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#1 2005-02-07 16:49:05

IceRAM
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From: Bucharest, Romania
Registered: 2004-03-04
Posts: 772
Website

Trolltech to Extend Dual Licensing to Qt for Windows (QT 4)

Trolltech Announcement Link (Feb 7, 2005)

Trolltech®, a provider of leading application development software, today announced that it will extend its successful dual-licensing business model to include the Qt® cross-platform application development framework for the Microsoft Windows operating system. The availability of Qt for Windows under the open source GNU General Public License (GPL) will bring the benefits of open source software to the Windows environment, fueling the development of open source applications for the mainstream PC market. Qt for Windows is already widely used for commercial software development.

... and there goes the Qt "problem" everybody was complaining on...

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#2 2005-02-07 16:57:09

vicious
Member
Registered: 2004-11-09
Posts: 113

Re: Trolltech to Extend Dual Licensing to Qt for Windows (QT 4)

IceRAM wrote:

Trolltech Announcement Link (Feb 7, 2005)

Trolltech®, a provider of leading application development software, today announced that it will extend its successful dual-licensing business model to include the Qt® cross-platform application development framework for the Microsoft Windows operating system. The availability of Qt for Windows under the open source GNU General Public License (GPL) will bring the benefits of open source software to the Windows environment, fueling the development of open source applications for the mainstream PC market. Qt for Windows is already widely used for commercial software development.

... and there goes the Qt "problem" everybody was complaining on...

I'm wondering about Qt's license. Once I read that if you want to make a commercial app, you need to purchase Qt BEFORE starting development.
On the other hand, you can make a GPL version. Then purchase the license and relicense new version of your app as propertial.
I wonder if it is legal to develop app, and buy the license just before you are to release the app?

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#3 2005-02-07 20:35:20

mico
Member
From: Slovenia
Registered: 2004-02-08
Posts: 247

Re: Trolltech to Extend Dual Licensing to Qt for Windows (QT 4)

Finally a topic worth reading in the off-topic forum smile

This licensing extension is good news indeed. However, if you want to use the benefits of otherwise great Qt platform for a commercial app or just don't want to show the sources, you'll still pay quite a large sum. Too bad, many small companies and individual developers will never use it because it's so expensive.

vicious: you heard right, but I don't think all users respect that. And they have nothing to fear. How could anybody know or even proove you're already developing something if you don't show it to public? Besides, Trolltech would not hunt you all over the world like MS would.
What is more troubling is that licenses are given to a person (developer), not just the company that paid for them and it is not that easy nor free of additional fees to transfer license to another developer. Imagine your employee (the developer with qt license YOU paid for) quits, you hire a new one, few months later you fire him and get another one, and so on. You just keep paying fees for transfer of license. Or even worse: you need more than one dev - pay as many licenses as you have devs. Sure there's some discounts for more devs, but it's still very expensive.

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#4 2005-02-08 06:20:02

darkcoder
Member
From: A bar near you
Registered: 2004-09-10
Posts: 310

Re: Trolltech to Extend Dual Licensing to Qt for Windows (QT 4)

That's are good news.  Now many developers that dislike QT for it's licensing problems with Windows will take a look to it.

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#5 2005-02-08 10:43:13

zeppelin
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From: Athens, Greece
Registered: 2004-03-05
Posts: 807
Website

Re: Trolltech to Extend Dual Licensing to Qt for Windows (QT 4)

IceRAM, the problem went away but might come back. Yeah sure, they will fork it but who is going to use the fork?

I have asked the president of Trolltech, to answer me this simple question:
"You have dual license and you support OpenSource"
if everyone is writing OpenSource you're out of business, so how can you *really* support OpenSource?

The reason of GPLing QT4 is not the love of Trolltech for its users nor the FLOSS. IMHO, these guys see QT losing all the time in the OpenSource Community (GNOME is mentioned more and more than KDE, GTK is stable and chosen for a lot of apps for Windows). GTK is LGPL.
The main problem with QT is that Trolltech does it. They opensourced QT4, and that means that they will lose some money from the internat software companies use. [may use the OpenSource QT to do their job]. I wonder how is that a good financial move for Trolltech, except if they expect to raise their customers and other NON opensource toolkits lose some customers. In other words QT cannot compete with OpenSource that's why it's the last to follow this path (remember KDE was non free in the past). Well it's always funny to be the last to do something, and to be proud of it.. Imagine SUN in 2008 announcing: "JAVA IS GPL"
wow! but in 2008 who is gonna use that crap?

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#6 2005-02-08 13:55:34

vicious
Member
Registered: 2004-11-09
Posts: 113

Re: Trolltech to Extend Dual Licensing to Qt for Windows (QT 4)

Zeppelin, you hit the nail on the head. I have exactly the same view of the subject.

Btw, this is really not an off-topic topic. It should go to Linux discussion.

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#7 2005-02-08 16:09:22

darkcoder
Member
From: A bar near you
Registered: 2004-09-10
Posts: 310

Re: Trolltech to Extend Dual Licensing to Qt for Windows (QT 4)

I dunno they loose customers.  Anyway if you want to sell your software no matter your market, you need a licence.  And there's where they get their income.

The more widespread use QT has, the more companies will look at it for an alternative (for a easier way to port software from Win or Mac to other platforms) and get a licence.

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#8 2005-02-08 21:00:49

IceRAM
Member
From: Bucharest, Romania
Registered: 2004-03-04
Posts: 772
Website

Re: Trolltech to Extend Dual Licensing to Qt for Windows (QT 4)

zeppelin wrote:

IceRAM, the problem went away but might come back. Yeah sure, they will fork it but who is going to use the fork?

Devs: zeppelin, I know you as a GTK fan/user. I can't take the opinion of a GTK developer as something definitive when it comes to arguing wether Qt will be used or not by OpenSource developers on Windows. I'd rather have a Qt application author tell me if he wants to port his application to Windows. It is my understanding that Qt apps are easier to port.
Users: they don't care which toolkit the app uses.

GTK+2 package size: 3.21 MB compressed (http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html - it should not contain extra libs for Gimp, it should only be GTK2)
QT 3.3.3 comming with Psi 0.9.3 library size: 3.10 MB UNcompressed
I can see a difference... (things could change though)

I can't actually find a good recent functionality comparison between GTK2 and QT. I don't see a license problem for the GPL developer right now. Yeah, it might come back, with another Qt version. This version will remain AS IS. And then, the porting might continue to be done in kde-cygwin project (as it was before Qt4).

zeppelin wrote:

I have asked the president of Trolltech, to answer me this simple question:
"You have dual license and you support OpenSource"
if everyone is writing OpenSource you're out of business, so how can you *really* support OpenSource?

zeppelin, don't worry.
I'm sure that the entire Qt Marketing Division (or whatever it is called) made enough calculations before taking this decision. I'm almost sure that  only one user opinion can't be compared to an entire Marketing Division analisys.

zeppelin wrote:

The reason of GPLing QT4 is not the love of Trolltech for its users nor the FLOSS. IMHO, these guys see QT losing all the time in the OpenSource Community (GNOME is mentioned more and more than KDE, GTK is stable and chosen for a lot of apps for Windows). GTK is LGPL.

How could GTK not be chosen for a lot of GPL Windows apps, since it was the the only mature toolkit available for Windows?
I find it reasonable to ask for money on a toolkit when you develop software and also ask money for it.

zeppelin wrote:

The main problem with QT is that Trolltech does it. They opensourced QT4, and that means that they will lose some money from the internat software companies use. [may use the OpenSource QT to do their job]. I wonder how is that a good financial move for Trolltech, except if they expect to raise their customers and other NON opensource toolkits lose some customers. In other words QT cannot compete with OpenSource that's why it's the last to follow this path (remember KDE was non free in the past). Well it's always funny to be the last to do something, and to be proud of it..

http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=9493

Trolltech, a provider of leading application development software, today announced that 2004 was a year of strong growth for its Qt® cross-platform development software. Leading companies such as AMD, Skype, Toon Boom Animation, Altair Engineering, Pioneer Hi-Bred International Inc.and Wolfram Research Inc. now add to the more than 3,000 companies developing commercial applications with Qt. The growing list of Qt commercial customers contributed to a 40 percent increase in sales of Qt commercial licenses in 2004 over the previous year.

Overall, I see it as a win-win decision, both for the users and for the developers. It doesn't really matter for a Linux dev if Trolltech entered the last on the Windows toolkits market. A Windows dev sees it as a blessing. Competition between toolkits helps development. Choice also. We'll see how all this goes.

Other coverage (tons of comments):
http://dot.kde.org/1107786164/
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=9635

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#9 2005-02-08 21:11:52

IceRAM
Member
From: Bucharest, Romania
Registered: 2004-03-04
Posts: 772
Website

Re: Trolltech to Extend Dual Licensing to Qt for Windows (QT 4)

vicious wrote:

Btw, this is really not an off-topic topic. It should go to Linux discussion.

Qt for Windows is not "Linux discussion". Remaining choices: "Off-topic".

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