietary, but the X11 versions free. And there's nothing preventing you from porting one to the other. You can even use Free Qt to create proprietary X11 apps!
You said: "even M$ doesn't charge a developer fee." I say bullshit. Go price out the full version of VC++. But then you may be comparing the much cheaper (but still charged for) VB to Qt, and if you are, you really need a clue if you think they're equivalent in any way.
I'm not trying to flame here, but what architectural advantage is there when your model won't allow a change in direction? ORB was not working out for everything KDE wanted it to do. So they did the sensible thing and came up with something else that was smaller, faster and easier to use, and kept ORB for those tasks where it was needed.
It seems to me that ORB has become the holy grail of Gnome. A couple of weeks ago the so-called abandonment of ORB was touted by the Gnomies as *proof* of KDE's inferiority. Now that mosfet sttempts to correct a gross misunderstanding, you say it sounds like spin-control. To quote a great line from a great movie, "some men...you just can't reach." Face the fact if you can that there is room enough for two or more A+ desktops.
Slashdot Mirror
"...it just needs people to understand that they're signing away their life when they buy commercial software."
Okay, who's being naive now? Redhat *IS* commercial software. Perhaps you were typing too fast and meant proprietary instead. In this day and age of enlightenment, do you seriously continue to believe the superstition that Windows users "sign away their life" to Bill Gates? Get real!
I'm sorry, I can't use Linux.
Why not?
I signed away my life to Microsoft.
Nonsense! Just switch over.
You don't understand. They have my life. If I use Linux I'll be a soulless zombie...
If naive means that I don't believe that the majority is always correct, then I guess I must be naive. Who cares if every other software company is lobbying their congressmen? If Redhat should do what every other company does, then why in hell aren't they a proprietary software company?
I'm not arguing that Redhat shouldn't be marketing themselves. But if they're going to publish opinion and position pieces intending to add to the laws that I have to live under, I must forcefully disagree.
IIRC, petroleum derived from cambrian era plants, while the dinosaurs were mesozoic.
The natural state of mankind is freedom. Laissez faire is thus the natural economic system. Managed economies can only occur if the government steps in and curtails the rights of certain economic participants. Whether this is right or wrong is a matter of opinion. But it is mistaken to call it freedom. Utopia is not an option.
If Free Software is the natural state of software development, then the government is not needed to curtail anyone's rights to ensure that Free Software prevails. If certain rights are already held hostage by existing laws (patents as an example), then we should demand their repeal, but anything beyond this in the name of freedom is hypocracy. Specifically, mandating the distribution of source code (for sharing can only be done voluntarily) and calling it freedom is hypocritical and orwellian.
This is why I am confused that you call the GPL "important politics". Politics is about laws. Are not the authors of BSD, AL, or other free software entitled to exactly the same rights and laws as all others? Can you really call a law fair that promotes only one license out of dozens? Are not even proprietary software authors entitled to equal justics?
So what would you do with software "inequality"? Send the cops over to the Gate's mansion and force him under penalty of imprisonment to hand over the Windows source code? Will there be citizens spying on citizens, and turning neighbors in to the committee for hoarding their own code? Will the teenager who unwittingly mixed GPL and QPL code together and "shared it with his friend" be fined by the magistrate?
Freedom is the absence of coercion. As long as the GPL remains voluntary I can live with it. But the instant it gains the power to coerce is the first day in an era of unparalleled injustice.
Silicon Valley has a very, very strange demographic.
Like the traditionally liberal university cities (Berkeley, Boston), SV is highly educated and intelligent. Unlike those cities, SV is not an ivory tower.
Like the conservative cities based on a military economy (San Diego, Norfolk), SV has Moffet, NASA, Lockheed, etc. Unlike those cities, it is not a "soldier town".
Unlike any other location, SV is the current center of entepreneurism. There may be a lot of rich corps and financiers around, but it's still the little guy with the big idea that gets things done.
In short, you can't characterize Silicon Valley. If you try to do so, you'll be wrong. SV is quasi-libertarian with smatterings of socialism; compassionate conservatives and hard-nosed liberals; extremist moderates.
None of the current crop of presidential candidates fit this mold.
The following statement from Redhat unnerves me: "projects intended to advance the social principles of open source for the greater good of the general public."
This is political rhetoric, pure and simple. If it came from a government, it would terrify me. If it came from a political organization it would make me nervous. But coming from a distributor of sofware, it confuses me. I want Redhat to distribute software that doesn't suck. I don't want Redhat supporting a "cause".
"Advancing social principles" is a strange phrase. I can only assume it's the "freedom" of Open Source. But this freedom doesn't exist as a social principle. It is not emancipation, liberty or even free speech. It is merely a permission to use and share. "The greater good of the general public" is much more troubling, and I must reject it with every fiber of my being. It presupposes that Redhat is knows what it best for billions of people it knows nothing about. It's also the common prelude to onerous laws and the destruction of liberties.
Get off the political bandwagon, Redhat, you're not running for office. If you want to help society, then put out a better product than everyone else.
"At some point of earning money, I conclude, the possession of more money is fundamentally wrong."
And what point is that? $1,000? $10,000? $1,000,000? $1,000,001? How do you decide?
I would agree that move moguls make too much and teacher not enough. But do you tax the moguls or put the teachers on subsidy?
Of course, if you were the emperor of the known universe you could arbitrarily decide that everyone who makes one dollar more than you is wrong. But you're not the emperor, king or even mayor or anything. Thank goodness for small favors.
If no one was coerced or defrauded in its earning, then it is of no concern of yours how much money someone makes.
"Sure you can, just guarantee that all derived works will also be Free Software."
I can do that with the QPL, but I still can't link it with GPL'd programs.
"There are many people who want to ensure that their code is always free, and is never used in closed source software."
Trouble is, you can't use this code in Open Source or Free software either.
"I dislike the idea of others deriving benefit from my work whilst preventing others from deriving benefit from theirs."
But this was not the case with Corel and Qt/GPL. There, the GPL's zealotry against proprietary software worked against a FREE SOFTWARE LICENSE! The GPL is not pro-freedom, it is pro-GNU, and that's a huge difference.
"Whining about not being able to use GPL'ed code in whatever software is paramount to whining that you don't have access to the source code to MacOS, Windows, or any other proprietary work."
So you're saying that there's really no difference between GPL and proprietary licensing?
You've got it all backwards. The GPL says "we want this software to remain free, so we're putting on some restrictions." If it was really about not restricting 'freedom', the GPL would be only a fourth its size.
Furthermore, the clauses that keep GPL code out of proprietary products are the exact same clauses that keep them out of ANY OTHER FREE software product. The GPL was not designed to promote freedom, it was designed to promote the GNU project.
If the QPL (a RMS certified Free License) is what's keeping you from using KDE, you need to get a life!
You don't give a reason why you don't like Qt/QPL, so I can only assume that it's political. Get over it. Your operating system isn't a political party. You won't go to hell if you use KDE. Be your own person and make your own decisions without RMS telling you what to think.
The fact that you say you would "switch from Gnome in an instant" implies that you aren't 100% happy with Gnome, and that you see KDE as being better suited to your needs. Don't let the lack of a non-GNU library stop you. Jeez Louise!
"What RMS doesn't want to see, however, is software that gives free software a definitive edge ... being LGPL'ed."
RMS wants exclusivity. He is not interested in freedom for users of proprietary software, he is interested in freedom for GNU. If something gives an advantage to GNU he is for it (rightly), but if it also benefits a non-free OS at the same time, he will oppose it if it's not needed for GNU.
Example: I ran across his article denouncing a standard for open device drivers. I was confused by this, and wrote him asking for clarification. After all, I thought that open source drivers for Windows users is a good idea, since they are the ones most in need of freedom. This sounded too much like "free the free and keep the slaves slaves". He replied and said precisely that: he didn't want open source drivers for Windows because that would benefit Windows.
Sorry, go back and read the old Qt license. It says you can release your code under the GPL, LGPL, *OR* distribute as open source.
Application "A" links to libraries "B" and "C". What difference does it make what licenses "B" and "C" are under, so long as "A" is properly licensed? "B" is *NOT* a derivitive of "C".
On a tangent, the purpose of a library is to be linked to. This is not deriving from the library, merely a "use" of the library, and the GPL expressly permits any and all uses of GPL'd code. The only thing it restricts is modifications and distributions. Even if the library was under the strictest proprietary license available, linking to it is still covered under the "fair use" clause of copyright.
The more I see articles like this the more I'm glad I switched to BSD for my own code. That way any downstream developers know they won't get their asses sued off for sharing code with their friends.
The christian bashings I'm referring to are not judgements based on rationality or differences of opinions, or anything like that. What I am referring to is a bigotry based on ignorance or hatred, just like any other bigotry.
Calling Don Knuth stupid for believing in God is bigotry. Disagreeing with his beliefs is not. There are many posts here calling Don Knuth stupid, but he is anything BUT stupid.
Recent slashdot examples of bigotry: assuming that the Jesux distribution must be true because it follows the preconceived notions of what christians are like; belittling those who prayed for the earthquake victims of Taiwan, saying it was a complete waste of time, but expending much more energy in the belittling than the prayers did; and when a certain christian newletter recommended Linux, indignation erupted that christians were using that operating system.
In fact, everytime christianity is mentioned on slashdot, the topic is lost amidst accusations of stupidity, being the prime cause of wars, and inane parodies.
"What really pissed me off with people like the author I'm responding to, and the trend they are a part of, is that they're trying to get people to stop thinking."
What really pissed me off about the responder is his knee-jerk bigotry in assuming that since I'm a christian I must be trying to get people to stop thinking.
"We see many examples of people who believe things without proof. That is faith. We see them do stupid things because of their belief in that faith. That is the proof that faith is bad."
You are mischaracterizing faith. It is much more than blindly accepting what someone else is telling you. It is accepting something because you *know* it to be true.
Every person with faith has strong and compelling evidence for that faith. But just because that evidence is not scientific, or is meaningless to you, does not make it any less evidence. I agree that "blind faith" is not very smart, but a faith bolstered by evidence, scientific or otherwise, is certainly not stupid.
"It doesn't make them a bad person, but it doesn't indicate a very critical mind."
I could go on and on about the great critical minds in history who were people of faith. But I won't, look them up in your own history books.
"It's the underlying slave mentality and world hatred of it all that's so perverse."
What slave mentality? Some religions may have it, and even some christian denominations, but the Bible does not command people to be slaves of others. I am not required in the Bible to submit myself to a priest. Personally, my politics border on anarchism. My life is between me and my God. But the Bible contains more than religious lessons, it also contains descriptions of political and cultural norms. Perhaps this is what Neitsche was refering to. It was a great debate in the early christian church (and detailed in the book of Acts) whether non-jewish christians had to follow the cultural norms of judaism. The answer was no.
As to a "world hatred", this is partially true. Some christian denominations, particularly eastern, are deeper in to this than others. But this is only natural. The world is truly a rotten place. Pick up the newspaper on any given day and you'll see that this isn't a perfect place. But this doesn't deny the good that is also present in the world. In Neitsche's day, the prevalent christian teaching was that this world was thoroughly evil and that our lot in life was merely to endure through to the end. It's no wonder he ended up thinking what he did. But this is not what the Bible teaches (much of what people see christianity as is not what the Bible teaches either...).
Apparently, Mr. Knuth's being a christian has deeply offended a lot of you. My guess would be that you're much, much more intolerant of other people than any imagined intolerance on christianity's part.
Geeks hate being wrong (I know, I am one). But that's what christianity is, telling you that you're wrong, a sinner, doomed. But you guys are so narrow minded that you can't get past that to find out that it also talks about what to do about it.
I could of course mention the fact that it was geeks killing christians at Columbine, but that's grossly unfair. Just as unfair as all these posts here blaming religion for all the atrocities in the world.
Christian bashing is the last refuge of the bigot in this era of political correctness.
It sounds as if you're trying to turn science into a religion. You are making it an article of your faith that stuff outside of science is "dumb".
Science cannnot deal with God, the supernatural, or anything else non-observable. It can't. It wasn't designed to. But neither does it deny the existance outside of observation, it merely states that such knowledge is outside of it's domain. Trying to use science to disprove the existance of God is like trying to use a hammer to saw wood.
$1000 is not that much, even for the small developer. If you plan to sell a shareware app for 10$ a pop, and expect to sell 1000 copies, then you've just grossed $9000! If you don't plan to sell that many copies, perhaps it's time you rethought your whole vocation.
Head on down to your local Mom-And-Pop store on the corner. It doesn't matter what they're retailing. Now take a look at their fixtures. How much to you think it cost them? Real life example: Mom-And-Pop carpet store down the street: Armstrong Vinyl rack = $1000~; each individual carpet waterfall = $50-75$ and there are 25 of them, and this isn't covering the samples; specialized accounting software = $1500 per cpu; carpet roller in the back = $5000; etc., etc., etc. And these are the small guys!!!
$1000 is peanuts for a quality tool like Qt, and it even comes with support and updates. It's nothing compared to what you'll have to spend on quality marketing.
I do indeed wish that Qt were free on the windows side as well. I wasn't arguing against it. I'm very sure that once Troll Tech can figure out the appropriate funding mechanism, they will. After all, their clientele aren't exactly the type that would use and pay for a support-based funding model.
What I was arguing against was the myth that the QPL'd Qt is only free for freeware and that once you charge for your application you must use the professional version.
If you look at it a certain way, Qt is free for NT for you to compile QTSlash'em, you just have to run it under X under NT.
Get a clue dude! Qt is 100% open source and RMS certified Free. Go to Troll Tech and download it! No questions asked. No need to enter in a credit card number.
Yes, the ***Windows*** version is proprietary, but the X11 versions free. And there's nothing preventing you from porting one to the other. You can even use Free Qt to create proprietary X11 apps!
You said: "even M$ doesn't charge a developer fee." I say bullshit. Go price out the full version of VC++. But then you may be comparing the much cheaper (but still charged for) VB to Qt, and if you are, you really need a clue if you think they're equivalent in any way.
I'm not trying to flame here, but what architectural advantage is there when your model won't allow a change in direction? ORB was not working out for everything KDE wanted it to do. So they did the sensible thing and came up with something else that was smaller, faster and easier to use, and kept ORB for those tasks where it was needed.
It seems to me that ORB has become the holy grail of Gnome. A couple of weeks ago the so-called abandonment of ORB was touted by the Gnomies as *proof* of KDE's inferiority. Now that mosfet sttempts to correct a gross misunderstanding, you say it sounds like spin-control. To quote a great line from a great movie, "some men...you just can't reach." Face the fact if you can that there is room enough for two or more A+ desktops.