Novell Desktop To Standardize On Qt [updated] 615
Balinares writes "NewsForge reports that Novell has settled for Qt as its Linux desktop development environment, casting more light on their strategy to unify KDE and GNOME. This ought to be interesting. The prospect of using Mono to code against Qt makes me drool in advance. Maybe programming will suck no longer!" Update: 03/30 00:01 GMT by T : Sounds like that story doesn't quite hold water; Nat Friedman writes in this Slashdot comment that "We have not decided that we are standardizing on Qt for the desktop. ... We support development with a variety of toolkits, and our internal development is done using the right tool for the right problem. This includes Qt, Gtk, VCL, XUL and others, depending on the application."
Re:QT? What about licensing? (Score:4, Insightful)
But I am *not* a license expert. This is pure hearsay.
Re:QT? What about licensing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Besides, whats wrong with software you have to pay for?
Makes sense for desktop interop (Score:5, Insightful)
Right now, there is still the opportunity to attract developers to cross-platform
It would be a double-bonus if Novell could make Mono a unified framework for writing apps that can be backended by KDE, GNOME, or Microsoft Windows without a rewrite. Let's see what happens. What's really a shame is that
Re:QT? What about licensing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Besides, whats wrong with software you have to pay for?.
Inappropriate for basic foundations of Linux software.
So this means C# is bring embraced? (Score:4, Insightful)
I have been impressed with the CLI implementation and the SOAP and Web Services technologies that are a part of the
Re:QT? What about licensing? (Score:5, Insightful)
The point of "free" software is that it is open for perusal, poking, sharing, etc. not that it's gratis so you don't have to pay for it. Granted because of the first the gratis part is often the case but the mentality that free speech software MUST mean free beer software is just wrong.
Re:GTK is out, then? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:QT? What about licensing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Says who? Oh, nevermind.
I think (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:QT? What about licensing? (Score:3, Insightful)
Nothing if you aren't using it as a core library for a free desktop system
Re:QT? What about licensing? (Score:1, Insightful)
The GPL *IS* a license with annoying restrictions, especially for a library.
Re:Programming (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't see why this is funny. It is clear that if programming were easy then people would do it for free (like everything else that is easy). On the other hand it dosen't mean that because people program for free, that programming is easy (it's not!). That's why we should all celebrate all those programmers that program for free and share their work with the rest of the world!.
C++ and binary compatibility (Score:3, Insightful)
I still don't understand the popularity of QT. It's as if people don't want linux to be taken seriously as a deployment platform. Why target a host that won't run your binaries next year?
there's nothing wrong with keeping them separate (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do I think this is a good idea? Keeping them separate but equal promotes competition between them. It makes them work harder to fix those little glitches that annoy users. KDE is looking kind of like windows xp, and gnome mac os X. It'd be nice if they took on more of an original look, but hey rome wasn't built in a day. I think that having the choice between both desktops knowing that most applications will work the same without needing a hundred different rpms for each thing is what's needed. I also think that libraries need to be consolidated. Basically I guess I'm saying this: the ease of installing programs on windows, but the ability to run them on a mac. Sound difficult? eh, look how far things have come.
Novell made the right choice (Score:4, Insightful)
Novell is trying to create a professional desktop environment for Linux. To this end, choosing the highest quality toolkit is much more important than having to pay a small fee for the development of non-GPL applications.
Gtk's licensing only has an advantage over Qt's for those shops that want to create commercial non-GPL applications yet are too small to afford Qt's relatively cheap license. Novell have obviously decided that those shops aren't such an important market to sway their choice.
Re:GTK is out, then? (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as the UI libs go, a lot of the time, they are going to have bindings into native code-- but that is something the libraries handle for you. So assuming your qt library or whatever has linux and windows support, it should work on both platform. Obviously, if a coder screws up one side or the other, there will be issues, but that can be said of any kind of multiplatform development-- or any development at all.
Re:I think (Score:5, Insightful)
Please. Cry me a river. Trolltech spent a huge investment on making Qt the best cross-platform GUI toolkit available anywhere. I think they're decision to provide a GPL'd version was an incredibly noble thing for them to do (althogh in truth, they do get a lot out of it in return, especially through their relationship with KDE). My hat is off to Trolltech.
Do you not see the hypocrisy in demanding that one software company (TT) must give away its product for free so that other companies can profit from the work? How does that make any kind of sense?
Re:Give me a break! (Score:3, Insightful)
I would hope that Novell will try to do this by bringing those persons into *our* way of doing things, not by trying to change the Linux community into the Windows community. If the latter is their goal (which I seriously doubt), then I say no thanks.
Re:I think (Score:1, Insightful)
Well, it makes sense in that if you allow them to use the competing products of any one of a dozen other competitors (such as gtk or wxwindows), rather than standardizing on Qt-- which is, you know, what this article is about-- then, um, they can get a product that some of them might be just as happy with without having to pay money and be license-beholden to a propeitary software company (TT). Some of them might prefer that situation.
Re:QT? What about licensing? (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that you have to buy a licence for closed source may be a problem for hobby developers that have more time than money. To companies like Novell the quality is more important than the price . To them, time to market is everything. And they will spend far more money on developer saleries and marketing than they will spend on QT licences. So they will go for the best tool. And QT is one of the best there is. (Cross platform, good development tools, well designed framework...)
And if they want to release free software they have less risk of being hurt by some competitor if they release it under GPL than under LGPL or BSD type licences. I guess this was the reason MySQL AB changed the licence on their client libs to GPL.
So, QT would be a very good choise.
Re:QT? What about licensing? (Score:4, Insightful)
First off, the cost of the software was only listed as a barrier to adoption, not the only one. As for what the additional barriers there are, two that I can think of quickly are learning curve and OEM buy-in. It is human nature to be reluctant to learn to use product B when you already are comfortable using product A. It takes a pretty good incentive to push people to expend the necessary energy. As for the OEMs, if they aren't already locked into a restrictive exclusive contract with Microsoft, they are probably reluctant to spend the resources to support installation of an alternative operating system on the machines they sell unless they see a sizable market. Given that it's a chicken and egg argument, adoption of Linux on the desktop will be slow until the market gathers enough mass. If and when that point is reached, you'll probably see very quick gains in market share. Getting large companies like IBM and Novell behind the push will go a long way in helping adoption.
Re:How Much to dev with? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:GTK is out, then? (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong. http://dot.kde.org/1073668213/ [kde.org]
Re:QT? What about licensing? (Score:5, Insightful)
While it is probably impossible for Redhat not to create a free as in beer version of their free as in speech software, the fact that it can and is paid for is very telling.
The main advantage of Open Source to most people is absolutely NOT the free binary whether they know it or not. It is not a "few geeks such as yourself" there is a very large world of geeks out here that value the source to their programs for many reasons other than that it may be free as in beer as well.
If in fact you value the monitary freeness of your software over the freedom of the source than I would argue that your not a geek at all but just someone who wants to ride a gravy train.
Furthermore the dichotomy you used between KDE & gnome is false because both are GPL'd. Would you rather pay for an Open Source KDE or get a closed source Windows for free? If you choose the Windows option than you definitely don't understand freedom and your no geek I want to hang out with.
The fact is that people have to stop with this idea that "free" in the GPL'd way means "free beer". Free software is a costly thing,I have spent untold hours of my valuable time helping to code free software, but that's fine I don't expect payment for that work because I was paid in kind by other coders. But users who just take and never give back must understand exactly what they are doing. I can't force anyone to pay for software they can get for "free" but your mentality that software MUST be free as in beer is totally antithema to the actual freedom that is espoused by free(dom) software.
Freedom software is about having the source, never looking over your shoulder for the thought police, adding to something and feeling you've contributed, learning, sharing. "Free beer" software is about being a leech!
Re:GTK is out, then? (Score:3, Insightful)
toolkits today (Gtk, Qt, XUL and VCL) will
become obsolete and we need to start looking
at the next generation toolkit system.
Which IS the next gen toolkit?
Re:I think (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds [gtk.org] reasonable [wxwindows.org] to [gnustep.org] me. [sun.com]
haha (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I wonder... (Score:5, Insightful)
Use GNOME/Gtk, because you can USE Gtk as much as you want for COMMERCIAL development without paying anything.
Don't use KDE/Qt, because you can only develop FREE software using it, otherwise it costs money.
So.. NOW KDE/Qt is the champion of free software, whereas GNOME/Gtk is for the COMMERCIAL (and apparently not so evil after all) PROPRIETARY closed source solutions.
You make me laugh!
If GNOME/Gtk is REALLY a friend, let's see them place everything under GPL (for true software protection) rather than the LGPL.
What's the big deal about support Qt is you use the toolkit? Yep.. it's commercial...and if you use it for commercial development, it costs money... so?? Is someone suggesting their software business plan is only to sell like 10 copies of their software, so they can't afford to by a real development license?? Just seems weird.
GPL != noncommercial (Score:4, Insightful)
There's no reason a small business can't do commercial work and license it under the GPL. It's done all the time by the Linux distributors both large and small, and many other development groups.
Anyway, I see this misconception about QT's licensing all the time, and I think part of it stems from Trolltech's own use of the word commercial to describe their other license. The word they (and you) are looking for is proprietary, not commercial. If you don't want to use the GPL (usually because you're paranoid about people stealing the ideas, or because you want to link with some other proprietary code), then you have to pay for commercial (i.e. proprietary) Qt licensing. However, you're free to use the free (GPL) version of Qt commercially, as long as you follow the GPL.
Re:Redhat got it right (Score:5, Insightful)
I was going to moderate, but this is driving me insane. There are just too many posts like this. How is $1000 "locking out" single developers who intend to sell closed-source licenses? Even for sole proprietorships $1K is nothing special. Besides, you are talking about selling closed-source software, which by definition requires other people to pay you money per license, but somehow you think TrollTech is a fiend for wanting to do the same thing. If you want to be open, TrollTech is right there with you.
Re:I think (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Give me a break! (Score:3, Insightful)
What's stopping a shareware market from appearing is OpenSource, not Qt licenses.
Re:GTK is out, then? (Score:3, Insightful)
UNIX apps doing things like that are hosed anyway for portability. For example, on Mac OS X, there is no
Re:CORBA vs. DCOP (Score:3, Insightful)
Try to get a GNOME guy to give you five real, practical examples of how they use CORBA. He won't.
He will mention that some apps can embed a gnumeric sheet, though.
Re:QT? What about licensing? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm perennially amazed that the GNOME zealots, who started out from the GNU "all software must be free" zealot camp, now argue that Qt is bad because it doesn't allow proprietary applications. (Actually, it does, if you buy a licence from Qt. Unlike, say, GNU's readline library, which was deliberately GPL'd and not LGPL'd by Stallman, who will not issue you a commercial licence.)
In fact, RMS even wrote an article on why you shouldn't use the LGPL for your next library [gnu.org]. Without the backing RMS gave GNOME in its early days, when it was an unusable piece of crap and KDE had already hit a high-quality 1.0, it would never have got off the ground. (Remember GNOME 1.0? *shudder*) And yet the selling point now is that GNOME is more suitable to proprietary apps? I just can't figure out where all this is coming from.
If anything, Qt is a shining success story on how to make money with GPL'd software using a dual-licensing strategy. Far from continuing to vilify Troll Tech, the GNU/GNOME zealots ought to trumpet this story as a way to encourage more proprietary software companies to play nice with the linux world. (Peter Deutsch did the dual-licence thing long back with ghostscript, but he only released year-old versions of ghostscript under the GPL, and that's still the practice. Troll Tech releases current versions of Qt under GPL as well as their commercial licence.)
Re:QT? What about licensing? (Score:3, Insightful)
"Reasonable" is a very relative word. Visual C++ costs $100 for the standard edition. QT standard edition for a single platform costs 15 times as much and doesn't include an IDE. Forget for a moment about all the other things that are included with Visual C++ and pretend it's just a license to distribute software developed with MFC. It's an absoloute bargain compared to QT.
But what about cross platform development, you're saying... Well, if you go the QT route your price jumps up to $2490 for both X11 and Win32. If you go the MFC/Visual Studio route your price stays at $100 and you invest a little effort in porting your MFC app to wxWidgets (they are very similar.) If you were thinking ahead you would have started with wxWidgets from the get-go and porting would be a non-issue.
Like I said though, "reasonable" is relative. Maybee you have thousands of dollars just burning a hole in your pocket. Personally, I don't.
Re:OOP and C++ vs. C -- probably Offtopic -- or no (Score:5, Insightful)
I despise C++. Hate it. It is an abomination both to C, and to OO programming. The syntax extensions to C are complex, as is the OO model. The only thing I think C++ did right is the templating system.
I prefer Objective C, which takes a minimalist approach, and the late dynamic binding makes templating irrelevent. It's a much cleeaner language.
So, the issue comes down to choice. I know a lot of people prefer C++ to Objective C. You can't account for taste-- it seems more people prefer Budweiser to any other beer, and McDonald's to any other food source, and MS-Windows to any other desktop OS. But the point is, there is choice. I know I don't want to declare a single standard language for all programmers to use, and I distrust anyone who does.
If they standardize on any one toolkit, we are screwed as developers. Instead, they should concentrate on standardizing protocols. And, from a comment Nat Friedman made somewhere along the line in this topic, that's exactly what Novell is doing.
Anyway, just my two bits.
- Tony
Re:GTK is out, then? (Score:3, Insightful)
Gtk+ is a nice toolkit, and had a very novel (Novell?
Re:GTK is out, then? (Score:2, Insightful)
For now, creating a custom widget would involve ordering a remote y-server to download a module from somewhere (big security no-no) or drawing on top of canvas (which is what we have today with X, really). I'll be watching whatever comes out of there with interest.
Re:How Much to dev with? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Setting the record straight. (Score:2, Insightful)
Funny, at Novell Brainshare, Nat did the Novell Linux Desktop presentation (which was XD2 for the
most part), including Novell's iFolder/Simias, ZenWorks.
de Icaza finished with the Mono and Gtk platform demostrations.
People have to resort to personal attacks to appease their own fears, you my friend are a
fearful person.
Non-Free Qt Makes Non-Free Software Unsafe (Score:3, Insightful)
Seriously, the only threat that Qt provides to the Free status of Linux is thanks to non-Free code built on top of it. If you build GPL code with Qt, then you can always from now until the end of days use the GPL version of Qt. The only products that can be screwed by an about-face attitude from Trolltech are the ones that Free Software advocates AREN'T USING IN THE FIRST PLACE. If Trolltech turns into a monster, the GPL Qt libraries can be forked and Trolltech can be told to go hang themselves.
Re:QT? What about licensing? (Score:2, Insightful)
A shame - I got all excited when I thought there might be a reasonable GUI toolkit available for Windows that didn't rely on visual-designing and x/y absolute coordinate layouts, but I'm not sure if it's worthwhile learning what is effectively going to be a discontinued and already outdated version of the product (no, I'm not paying $1550, that might be reasonable for a company, but not for someone who wants it for programming for fun in their spare time!
Re:Setting the record straight. (Score:1, Insightful)
People have to resort to personal attacks to appease their own fears, you my friend are a fearful person.
This sort of rubbish isn't new. The perp is probably "manyoso" (it's certainly his style). He posts repeated personal attacks on anyone that doesn't think KDE should rule the world -- and he's spent the last few months posting lies and rubbish about Bruce Perens because of his decision with regard to UserLinux and KDE. Frankly, I think there's something wrong with him.
There's a long tradition of hysterical personal attacks from KDE supporters: remember Red Hat, Sun, Ximian... all have been subjected to this. Frankly, you are better off ignoring them; you can be certain that business people do.
What is really going down here? (Score:3, Insightful)
When the previous article about Novell merging KDE and Gnome I immediately thought, which platform will they use as the base. I guessed KDE since the KDE people are already doing all the work whereas the Gnome people don't seem so interested. Nobody asked that fundamental question. Why?
Now, assuming that article says what it is claimed, I am left wondering why people think Gtk is being dropped, and scratching there heads over the Ximian aquisition. Why do people think that Gtk is being dropped, and what does integration mean to you anyway?
When Novell say *they* are standardising on Qt why do people then say that everyone else must now develop their apps in Qt too? How do you explain the fact that Gtk apps have long worked under KDE, and now Novell wants to integrate them more tightly?
To me this all sounds like Novell are going to make more use of Qt for their own future development, are going to use KDE as a base system for their OS, but are going to continue and extend the work being done in the KDE camp so that Gtk based applications work flawlessly in KDE (print dialogs, file dialogs, look 'n feel, font settings, control center options, etc).
The only question I am left wondering is whether they will also offer a Gnome desktop and do the exact same integration the other way round so that KDE applications work flawlessly in Gnome. Anyone care to comment?
Re:GPL != noncommercial (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually MORE. Because there is commercial support. Businesses would have picked it up and ran with it years ago. If you don't belive that then you are too young to understand businesses.
They don't care about open source. They care about profit margins and who to yell at when somethign goes wrong. If OpenSource results in a better product then they don't care as long as they are benefitted by it and not harmed. If it were proprietary, they'd still not care.
History has computers as a trickle-down from companties to homes. If you run XYZ OS at work, then tog et work done at home you prolly have to run XYZ at home. Having business penetration would mean overal penetrations sooner. The company -wide linux deployments and tests would have happened years ago.
Yeap its true.
Re:Setting the record straight. (Score:2, Insightful)
I am glad that Nat and Miguel finally spoke out. Heise, the oh-so respectd german IT publication, either knowingly or unknowingly allowed itself to be used in a rumor/speculation propaganda war-a power push from A group of hackers within Novell against another group of hackers within Novell to force some big "decision", which when the Novell execs, who are new to Linux and are prone to make such noobie mistakes, start thinking clearly again isn't even a question.
The depths of ridiculousness which comments here at slashdot have reached are mindboggling. People attacking Nat and Miguel, questioning their position, their right to speak as representatives of Novell...utterly assinine. The whole "QT is not free (enough)" stuff is also pretty braindead-if this were the case(already) KDE would not be so widely used.
Freedesktop.org is the organization which *is* the answer to the common desktop which Novell exec's are looking for. KDE developers and GNOME developers are already working together on a variety of projects-this will only increase with time. There is far more consistency across the GNOME/KDE divide today than ever before- even SuSE used a cvs-patched version of KDE in 9.0 so that KDE and GNOME used the same .desktop files. Gstreamer is already being integrated into kdemultimedia, sodipodi is integrating optional KDE-dialogs, both KDE and GNOME have adopted DBUS-GNOME is going to use cairo for 2.8, KDE/QT won't be far behind.
SuSE has a whole lot of expertise in kernel and XFree86 hacking-their enterprise offerings, based on cooperation with IBM makes SuSE from the server point of view invalualble. For many home users SuSE has been known as a good desktop distribution- but SuSE has not made any big splash on the desktop in the corporate world. Novell purchased SuSE primarily due to the SuSE-IBM connection and the quality of their programmers.
In Europe SuSE reigns uncontested as *the* Linux distribution-but yet again, more so because of SuSE as a server than as a desktop-corporations are only now beginning to show an interest in the Linux desktop.
Ximian is all about the desktop and all about integrating/migrating Windows data, applications, users and developers into the Linux world. Why is it that none of computers at the brainshare conference were running KDE -but all of them were running ximian-patched GNOME ? Why is it that Ximian is an unknown name to those who work primarily in the server world?
Novell has made a brilliant decision purchasing both Ximian and SuSE. They, Novell, have great kernel hackers, xfree86 hackers, desktop specialists par excellance-the best in the Linux world and the developers of one of the most trusted names in enterprise server Linux in addition to great QT/KDE programmers.
Novell will itself onl be producing a very small set of software-perhaps in total in 5 years 1/2 of one of the 6 CD 's ditributed in the Novell/SuSE distribution. Even if at some point down the road Novell chose to use QT# for it's development projects-who really cares ? QT# is dependendant upon MONO-and that is one of the key technologies which Ximian brings to the table.
Novell is not going to single handely re-write the Linux desktop with QT-such is pure and utter nonsense-as if any singly company could do so-hello- Linux consists of thousands of programs written by 10's of thousands of hackers from all over the globe.
For the near future the desktop applications released by Novell will be written in Mono + GTK#-this is already clear-the iFolders software is already being written in GTK# and it is not the only GTK# project being written right now, as we speak, at Novell. Once the QT# library get's up to speed their will probably be some desktop apps written to use this new library-think integration with YAST-appending new modules to administer the OpenSever technology which Novell wants to integrate with their Novel/SuSE distribution.
If and when Novell's customers start to want to build new application