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#11
Originally Posted by ragnar View Post
I hope this thread doesn't turn into a Slashdot style GPL license deathmatch.
Why not? I'm in the mood ....

Originally Posted by ragnar View Post
Personally I feel that "free as in freedom", not "free as in beer" makes more sense. Why shouldn't somebody be able to make money from free software.
GPL doesn't prevent anyone from making money. In fact, by using it on the tablets, Nokia is making money from GPLed software.

What you probably mean is making money from non-free software, using e.g. LGPLed software as a base and adding only some icing.
I don't like that idea.
If people want to make money from non-free software, they should also need to use non-free software as a base. Like with Qt as it used to be: Either GPL or commercial. Use it for non-free projects? Fine. Pay. Use it for free projects? Great! GPL.

Originally Posted by ragnar View Post
(Then again, I'm also a GPL2 type of guy instead of a GPL3 type of guy.)
OMG! And probably you get blisters from holy water... (I should have known from your comments on touch-screen-UIs and d-pads...)
I never understood how somebody who basically agrees with the principles of the GPL2 could object to the GPL3; it's the same principles, only better protected now that time has taught us some lessons. But that's a completely different story I only bring up here to make this thread slip completely OT ... Abortion, anyone? Gay marriage? Capital punishment? Or gun control?
 
allnameswereout's Avatar
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#12
It is good the license argument for being pro GPL is now moot. May the best one win, and may there be contineous compatibility between the 2. This is best for all platforms using them.

This makes it also still possible to develop proprietary/freeware and proprietary/commercial programs.

Originally Posted by benny1967 View Post
I never understood how somebody who basically agrees with the principles of the GPL2 could object to the GPL3; it's the same principles, only better protected now that time has taught us some lessons.
1) Neither GPLv2 nor GPLv3 protects against GPLed web applications (and fat servers, serving thin clients) with modifications.
2) People are conservative; don't like change.
3) Some believe these protections (e.g. patent protection) are outside the scope of a license.
4) Some believe these protections (e.g. patent protection) aren't working.
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Benson's Avatar
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#13
Originally Posted by allnameswereout View Post
1) Neither GPLv2 nor GPLv3 protects against GPLed web applications (and fat servers, serving thin clients) with modifications.
Isn't that what the AGPL is for? (I haven't read it, but I think it's supposed to be that.)
 

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#14
This is BIG news. Excitement in comments on dot.kde.org and even slashdot is almost touchable.

It shows one thing we could hardly believe commening in other recents threads: Nokia software people *do* understand Open Source. Now, about those hardware guys...
 
allnameswereout's Avatar
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#15
Originally Posted by fanoush View Post
Never heard this side. So someone really thinks keeping Qt as GPL will result in more free software then LGPL?

Now I am reading http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html and see FSF opinion shift Anyway, this 'gpl only advantage' does not apply to Qt since it has commercial licence too.
This is not new information! See the copyright on bottom: 1999. The LGPL used to be called the Library General Public License instead of the Lesser General Public License. The name Library General Public License was too vague because it implied that libraries required the LGPL. Hence the latter name was adopted, and an article was written why and why not one would prefer either license. FSF, being anti proprietary software, ofcourse stresses the GPL protects free software more than LGPL, but on the same time they realize the LGPL's necessity. See the referenced article and quotes here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGPL

Also see the history of Qt, GNOME, and KDE for more details about how these projects started. Its an interesting read into open source UI history! One thing to always remember is that the development of GTK and GNOME was a legal one because the Qt license [FreeQt, QPL] and the GPL (for KDE 1.x back in those days) were legally incompatible with each. That is why the Harmony toolkit (back then a free software Qt implementation) was started. Later on, Qt on Windows (and Mac) was not GPL. This is why KDE on Cygwin existed. Later these were GPLed; and now we have a native port of KDE for Windows in development. The Zaurus also had a proprietary UI, back in the days this was Qtopia (now open source again, and known as Qt/Extended). It was forked into OPIE (Open Palmtop Integrated Environment). Later, GPE (GPE Palmtop Environment) came along. Enlightenment plays a role in the story as well. If you look along the timeline you see Qt getting slowly but surely more open and free (as in speech), stimulating adoption, development and acceptation.

My take on it is that this has the potention to make Qt far more used hence making it the primary choice for cross platform or platform agnostic development.

We talked to Sebastian Nyström, Nokia's VP of Qt, who explained that the licensing change was primarily driven by a desire to boost the quality of Qt. The company will be using it internally for a wide range of things and is positioning it as a modern solution for building applications for its own Symbian platform.

Nokia concluded that, in the long term, the benefits of adopting a participatory development model and accelerating development far outweighed the value of the revenue stream that it could generate by selling commercial licenses. The commercial licenses will still be available, however, for developers who don't wish to be constrained by the terms of the LGPL. Nyström says that Nokia intends to take Qt "to the next level" by getting the community involved in improving the toolkit's performance, functionality, and platform support. Nokia will also be hiring additional full-time developers to work on the toolkit. The licensing change is clearly a win for Nokia, application developers, and a large segment of the open source software community.
So, if this succeeds, what you can see on longer term is applications easily ported to and from Linux to Windows, MacOSX, Symbian, Java, Windows CE, Qtopia, and tons of other platforms while Nokia is still able to sell proprietary Qt licenses to those who do not wish to be bound by LGPL.

qgil also wrote on his blog

Also, the Qt open development model and infrastructure will become the main reference for improving the Open Source practices in Maemo.
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Last edited by allnameswereout; 2009-01-14 at 21:50. Reason: Sorry for some typos previously; fixed now! EDIT: Added qgil quote
 
Benson's Avatar
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#16
Originally Posted by allnameswereout View Post
My take on it is that this has the potention to make Qt far more used hence making it the primary choice for cross platform or platform agnostic development.
But Qt means c++, which, as anyone who's just spending the better part of a day porting a QT3 app to QT4 and building it on the tablet (by the process of iterative creepingly slow c++ compilation and fixing whatever throws errors), is perfectly horrible.

Anything that makes Qt, and thus c++, be used more places only serves to annoy me. (IMO, C++ should be banished; we have C for a systems language, and anyone wanting to use a high-level apps language should use a high-level apps language, not C with strap-on object-orientation. LISP comes to mind. Did someone order a /. flamewar?)
 

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#17
Originally Posted by Benson View Post
But Qt means c++[...]
Apparently the bindings for various other OO languages (including Java) are good quality - I don't know if they can be considered tier-1, or not though.

I suspect Qt => C++ is as true as GTK => C, which is to say - not very.

(Agree with your thoughts on C++, though <shudder />)
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allnameswereout's Avatar
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#18
GTK uses object oriented C. So style is similar to C++. But they each have libraries with bindings for other programming languages such as Python and Java.

I heard the Qt APIs are more clean, but I haven't used either very much. I definately find compiling a Qt application easier compared to the GNU tools.

There is also new IDE for Qt, called Qt Creator

The point is that the legal and political argument to use GTK over Qt is now gone; this will rise acceptable of Qt although technical arguments remain valid.

Legal flamewars suck, and there is no need for flamewars...
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#19
Originally Posted by Benson View Post
But Qt means c++, which, as anyone who's just spending the better part of a day porting a QT3 app to QT4 and building it on the tablet (by the process of iterative creepingly slow c++ compilation and fixing whatever throws errors), is perfectly horrible.
Qt4 is quite different than Qt3. The porting was actually less hard thanks to OO. If such a change would have been done on Gtk, it probably wouldn't survived it.

Yes, C++ compiling takes more time. Fortunately it has improved a lot in gcc-4.x series. I remember that that was my main reason once to upgrade my system in 1995 or so, but nowadays it's fast enough for comfortable developing.
Originally Posted by Benson View Post
Anything that makes Qt, and thus c++, be used more places only serves to annoy me. (IMO, C++ should be banished; we have C for a systems language, and anyone wanting to use a high-level apps language should use a high-level apps language, not C with strap-on object-orientation. LISP comes to mind. Did someone order a /. flamewar?)
Every language has its hotspot, and C++ is a system programming language with native OO support. Of course there are languages that have a more complete OO implementation and what not, but they aren't necessary good for system programming. Even so that hardware gets faster, we always want to squeeze the max out of it and/or use as less CPU cycles as possible (think of battery lifetime).
I respect your opinion, I hope you respect others have different ones.
Originally Posted by Jaffa View Post
I suspect Qt => C++ is as true as GTK => C, which is to say - not very.
My little project on Maemo-extras, mozilla, JDK are examples of C++ codebases using Gtk, Qt->C is probably not very common.
 
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#20
Originally Posted by koos View Post
Qt4 is quite different than Qt3. The porting was actually less hard thanks to OO. If such a change would have been done on Gtk, it probably wouldn't survived it.
GTK+ also is OO, using GObject. And yes, porting GTK+ to GTK2 is big. OTOH, GTK only has had one major version. But I wasn't really complaining about that; porting to newer library versions is a fact of life.

It's the whole takes-forever-and-a-day aspect that was getting to me, combined with my existing notions of the ******edness of C++; I feel that, these days, purebred apps languages come close enough to C++ for performance. Then again, I would never consider C++ as a systems language; I think I've encountered only one example of it being used as one, so I'm not sure how true that classification is in practice. If someone needs an OO systems language, though, I'll grudgingly acknowledge C++ as the main practical contender.
My little project on Maemo-extras, mozilla, JDK are examples of C++ codebases using Gtk, Qt->C is probably not very common.
Qt on C, AFAIK, is not even possible, because it doesn't use a separate OO library (gobject) as does GTK+; generally, it's easier to move up than down.
 

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