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questions I would like to have seen...
by rjw on Monday 12/Apr/2004, @16:23
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Licencing
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Do you think it would be better for the overall state of free software
( not necessarily any plans of your own) if IBM or Novell bought you out and LGPLed QT on all platforms? Is there any downside to this scenario?( Maybe your support would become less professional... just look at Rational..) TBH, I understand you can't really answer this question, as answering in the affirmative would possibly lower your acquisition price and thus damage share holder value... but we all think we know the answer here.....
Theming
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Given that you use the native theming APIs nowadays on Windows and Mac OS X, what are you doing as a top two toolkit provider on Linux doing to provide a unified theming API, acceptable to all toolkits?
Would you agree that we need to say goodbye to theme duplication (keramik/geramik) and the horrors that result? (Leading question if ever there was one!)
Would you as a company characterise the Qt/Gtk engine as a realistic cross toolkit theming api or a silly hack?
Toolkits requiring integration include VCL, GTK, Qt, XUL/XBL, Motif, Tk, xaw, athena, swing, xforms, fltk etc etc.... This, IMHO, leads to a probable C and cairo based system. Would Trolltech move to a system such as this? Would they contribute resources to a project like this?
The Avalon questions..
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What are you doing to address the coming prevalence of resolution independent user interfaces? Are you going to fully unify the QCanvasItem and the QWidget hierarchies as MS are planning in Avalon?
On Windows, the fact that Qt really fits in nicely and looks native even when it wasn't has served it well. Are you going to be able to keep doing this when Avalon arrives?
IMO, the largest part of Qts appeal on Windows is that it provided an escape from the horror that is programming the Win32 user interface. Anything based on this is really a work of terror and limited - raw access to User.dll, MFC, ATL, WTL, Winforms - all of these make Qt look great. Are you at all worried that the Windows "I can't face another HWND" market will dry up when Avalon hits the scene (granted this is probably 2007 realistically, but you must be planning ahead)? |
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Re: questions I would like to have seen...
by Philippe Fremy on Tuesday 13/Apr/2004, @03:40
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You are a bit late. The questions period was last july:
http://dot.kde.org/994553595/ - ask Trolltech anything
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Re: questions I would like to have seen...
by Niek on Tuesday 13/Apr/2004, @05:50
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08/Jul/2001
Heh.
I think you meant http://dot.kde.org/1057129749/
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Re: questions I would like to have seen...
by rjw on Tuesday 13/Apr/2004, @06:04
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Yep. I'm asking these questions now. Trolltech can decide whether or not to answer them... since they do read the dot.
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look what I found
by rjw on Thursday 15/Apr/2004, @06:45
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http://dot.kde.org/1057129749/1057275038/
I did ask a lot of the same questions...
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Re: questions I would like to have seen...
by Anton Velev on Thursday 15/Apr/2004, @10:01
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> Do you think it would be better for the overall state of free software
> ( not necessarily any plans of your own) if IBM or Novell bought you out and
> LGPLed QT on all platforms?
That would be a great idea! BSD style license or LGPL will be nice, this is what the free commercial market needs! Then all GPL-related issues will go to hell.
Until then you have to stick with one of those: VCL, GTK, WxWindows
But as you guess this questions are always being ignored.
Btw there is one more option:
http://www.kde.org/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php
then you will have BSD Qt, but I guess before that happens there will be already another superior toolkit that will preferably be BSD.
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Re: questions I would like to have seen...
by Datschge on Thursday 15/Apr/2004, @12:09
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"free commercial market"? What is that?
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Re: questions I would like to have seen...
by Kevin Krammer on Thursday 15/Apr/2004, @12:29
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Perhaps a commercial market for free software.
Or a free market for commercial software.
In either case it already exists :)
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Re: questions I would like to have seen...
by Anton Velev on Thursday 15/Apr/2004, @13:08
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oh, not again...
Read some articles about Adam Smith and Free Market.
The current state of modern society seems to prove that the Free Market (commercial) is the best working model. (when saying 'market' I mean the economy being it global or local)
However some people (rms) seem to discover that capitalism, is not the best model and try to make it more 'social'. (I agree that Free Market may not be perfect, but still is the proven working model)
Now about the problem: one of the biggest problems of the Free Market is monopoly because the key factor for improvment in free market economy is the commercial competition. And monopoly is the opposite of competition.
If we believe that GPL really destroys one monopoly (well known empire), there still remains the question how would GPL help the competition to improve. Moreover since IT industry requires standartization, seems that it's a normal trend of adpotion of one monopoly solution for a given purpose (as for example current state is that Apache is widely adopted as "standart" solution for webserver, and Windows is widely adopted as a "standart" solution for desktop). However organizations like w3c try to help with the standarts and make possible actual competition of differrent parties when implementing the standarts.
The reason I don't believe GPL is the right solution is because I am strongly convinced that GPL eliminates the competition. Again if we believe GPL will ever destroy all other software and everything becomes GPL do you think there will be competition? You probably can show me the example of GTK vs Qt saga (but this is LGPL vs GPL issue). To me more exact I must add the facts that GPL:
- can be forked
- you cannot sell your closed-source feture (to GPL software)
Make conclusions yourself. But you cannot miss the fact that GPL encourages GPL monoploly. Of course it would sound great if spelled like "GPL powers the innovation by uniting the GPL developers", but here is what makes me feel we have a problem - again instead of competing parties that try to make it better and better.
I agree that if there were >10 competing Qt like companies (selling commercial licenses only) and there was no Microsoft that would be better for the Free Market, but the current state of the world makes in impossible. (here is where GPL people find GPL very useful)
But wouldn't it be better (having in mind the current state of the world) for the Free Market if there was a truly open (no monopoly) and standarts compilant platform. (by "truly open" I mean like BSD, X, Apache and MIT licenses) Then every company out there could add a feature and sell it - like Apple does but in a very large scale. With GPL this will be impossible, except if the company that created the GPL software is selling the additional features.
To help you better understand my opinion will show you this formula:
free market = competition != GPL
If you can convince me that GPL not only destroys the empire but also helps and encourages the competition then probably I may agree that GPL is the right model.
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Re: questions I would like to have seen...
by LuckySandal on Thursday 15/Apr/2004, @15:07
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"To me more exact I must add the facts that GPL:
- can be forked
- you cannot sell your closed-source feture (to GPL software)"
A company may choose to to release a library simultaneously under GPL and a commercial license. You may create GPL software based on the library, or you can pay a fee to release closed-source software based upon the commercially-licensed version. This is the case with Qt on Linux. Companies are able to profit and thus compete while using GPL by including an additional licensing option.
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