Defragmenting Qt and Uniting Our Ecosystem • Hacker News Board

Re: Defragmenting Qt and Uniting Our Ecosystem

#41

Post by milliams » Wed, Aug 06, 2014, 3:54 PM UTC

jordigh wrote: post #36

milliams wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You can give it to your friends since all you have is a license to use the source-code under different conditions. It's the same source either way, just you have a special license. Your friends don't have that license and so presumably would be bound by the LGPL.

Re: Defragmenting Qt and Uniting Our Ecosystem

#42

Post by milliams » Wed, Aug 06, 2014, 3:56 PM UTC

jordigh wrote: post #35

zanny wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Two separate things:

1) The Qt source code. Available under GPL, LGPL or commercial license

2) Some extra proprietary addons. Only available under the commercial license.

Re: Defragmenting Qt and Uniting Our Ecosystem

#43

Post by geraldcombs » Wed, Aug 06, 2014, 3:56 PM UTC

zanny wrote: post #31

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 thes…

Wireshark doesn't use MySQL or any other SQL backend. I'm not sure what sort of dependency chain would trigger the installation of MySQL but it's unusual to say the least.

Re: Defragmenting Qt and Uniting Our Ecosystem

#44

Post by milliams » Wed, Aug 06, 2014, 3:57 PM UTC

geraldcombs wrote: post #43

zanny wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 thes…

Wireshark doesn't use MySQL or any other SQL backend. I'm not sure what sort of dependency chain would trigger the installation of MySQL but it's unusual to say the least.

Almost certainly a packaging error where Wireshark depends on Qt and Qt includes all modules, including QtSql.

Re: Defragmenting Qt and Uniting Our Ecosystem

#45

Post by toyg » Wed, Aug 06, 2014, 3:57 PM UTC

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?

Digia is doing the same thing Nokia did, which was the same thing Trolltech did. The only difference is that, since the Nokia takeover, the open source version is also available under LGPL. This has not changed under Digia.

Re: Defragmenting Qt and Uniting Our Ecosystem

#46

Post by panzi » Wed, Aug 06, 2014, 4:02 PM UTC

jmaygarden wrote: post #26

Iftheshoefits wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

One might want to add: There are not "native" controls under X11 (and I guess also Wayland). There Qt is as native as any other toolkit.

Re: Defragmenting Qt and Uniting Our Ecosystem

#47

Post by toyg » Wed, Aug 06, 2014, 4:03 PM UTC

antocv wrote: post #6

onli wrote: post #4

I'm not too much concerned by this, but it does not sound like a good move. > The unified web page will give a broad overview of the Qt technology, both enterprise and open-source, from a technical, business and messaging perspective. So, the new web page will still have to be fragmented, because it has to serve open source and business visitors. Who speak a completely different language and look for different inform…

Yeah, but the new company will be 100% owned by Digia. So basically this is a nice move from Digia to consolidate its ownership and leadership of Qt. I guess its similar to what Google does.

Or a move from Digia to prepare a sale - it's much easier to sell something like QT if you also include all the relevant developers in one nice package.

Or maybe it's a way to insulate Digia from losses resulting from QT operations, who knows?

I have to say I'm happy they'll review the installer though; ever since they started packing their own compiler, I got the feeling things became a bit more chaotic than they were.

Re: Defragmenting Qt and Uniting Our Ecosystem

#48

Post by jordigh » Wed, Aug 06, 2014, 4:06 PM UTC

milliams wrote: post #41

jordigh wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You can give it to your friends since all you have is a license to use the source-code under different conditions. It's the same source either way, just you have a special license. Your friends don't have that license and so presumably would be bound by the LGPL.

Apparently not all of it, there are some non-free addons not available under a free license.

Re: Defragmenting Qt and Uniting Our Ecosystem

#49

Post by toyg » Wed, Aug 06, 2014, 4:08 PM UTC

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.

It just feels slightly overwhelming, because it's bloody massive. There's a huge amount of power packed in those interminable lists of methods and properties... So much power inevitably comes with a few quirks.

Re: Defragmenting Qt and Uniting Our Ecosystem

#50

Post by octo_t » Wed, Aug 06, 2014, 4:08 PM UTC

onli wrote: post #4

I'm not too much concerned by this, but it does not sound like a good move. > The unified web page will give a broad overview of the Qt technology, both enterprise and open-source, from a technical, business and messaging perspective. So, the new web page will still have to be fragmented, because it has to serve open source and business visitors. Who speak a completely different language and look for different inform…

plenty of opensource-but-with-enterprise-offerings do the exact same thing, with high levels of success (although I can't think of any examples of this off the top of my head)