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."
About time (Score:1, Interesting)
GTK is out, then? (Score:5, Interesting)
- Will they be writing a GTK-on-top-of-QT layer?
- Ditching GTK apps?
- Using GTK apps but not encouraging their creation?
- Just using QT for Novell-specific stuff (like Redhat uses GTK for its configurators, etc)?
*confused*Re:GTK is out, then? (Score:2, Interesting)
Give me a break! (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:QT? What about licensing? (Score:4, Interesting)
the most obvious is that it is a barrier to adoption. if your model is to sell software and make yr money that way, everything's fine... but if you're model is have free wares to drive sales of other commodities (hardware, support, data &c) then the extra pricetag on the software can tank your business.
since you asked....
Re:How Much to dev with? (Score:2, Interesting)
in other words, every company out there that uses KDE legally needs to buy a QT license???
Please someone tell me that I am assuming wrong.
As a new Qt programmer... (Score:5, Interesting)
Now the license is different. I often wish there was a small-business or starting-business license, but this is only pertanant if you are going commercial work. for GPL work it is completely free.
Right now I'm doing some advanced work with QSA (Javascripted Qt apps) It is easy and cross platform. I can now replace a browser (and the rendering issues with a user interface file (loaded at run-time) and ECMA script code (platform indep. cause we run on various architectures with limited space, whose list may change at any time)
The Troll Tech stuff is top notch.
Re:GTK is out, then? (Score:5, Interesting)
1) I believe #4 is correct, at least for today's news.
2)In the big picture, Novell wants to be a major Linux player, bought a lot of expertise, and is trying to integrate the two development platforms and environments without antagonizing either the developers from both sides or the screaming fanboys. I doubt if they themselves have a long-term plan yet.
As long as I'm posting -- here's something I've asked a zillion times and still don't understand: given the GTK and Qt bindings for Mono, will it be possible to make run-anywhere applications on Linux that will work on Windows? Will generic
Redhat got it right (Score:3, Interesting)
With [gimp.org] so [sf.net] many [rhythmbox.org] of [sourceforge.net] the gtk programs riviling the qt equivalents, I wonder why companies always flock towards Qt.
Re:Boy. (Score:3, Interesting)
This is good news (Score:5, Interesting)
The only potential problem I see is Trolltech's insistance on license fees for commercial development. Not that this is any different in the Windows world, but it'd be nice to give ISVs a completely royalty free solution. I'd like to see Novell take that $50 million that IBM gave them and purchase TT outright and put Qt under a more liberal open license. The wording on the KDE Free Qt clause seems a bit unclear to me. Does Qt get automatically BSD'ed when any company buys Trolltech. What if the purchasing company doesn't make the license any more closed that currently, does that have an effect.
Anyway, I've never understood the reasons people chose to write a whole desktop environment in straight C. C++ just seems a far more natural fit. I've looked over both GNOME and KDE fairly extensively, and there is no doubt in my mind that KDE has a cleaner code base and architecture. With all the "higher level language" rumblings going on in the GNOME community, I suspect that those developers are hitting a brick wall in terms of where they want to go and what the current code is capable of becoming. That sort of thing isn't happening in the KDE world, so I think that speaks volumes.
Good luck Novell, you've got at least one supporter here.
Re:Redhat got it right (Score:3, Interesting)
The bindings are no problem as well, there are bindings for most of the commonly used OO languages including excellent ones for java.
It is a matter of time, I think a license for Qt is well invested given that the license costs itself probably are gathered in within weeks due to the speed you can code the thing in.
The problem with Qt is, that the current license costs basically locks out single developers who dont want to go the GPL route. I know at least two excellent shareware projects which didnt use Qt for exactly that reason.
TrollTech should offer a small developers license which would be affordable by individuals.
Re:About time (Score:3, Interesting)
In the whole world of UI/Desktop use, choice is a good thing. It means complete customisation control from one purpose such as industrial process control, to corporate desktop, to games system (humor me and look to the future when this is the case with Linux. It will happen eventually). However for Novell who will be supporting a system, and selling it as a solution for businesses, then there needs to be stability, if not from a support point of view then for a User point of view.
Users don't care, and shouldn't, about the technicalities of their tools, and that's what support is for. Only when they have a well constructed and supported toolset (their desktop in this case) can they perform with 100% concentration on their REAL job be it marketing, secretarial, analysis and so on
Acker's Nude & Anime Desktop Gallery [67.160.223.119]
Wait a sec... (Score:3, Interesting)
However, derStandard.at asked for confirmation at Novell and they assured that no decision would have been fallen yet.
They (Novell) also demoed quite a few new Gtk applications at the keynotes, most notably the interesting iFolders (using Gtk on Linux), while I don't think there has been shown any _new_ Qt program.
So take this all with a grain of salt, I can't really imagine that this is a clear decision yet.
Re:QT? What about licensing? (Score:3, Interesting)
Linux has been free for years and yet only accounts for 5% of the desktop max. So what is the real barrier to people adopting Linux then?
Re:more "Utah software" ? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'll admit it, the first time I read this conspiracy thoery I was worried. I looked into it. Trust me there are no black helicopters being dispatched from SCO.
KDE Myths #60: http://kdemyths.urbanlizard.com/viewMyth.php?myth
"According to http://www.trolltech.com/newsroom/investors.html the Canopy Group only has 5.7% shares of Trolltech while 64.7% are in posession of Trolltech employees with an additional 5% controlled by the Trolltech founders. One can hardly say that the Canopy Group owns or controls Trolltech."
Don't forget Canopy is just an investent group. They'd probably like to see TrollTech get this boost because SCO is a loss at the moment, and they aren't going to get better.
It is like saying that you own a mutual fun that invests in two competitors, and that you are going to devalue one so the other can rise. The problem is that you want BOTH to perform.
MOD THIS AS HIGH AS YOU CAN. (Score:4, Interesting)
So how could the keynote speech have been misconstrued?
Microsoft's Trump Card? (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know if it's just heresay, but could MS patent
Re:Setting the record straight. (Score:4, Interesting)
I see you are *still* presenting yourself as the desktop lead, Nat. Interesting since from all accounts, Chris Stone occupies that position.
Why don't you set the record straight as to the organizational heirarchy of the company and where you and Miguel sit in the organizational tree? Do you answer to Chris Stone or Richard Seibt or do they answer to you? Or are you all just a bunch of middle management?
Re:GTK is out, then? (Score:2, Interesting)
It seems to me that the easiest way to accomplish this is to put the developers from both sides in the same room, or in adjacent offices. I once worked in a web dev team which was one door down from the video production studios. Since we were all very creative and in contact all day long, we rather naturally ended up collaborating on lots of cool cross-media stuff.
Re:GTK is out, then? (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:This is good news (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, it still costs the company and the consumer, just in different areas. With Trolltech, you pay a per developer license and be done with it. Free to distribute to whoever you want for whatever you want.
If you develop a Microsoft solution, the the consumer has to pay for Windows licenses and the developer has to pay for Windows licenses and likely Visual Studio licenses as well (though this isn't strictly necessary). If you use one MS product, you likely use others too, so start paying out money for SQL Server, Exchange, and whatever other traps you get yourself into.
By the way, you are entirely free to develop with Qt without paying any royalties or super-expensive tools as well.
Re:QT? What about licensing? (Score:3, Interesting)
Stop whining about QT licence... (Score:2, Interesting)
People fail to understand that you don't pay only for the right for developing commercial programs when you buy a QT licence. You are also paying for SUPPORT.
There exist lot of free software for Linux, thus if you want to SELL your software, you need to invest lot of money in any case to create something much, much better.
Last time I checked, there were lot of undocumented [gtk.org] widgets in the GTK. How are you supposed to figure them out? $1000-$2000 QT licence pays itself quickly back with faster development times.
Re:This is good news (Score:4, Interesting)
It's not necessary at all. There are a lot of good free-software development tools for the Windows platform. As for the cost of windows, when you're making a windows app your target audience already has that...
"Use the GPL for your project or pay us thousands of dollars" is hardly free. By contrast, in my view GTK+ and wxWidgets are free.
Re:Boy. (Score:5, Interesting)
Regardless of NET's good or bad points, it's a potential legal land mine for open source that could make the SCO fiasco look postiviely quaint. Unlike SCO, Microsoft would have an actual case.
Re:Setting the record straight. (Score:2, Interesting)
From the Novell web site I would have guessed that it is Markus Rex [novell.com]:
"He is also responsible for Novell's Linux desktop activities."
Re:GTK is out, then? (Score:2, Interesting)
I can tell you that we've had many interesting discussions on IRC about this very subject.
During our latest discussion Miguel de Icazza chimed in and settled things down. According to him this is all basically a miss understanding.
Nobody from Novel has yet to make *any* official statement regarding the issue, and according to the people working for Novel that I have talked to they are *not* going to standardize the desktop around Qt.
Novel will be making an official statement on this sometime soon.
Personally Im expecting the press release to go something like this:
1. Yes, there will be Qt apps. (This does make sense considering that Novel now employs a large number of KDE hackers thanks to the recent Suse acquisition.)
2. Yes, Suse is mainly a KDE distro at the moment and that is probably not going to be changing drastically any time soon.
3. No, GTK#/GTK+ apps are not going to disappear or otherwise be replaced in any way whatsoever. In fact if you look at one of Novels newest opensource offerings named iFolder you will see that it is in fact a GTK# application.
4. Yes, Novel is looking for ways to better integrate its Ximian desktop with the KDE desktop.
But don't make the mistake of thinking that GTK+/GTK# is diminishing or that Novel doesn't have a lot of Gnome love going on.
I sabmoc, hear me snore..
Re:$0.00 (Score:3, Interesting)
Mono on Qt would still suck. (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:GTK is out, then? (Score:1, Interesting)
Well are you contradicting your boss then Miguel? People actually heard it, and considering Suse is now the Enterprise Linux Division of Novell and IBM has invested 50 million dollars in it, I think it is down to what Suse wants. There will be no more of this stuff I'm afraid:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/11/24/46NNdes
Before the ink was even dry on the Novell/Suse deal, I'm sure that Suse were pleased to see someone talking about the future of their products, probably without them knowing.
My team and other teams within Novell continue to develop and use Gtk as their toolkit (recently open sourced Simias/iFolder for instance) and all of the Mono GUI development tools.
Well that's good, and I wouldn't expect anything less, but different UI toolkits can be produced and development tools used if required - quite easily. With Qt there is significant commercial development weight to do that, and Novell doesn't even need to invest very much. Just because you are doing development with GTK, it doesn't mean that the article is wrong.
The only use of Qt that am aware of today is SUSE's recently open sourced YAST.
Believe it or not, YaST does not depend on Qt. It is a configuration utility with a Qt front-end. You could quite easily produce a GTK one.
Btw, if you have been following my posts on my blog and on the desktop-devel-list, you will know that my feeling is that all of the existing toolkits today (Gtk, Qt, XUL and VCL) will become obsolete and we need to start looking at the next generation toolkit system.
Nice one. So we invent yet another bloody toolkit. I'm sure we'll see some good integrative and communication stuff come out of freedesktop, and we are defintely not going to se GTK or anything else disappear. However, for the future of Linux on the desktop over the next couple of years, this is just not an option.
I don't think we will see Qt become obsolete at all, so I don't know where you get that idea. It is also worth pointing out that Qt is a whole development toolkit environment, not just a graphical one. Why will it not disappear? Several reasons:
- It's damn good, and it is the only option if you want to do cross-platform and embedded development today - not sometime tomorrow. Novell have expressed interest in the embedded systems market.
- Any Visual C++ developer looking at Linux development will want to see it. For many applications Mono and CLR environments just don't cut it, which is why Microsoft is doing some awful things to
.NET, such as pseudo natively-compiled/CLR binaries.
- It has a workable business model behind it to ensure its future.
In view of this, quite why we need a whole new toolkit I don't know. If you don't believe me about Qt, try and do a cost analysis of the Evolution and Kontact PIM suites, and compare their relative development times.The hype, vapourware and blog entries have got to stop Miguel. As a community of free software developers and business interests we need to start producing something, because people are asking questions of us.
*Proprietary* Qt is Dangerous to Linux!!! (Score:5, Interesting)
And if we are not careful, Trolltech is going to end up controlling Linux. [We also need to consider the possibility of a backroom deal between Trolltech and Microsoft, similar to the deal between Microsoft and SCO.]
The danger, of course, is not the GPL'd version of Qt. KDE is also not a problem. Both of those are Open Source, so we don't have to worry about them, and I have no reason to talk about them.
The real danger of Trolltech is the proprietary version of Qt and the applications that depend on it.
Or, in more general terms, the danger is proprietary middleware.
Let's look at an example from history. Remember when the PC platform was open, from bottom to top? Remember when you could not only buy the hardware from any number of vendors, but there were also competing vendors for the BIOS, there was more than one windowing architecture (Gem, Geoworks, Borland's GUI libs,...), and there were dozens of development environments, and thousands of code libraries? Remember when standards were simple, when it was easy to write code to interface directly with printers, with video cards, and so on?
What happened? Microsoft introduced Windows.
After a while, Windows became an indespensible component of the PC. Applications depended on it, and hardware manufacturers had to support it. And there was only one supplier of the Windows component, namely, Microsoft.
Soon, Microsoft started using its control of Windows to make itself the winner in the applications market. And today, Microsoft (with a few accomplices) also dictates the standards for PC hardware, its BIOS, its peripherals, and its network protocols.
What was special about Windows? It was proprietary middleware!
Windows sat in the middle, in between the applications and the PC. Any applications that wanted to access PC hardware used (and became dependent on) Windows APIs. And any PC manufacturer that wanted applications had to support Windows APIs. Bill Gates once said that by controlling the APIs, he controlled the industry.
Likewise, PC users became locked in. They could replace their hardware. They could replace an application. But they couldn't replace Windows. As the PC became cheaper, Windows became more expensive, as did the Microsoft applications that Windows "encouraged" users to use.
The proprietary version of Qt is just like Windows. It is proprietary middleware. It sits between the applications and Linux. The applications that use Qt are dependent on its APIs. And if Linux wants to be able to run those applications, then it has to support Qt.
What applications are we talking about? Applications like Kylix, Hancom Office, Opera, the professional versions of Quanta and Rekall and various other TheKompany products, ATI's setup utility, Quasar Accounting, Adobe Photoshop Album, and so on. If a Linux distribution wants to be able to run those applications, then it must support the proprietary version of Qt.
So how bad is it? Has Linux been taken over by proprietary middleware, the way the PC was taken over by Windows?
In other words, Have we reached the point where the proprietary version of Qt, with its single supplier, is an indedpensible component of Linux?
If this article is correct, and Novell is standardizing on Qt as the foundation of its desktop and development environment, then things are very bad.
Others have also argued that it has become almost impossible to have Linux without proprietary Qt...
In their paper Conquering the Enterprise Desktop [kdenews.org], a group of developers argued that Bruce Perens' UserLinux would have trouble succeeding, unless it included the Qt Library in its basic install. Were those developers just talking about the GPL'd version of Qt? No, as shown by these statements:
Well (Score:2, Interesting)
I had a job for part of which I spent about four or five months writing WxWindows. It seemed fairly easy to pick up, entirely reasonable as a development platform, and the quibbles I had with the functionality and documentation only came up a couple of times (one of the class docs was misleadingly written at one point, and one of the classes, WxListBox or something, turned out to only work on the Windows platform). Is Qt "better" than it? I wouldn't know. All I know is I had no objections to WxWindows whatsoever.
Most of the stuff I do is not GUI. However what I do all of my personal GUI development in is Cocoa, one of the two Mac OS X GUI libraries, which I consider as elegant, complete and (usually) well-documented as I could possibly imagine a GUI library to be. From my perspective, it is generally a joy to use. And, um, well, it doesn't cost me anything to use. The development tools came free with the OS. Now, given, I had to pay money for OS X itself, and anyone who uses my programs will have to have paid money for the OS as well. But, um, you know what? I don't really mind paying for the OS so much. Personally. I feel like I'm getting what I paid for there. And I CERTAINLY prefer paying money to use the OS and then getting dev tools and a lovely dev library that I can do anything I want with to either YOU WILL USE THE GPL PERIOD or having to pay, um, what appears to be a per-year, per-developer, per-platform fee of at least either $500 or $1500, i can't tell which, [trolltech.com] to develop software. What I'm currently getting just sounds like a better deal to me, so personally I'm going to stick with it.
(And since Cocoa is what GNUStep aims toward, who knows, if I really wanted to I think I could probably port my software to GNUStep without *too* much trouble. I know GNUStep is woefully incomplete, but this is why I mentioned it.)
But this is of course totally just my opinion. And it isn't entirely germane. But hey, you asked.
Re:Classic translation error (Score:1, Interesting)
Hmmm - anybody else catch this? (Score:3, Interesting)
At first I read this as 'Maybe programs will suck no longer!"
Good luck with that one, given the direction of the current corporate development climate.
Probably applies to programming also, same reason.
Re:GTK is out, then? (Score:3, Interesting)
I tend to agree that the existing toolkits leave a lot to be desired. But, what I would really like to know is what direction you (and others in the know) see toolkits going in?
Are we looking more towards things like gnustep [gnustep.org] or Y Windows [y-windows.org]?
Should we be looking to take the best aspects of each of these toolkits and create something new? (and if so, what do you see being included?)
Re:This is good news (Score:3, Interesting)
Every place I've ever seen that does commercial development for Windows uses Visual Studio for development. The only people I've ever seen use the free/open compilers were doing open source work.
We are just splitting hairs here, but if a company is serious about using open tools to do development work on Windows, they'd be further ahead to pay the reasonable fees to trolltech and could write code to target Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows.
You may in fact be more free under a license such as the QPL than you would be under LGPL'd GTK and wx. Qt is an extremely high quality toolkit and you are not being forced into anything that you yourself don't choose.
Re:GTK is out, then? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:QT? What about licensing? (Score:3, Interesting)
I haven't actually been arguing about profit in a monetary sense at all. What I'm trying to argue is that users of freedom software must be conditioned to know that the expectation is that they give back something. I don't care what it is, coding, documentation, word of mouth of how freedom helps them or money.
In your case I've been trying to condition you to react by both giving back software and evangelizing freedom NOT free beer.(since you mentioned your a coder)
This started because it seemed to me that you expect that software must be free of cost in a monetary sense. Monetary free is only a possibility from freedom source not a mandatory requirement.
"The only way to make money with information is to either generate new information or to provide a more efficient way to spread,gather or copy information"
There you go you got it. Well at least you have part of it. Where in your above statement does it say anything about the nature of the license attached to the information? It doesn't matter if the information is licensed under the GPL, if I make my product more attractive, easier to use, more worth while, more...something. Than people will pay, either through their own hard work, word of mouth or with money. In fact it should be expected that people do pay in one of these manners. Anyone not paying somehow, not necessarily with money, is a free loader pure and simple. In the long run enough people will see the value of paying for freedom software to make it profitable.
As to the music,movie, television industries. Their problem isn't that they are losing control of distribution it's that they are LAZY. They refuse to charge the correct amount for the information or they refuse to provide sufficient value-added to make buying the information desirable.
I will pay a reasonable amount to have a CD,book,DVD or easy cable access. Currently all of these are too high for the product that is sold. I care not a wit for "Top 40" music it's not worth even a penny to me. If a music exec asked himself why than maybe they'd understand. The reason is there is absolutely no value in that information to me. I won't even waste bandwidth on it. However, if you somehow got George Clinton and Parliament back together, put together a good CD of funk, with bitchin' liner notes and maybe throw in the possibility of tickets to see them at a concert in New York(e.g. put a coupon in random jewel cases) I might pay $30,$40 or even more dollars for that. In both cases the information is free(the music) but only in the latter is there a value added service that I'd pay for.
As a physicist by training and a coder by profession I KNOW information wants to be free. The question is what are you willing to pay for sharing in it?(Again pay is not just in a monetary sense.)
Re:This is good news (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, but they don't have to. And Visual Studio Professional is a lot cheaper per seat than Qt.
Only if they need something that Qt offers but the other, genuinely free, toolkits do not offer. I don't concede that the fees are "reasonable," though.
How is "free to GPL your program or pay huge per-seat developer fees, your choice" any freer than "free to do whatever you want"?
Re:*Proprietary* Qt is Dangerous to Linux!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
And its DEADLY for future of Linux as a free and open platform. Mark my words, a few years from now Slashdot will be full of suprised QT appologists going "What happened?! We thought Trolltech was on our side!" when TT turns into a Microsoft or SCO-like monstrosity and unlike SCO we will be all fucked since there seem to be a lot of developers who learn by sticking their asses into the fire because it looked "cute". No matter how many times were they warned about it.
Dismissing critics as GNU Zealots and blabbering about dual-licensing does not hide the fact that TT is positioning itself as the nexus for ALL of the commercial application development on Linux. To be followed shortly by TT dictating Linux standards. Remember, commercial applications are where the mainstream acceptance of Linux will come from (at least in the near future) and it its the commercial applications which will be the most visible to the corporate desktop user. In fact those applications will be Linux as far as millions of corporate users are concerned. Their failure or success will directly impact the impressions of those poeple and subsequent adoption of Linux into their homes and small businesses.
Is Novel smoking the same crack as Darl? (Score:5, Interesting)
Anyway, I wonder what in the world would make Novell pick QT? I don't have a problem with the QT license since it is free for GPL'ed code and if you want to do closed source, you pay, just like the rest of the world. I am fine with that. What I don't understand is what is Novell's game plan concerning all the Ximinan "IP" that they bought? There is no acceptable QT based groupware application that is ready _NOW_, while there is GTK+ based Ximian Evolution that even works very well with MS Exchange. There is Mozilla that is GTK+ based. Novell is not going to get all those users to switch to konq when, IMO Konq is not standards compliant enough yet and the rendering engine is not up to snuff with Gecko. What about OOo? Again, it uses GTK+, I cannot see Novell porting that beast to QT. These three apps are critical to the Linux desktop, everything else is fluff in comparision.
Maybe they plan to do some good QT/GTK+ integration? I hope so, since the two tool-kits have issues with simple interoperation such as drag-n-drop and copy-n-paste, not to mention how different the widgets look. I personally don't want a Linux desktop that has no consistency between the widgets. This is the main reason I always look for Gnome apps over KDE apps to keep my desktop consistent (with the exception of K3b, since it is one great app).
Oh, there is also the issues of the different technologies that the two desktops use. What sound server are they going to use? arts or esd? Are they going to make the coding changes to to the all the other apps or do they expect a user to have both running? DCOP or Orbit? etc vs etc. IMO, Novell should have picked one desktop and then ported any of the very good apps from the other desktop over. It would take a long time to port Evolution, Mozilla/Firefox and OOo to QT and have it be stable.
Since Redhat dropped interest in the desktop, I was hoping for Novell to help push Desktop Linux, though this move makes me less optimistic.
Bad comparison, QT !~ Windows. (Score:2, Interesting)
that a Linux distribution must include support for proprietary Qt
In effect, they are saying that proprietary Qt is to Linux, as Windows has been to the PC.
etc.
There's a BIG difference between windows and Proprietary QT here, and the difference is that Windows costs money per-user. So to use the windows middleware, your *users* have to pay Microsoft.
However, with Proprietary QT the only cost is per-developer. So to install opera, hancom office, etc, I don't have to pay a penny to Trolltech. Only the companies developing these proprietary apps need to.
For that reason alone, trolltech is not going to fall into the control of trolltech.
Re:*Proprietary* Qt is Dangerous to Linux!!! (Score:1, Interesting)
Pro Linux company like Novell or IBM to buy out Troll Tech and place the following pricing policy
on QT using the SAME VERSION OF THE LIBRARY. (the free edition that ships with Linux for all the pricing levels.
Free Software license
(For GPL lecensed software)
--> No Cost.
Standard License
(For (shareware) and other small companies)
--> 90 to 200 dollars.
Professional License
(For medium sized proprietary software companies)
--> Stays at 1550 dollars.
Enterprise License
(For large proprietary software companies
-->Stays at 2490 dollars.
As you can see I'm NOT one of those people who say "buy out and LGPL the whole thing" I believe
that proprietary software developers should pay to keep QT for Linux going no matter who owns it.
Troll Tech, Novell or IBM. I just feel they should pay according to the level of profits their software is expected to bring in.
Re:*Proprietary* Qt is Dangerous to Linux!!! (Score:3, Interesting)
Since QT is licensed under a childlish scheme of "dual-licenses" whereby Trolltech seems to think they can apply GPL willy-nilly only to certain applications of their choosing, there is nothing stopping them from changing the rules and proclaiming that GPL "only" applies to applications developed free of charge, on Friday the 13th between 4 and 4:15pm, during hailstorm and while a stampede of wild elephants in in progress...