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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

#31

Post by zanny »

codehero wrote: post #29

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…

> 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.

How is Wireshark not well focused? It probably uses a mysql database for its activity history (note: I didn't look, its just a common design pattern). I mean, it seems like a program like Wireshark would be better suited by a simpler sqlite database, but its really up to the project lead on these things.

Re: Defragmenting Qt and Uniting Our Ecosystem

#32

Post by zanny »

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 also have a bunch of addon packs that are proprietary-only. A few of them would be really useful in the free software community too, which sucks, like their graphing QML library.

Re: Defragmenting Qt and Uniting Our Ecosystem

#33

Post by milliams »

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 deal was that before Nokia Qt was GPL or commercial but after Nokia bought it they relicensed the open-source offering to LGPL. This obviously reduced the demand for the commercial version but there's still plenty of companies who would buy it for both license and support.

Re: Defragmenting Qt and Uniting Our Ecosystem

#34

Post by milliams »

joezydeco wrote: post #8

Just great. As if their licensing cost wasn't high enough, this will probably make it way worse.

I'm not sure it's going to affect it at all. What makes you think it will? All they're doing is spinning off a subsidiary to do what the Qt division is already doing.

Re: Defragmenting Qt and Uniting Our Ecosystem

#35

Post by jordigh »

zanny wrote: post #32
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 also have a bunch of addon packs that are proprietary-only. A few of them would be really useful in the free software community too, which sucks, like their graphing QML library.

So the commercial version indeed is not open source at all? I can't buy the commercial version and give it to my friends? Hm. That's a pity.

Re: Defragmenting Qt and Uniting Our Ecosystem

#36

Post by jordigh »

milliams wrote: post #21
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 ).

> They sell a commercial version without any restrictions on usage.

I understand I can't give it to my friends? That's would be a restriction that free software/open source doesn't have.

Re: Defragmenting Qt and Uniting Our Ecosystem

#37

Post by jordigh »

navlelo wrote: post #30
jordigh wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, I understand this, but Digia went back to GPL and back to selling GPL exceptions like Trolltech did originally?

Re: Defragmenting Qt and Uniting Our Ecosystem

#38

Post by nicholassmith »

codehero wrote: post #29

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…

That sounds like a tenuous thing related to wireshark, not Qt, which is a little odd. You can build command line tools with Qt (surprise!) that are light and focused, but have the benefit of a number of frankly excellent standard library replacements.

Re: Defragmenting Qt and Uniting Our Ecosystem

#39

Post by nicholassmith »

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?

Little bit of a, little bit of b. They use some native controls on X11, and I think they hook into the Windows C++ APIs in places as well, but with the shift to QML I think it's back to being heavily custom control based again.

Re: Defragmenting Qt and Uniting Our Ecosystem

#40

Post by milliams »

jordigh wrote: post #37
navlelo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, I understand this, but Digia went back to GPL and back to selling GPL exceptions like Trolltech did originally?

No. it's still available under the LGPL.
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