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Defragmenting Qt and Uniting Our Ecosystem

blog.qt.digia.com

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Re: Defragmenting Qt and Uniting Our Ecosystem

#21

Post by milliams »

jordigh wrote: post #17

Dear lazyweb, what exactly is Qt's current business? The blog post makes it sound as if the commercial version of Qt wasn't free software. What freedoms does it take away? I know that Trolltech commercialised Qt by selling exceptions. What's the current business? Also, if 25% of all contributions are coming from non-Digia employees, does Digia require copyright assignment? Does their current commercial model require…

They sell a commercial version without any restrictions on usage. In order to accommodate this they do have a copyright license to Digia (https://codereview.qt-project.org/static/cla_individual.html).

Re: Defragmenting Qt and Uniting Our Ecosystem

#22

Post by cbhl »

jordigh wrote: post #17

Dear lazyweb, what exactly is Qt's current business? The blog post makes it sound as if the commercial version of Qt wasn't free software. What freedoms does it take away? I know that Trolltech commercialised Qt by selling exceptions. What's the current business? Also, if 25% of all contributions are coming from non-Digia employees, does Digia require copyright assignment? Does their current commercial model require…

Qt is licensed under GPL v3 and LGPL v2.1, but you can also buy a license if you want to use and/or modify Qt in a project without having to redistribute the whole thing under GPLv3 or redistribute your modified Qt under LGPL v2.1.

There's actually a lot of closed-source software you know of that uses Qt in some form: Autodesk Maya, Google Earth, Skype, and Spotify are just a few.

I'm not sure whether all of these teams use the commercial version (some may use e.g. the LGPL version) but it's probably not zero.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_(software)#Software_using_Qt

Re: Defragmenting Qt and Uniting Our Ecosystem

#23

Post by milliams »

Deusdies wrote: post #11

Phew, for a moment I thought that they will be focusing only on enterprise licenses and make Qt closed-source (which would probably be a suicide).

It would be suicide and it would also be impossible due to the agreement with the KDE Free Qt Foundation (http://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.p...).

Re: Defragmenting Qt and Uniting Our Ecosystem

#24

Post by rat87 »

Deusdies wrote: post #11

Phew, for a moment I thought that they will be focusing only on enterprise licenses and make Qt closed-source (which would probably be a suicide).

note

http://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.p...

> The Foundation has a license agreement with Digia and Nokia. This agreement ensures that the Qt will continue to be available under both the LGPL 2.1 and the GPL 3. Should Digia discontinue the development of the Qt Free Edition under these 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.

Re: Defragmenting Qt and Uniting Our Ecosystem

#25

Post by milliams »

makmanalp wrote: post #18
bananaoomarang wrote: post #7

Qt always seems like a thing that has so much potential, but whenever I use it I'm struck by how it never seems quite good enough. 5 seems a big imporvement on 4 though, so we'll see.

Personally, I think it's great, but I do dislike how it tends to take over the entire project. It's not just UI, it's also QNetwork and QProcess and QByteArray and QSqlDatabase.

Sure, but you're free to use or not use any of these modules. Some core things like QString are harder to get away from but outside of that, it's quite free.

Re: Defragmenting Qt and Uniting Our Ecosystem

#26

Post by jmaygarden »

Iftheshoefits wrote: post #16
FigBug wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, and I wonder how much further ahead it would be if they'd switched to the current licensing scheme years earlier. Other than writing native for each platform, which I don't have time to do, I haven't seen any good alternatives to Qt. And I'm not going back to MFC.

I haven't investigated Qt's mobile offerings or "Qt Quick", but I am fairly certain that on X11-based systems the basic core desktop SDK is as native as any other UI toolkit (e.g. GTK), and on Windows it uses the same core libraries that MSVC-written programs use, so it's as close to "native" as it gets there, too. Is that incorrect?

That is incorrect unless things have changed in the last few years. Qt does not use native controls. Everything (list boxes, tables, buttons, etc.) is drawn and implemented by the Qt library.

wxWidgets takes the opposite approach and uses native controls. I imagine they support a lot fewer platforms as a result. It's much easier to port when all you have to do is abstract the native drawing and input routines.

Re: Defragmenting Qt and Uniting Our Ecosystem

#27

Post by Igglyboo »

higherpurpose wrote: post #2

Digia, and anyone else who might still use it, please remove AddThis. http://www.propublica.org/article/meet-the-online-tracking-d...

Can't you just block that by using noScript? Or is this an issue because you have to use noScript to block it?

Genuinely curious as all I use is an ad blocker and have no experience with noScript.

Re: Defragmenting Qt and Uniting Our Ecosystem

#28

Post by jordigh »

cbhl wrote: post #22
jordigh wrote: post #17

Dear lazyweb, what exactly is Qt's current business? The blog post makes it sound as if the commercial version of Qt wasn't free software. What freedoms does it take away? I know that Trolltech commercialised Qt by selling exceptions. What's the current business? Also, if 25% of all contributions are coming from non-Digia employees, does Digia require copyright assignment? Does their current commercial model require…

Qt is licensed under GPL v3 and LGPL v2.1, but you can also buy a license if you want to use and/or modify Qt in a project without having to redistribute the whole thing under GPLv3 or redistribute your modified Qt under LGPL v2.1. There's actually a lot of closed-source software you know of that uses Qt in some form: Autodesk Maya, Google Earth, Skype, and Spotify are just a few. I'm not sure whether all of these te…

So they're back to selling exceptions again? I thought they had stopped when it was owned by Nokia.

Re: Defragmenting Qt and Uniting Our Ecosystem

#29

Post by codehero »

One thing you do not see fragmenting are command-line tools, because people tend to agree on their function(1). However, QT is huge; its scope goes far beyond GUI functionality, into string classes, SQL databases, networking, etc. And moc, its C++ code generator. More scope equals more possible disagreements, which necessarily entails fragmentation.

I tried installing the Qt version of wireshark using exherbo (one of the most minimal Linux distros) and it wanted MySQL as a dependency! For me, if you cannot build a well focused tool with a GUI toolkit it's not worth using.

1 (sure different Unices have different options, but that is more historical)

Re: Defragmenting Qt and Uniting Our Ecosystem

#30

Post by navlelo »

jordigh wrote: post #28
cbhl wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Qt is licensed under GPL v3 and LGPL v2.1, but you can also buy a license if you want to use and/or modify Qt in a project without having to redistribute the whole thing under GPLv3 or redistribute your modified Qt under LGPL v2.1. There's actually a lot of closed-source software you know of that uses Qt in some form: Autodesk Maya, Google Earth, Skype, and Spotify are just a few. I'm not sure whether all of these te…

So they're back to selling exceptions again? I thought they had stopped when it was owned by Nokia.

The commercial business/licensing was sold off to Digia, which eventually bought the whole Qt division.
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