I am a user at work. At home I develop my own little programs/tools which could sometimes be useful at work [hence my interest in kdevelop and anjuta]. But Qt is useful only if I'm willing to GPL. The Qt license is probably worst for small time homebrew projects. It works well for opensource projects and it is reasonably priced for large commercial endeavors. But the price is too prohibitive for small time projects that do not aim for the open source market.
I don't hold the view that all software should be GPLed or that it is possible to find alternate sources of revenue (sustenance) for all software. This belief of mine is not one that based in heresy. The LGPL probably would not exist if it did not try to accomodate some of the sentiments I hold.
Also, as a user of open souce, I depend on developers. Many developers have been known to shy away from Qt because of its licensing. Hence it affects my choices and I wish the license would be different.
My usage of opensource may appear as self serving. I'll defend myself by stating that I've contributed to it in the past. I mostly see opensource to be extremely useful in areas of software that are common to many users. For smaller projects, it should be able to co-exist with commercial apps.
While doing some recent research on KDE, I came across the following book due out in the next few days. Apparently, if you buy the book, you'll get a non-commercial QT 3.2 for windows as a bonus:
C++ GUI Programming with Qt 3
by Jasmin Blanchette, Mark Summerfield
I think the release candidate was primed to be done just before the conference. Afterall, they are up for two awards (kdevelop, and kde 3.2). It's hard to win with a beta...
Recently, I've been debating between Gnome and KDE for quite some time. At work I'm a user, not a developer, and my desktop is Gnome.
The Gnome environment looks polished but it has many inconveniences. [Cut & Paste are extremely annoying.] I've been contemplating switching to KDE but seeing the momentum behind Gnome I'm very tempted to be a bit more patient with it and try out 2.6 first, maybe Ximian. Especially that I dislike the infamous licensing from Trolltech.
That said, I will immediately convert to some KDE apps while still running under gome. For example, kdevelop is not likely to have a Gnome counterpart any time soon. The project looks brilliant. After some study, Anjuta looks like a mismanaged project and I don't think it will be able to evolve as much as kdevelop. KDE and QT look much more structured in their approach (I've also
used KDE in earlier days, so it's not only an impression).
If Gnome 2.6 doesn't cut it, and the KDE apps are robust, then I'll be switching. I've not time to make it a point of honor to use Gnome when the bottom line is that I need to get work done as efficiently as possible.
IANAL:
Eventhough I don't think SCO has a case, I don't like articles like the one above.
Didn't the courts recently uphold an IBM motion that forces SCO to reveal some of the code infrigements it claims? I would think a common legal tactic would be to give an impression of satisfying the court while sending out the least useful information at the worst possible time and in a voluminous quantity that actually says very little.
65 files containing lots of redundancy sent out three days before Christmas could be seen as a delaying tactic. I sure hope this is not what SCO will reiterate to the court in answer to the IBM discovery, because they will have bought themselves time for another round of antics.
"But your honor, we gave them thousands of line
of code in 65 five files, and yet they are still not satisfied?"
For various reasons, I would think SCO would like to reveal the stronger evidence of their argument at the latest stage possible. For one, if someone comes forward to defend open source while chosing undisclosed evidence as an example then SCO could pose the question as to why the defender knew that was a sore point.
That is why I still don't understand the seemingly benign actions like the public retraction of some code by SGI or the immediate "feel good" response given to SCO's last offensive. The former can be construed as an admission of some sort while the latter places Linus as the original owner of disputed files. So even if someone else patched in something at a later stage, SCO may have an argument to drag Linus further in: the owner of the file and project should monitor more carefully the progression of the work. In fact this may be similar to something argued in the past.
The Linus response makes you feel good with its mockery, but I do not think it a smart response. Let SCO have the burden of establishing everything. As the accuser, let them do all the work. Even if some of the information is public domain, it'll take them longer than if someone spells it out and they may not have time to cover more ground to finesse their weak arguments.
Linux does not need to win a PR war, it needs to establish its case in court. Very few people outside of Linux fans will read this article, therefore making such as response of little PR value to start with.
Slashdot Mirror
little programs/tools which could sometimes be useful at work [hence my interest in kdevelop and anjuta]. But Qt is useful only if I'm willing to GPL. The Qt license is probably worst for small time homebrew projects. It works well for opensource projects and it is reasonably priced for large commercial endeavors. But the price is too prohibitive for small time projects that do not aim for the open source market.
I don't hold the view that all software should be GPLed or that it is possible to find alternate sources of revenue (sustenance) for all software. This belief of mine is not one that based in heresy. The LGPL probably would not exist if it did not try to accomodate some of the sentiments I hold.
Also, as a user of open souce, I depend on developers. Many developers have been known to shy away from Qt because of its licensing. Hence it affects my choices and I wish the license would be different.
My usage of opensource may appear as self serving. I'll defend myself by stating that I've contributed to it in the past. I mostly see opensource to be extremely useful in areas of software that are common to many users. For smaller projects, it should be able to co-exist with commercial apps.
C++ GUI Programming with Qt 3 by Jasmin Blanchette, Mark Summerfield
A link to amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0131240722/ qid=1074556677/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/104-5196007-70559 15
I think the release candidate was primed to be done just before the conference. Afterall, they are up for two awards (kdevelop, and kde 3.2). It's hard to win with a beta...
Recently, I've been debating between Gnome and KDE for quite some time. At work I'm a user, not a developer, and my desktop is Gnome. The Gnome environment looks polished but it has many inconveniences. [Cut & Paste are extremely annoying.] I've been contemplating switching to KDE but seeing the momentum behind Gnome I'm very tempted to be a bit more patient with it and try out 2.6 first, maybe Ximian. Especially that I dislike the infamous licensing from Trolltech.
That said, I will immediately convert to some KDE apps while still running under gome. For example, kdevelop is not likely to have a Gnome counterpart any time soon. The project looks brilliant. After some study, Anjuta looks like a mismanaged project and I don't think it will be able to evolve as much as kdevelop. KDE and QT look much more structured in their approach (I've also used KDE in earlier days, so it's not only an impression).
If Gnome 2.6 doesn't cut it, and the KDE apps are robust, then I'll be switching. I've not time to make it a point of honor to use Gnome when the bottom line is that I need to get work done as efficiently as possible.
IANAL: Eventhough I don't think SCO has a case, I don't like articles like the one above. Didn't the courts recently uphold an IBM motion that forces SCO to reveal some of the code infrigements it claims? I would think a common legal tactic would be to give an impression of satisfying the court while sending out the least useful information at the worst possible time and in a voluminous quantity that actually says very little. 65 files containing lots of redundancy sent out three days before Christmas could be seen as a delaying tactic. I sure hope this is not what SCO will reiterate to the court in answer to the IBM discovery, because they will have bought themselves time for another round of antics. "But your honor, we gave them thousands of line of code in 65 five files, and yet they are still not satisfied?" For various reasons, I would think SCO would like to reveal the stronger evidence of their argument at the latest stage possible. For one, if someone comes forward to defend open source while chosing undisclosed evidence as an example then SCO could pose the question as to why the defender knew that was a sore point. That is why I still don't understand the seemingly benign actions like the public retraction of some code by SGI or the immediate "feel good" response given to SCO's last offensive. The former can be construed as an admission of some sort while the latter places Linus as the original owner of disputed files. So even if someone else patched in something at a later stage, SCO may have an argument to drag Linus further in: the owner of the file and project should monitor more carefully the progression of the work. In fact this may be similar to something argued in the past. The Linus response makes you feel good with its mockery, but I do not think it a smart response. Let SCO have the burden of establishing everything. As the accuser, let them do all the work. Even if some of the information is public domain, it'll take them longer than if someone spells it out and they may not have time to cover more ground to finesse their weak arguments. Linux does not need to win a PR war, it needs to establish its case in court. Very few people outside of Linux fans will read this article, therefore making such as response of little PR value to start with.