Re: Will the FreeQt foundation actually work?

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Re: Will the FreeQt foundation actually work?
by Sage on Monday 28/Jan/2008, @04:35

You miss the point - it's not in the interests of other manufacturers to use Nokia's toolkit. Simple example: what if Ericsson needs a change to Qt to work on its new device? They have to go rely on their competitor to make the change to help them, which of course Nokia has every motivation not to do - and, on top of that, risk pre-notifying their competitor of their new device's feature in order to get the change, giving up a major competitive advantage (first to market). Smart management just does not put themselves in that position.

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Re: Will the FreeQt foundation actually work?
by A KDE advocate on Monday 28/Jan/2008, @04:42

One word: Android.

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Re: Will the FreeQt foundation actually work?
by Anon on Monday 28/Jan/2008, @04:47

"They have to go rely on their competitor to make the change to help them"

Why?

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Re: Will the FreeQt foundation actually work?
by Sage on Monday 28/Jan/2008, @05:04

In the hypothetical: assuming Ericsson does not want to open source its drivers and all its software, it has to use the commercial version of Qt / Qtopia, which means it can't make its own changes, which means it has to ask Nokia to make the changes for it.

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Re: Will the FreeQt foundation actually work?
by Kevin Krammer on Monday 28/Jan/2008, @05:14

> it has to use the commercial version of Qt / Qtopia, which means it can't make its own changes

This is a wrong implication. A Trolltech customer, i.e. someone who has bought a commercial licence, still gets the Qt code and is allowed to change it and distribute alongside their applications.

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Re: Will the FreeQt foundation actually work?
by Sage on Monday 28/Jan/2008, @13:13

Since I don't have (and Trolltech for some reason does not publish) their commercial license I cannot confirm your summary or whether it would be adequate. One inadequacy, e.g., is that this license might change, including that the license fees might go up dramatically or this right you refer to to make changes goes away. And as I have noted before, there is no secondary market in Qt licenses (e.g., buying an off-the-shelf kit at Best Buy), which enables Nokia to price discriminate (charge some customers more than others, or plain refuse to license to someone). All very unattractive features when deciding on the platform for a hardware device.

Can you post your Qt Commercial License somewhere and provide a link?

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Re: Will the FreeQt foundation actually work?
by Hank Miller on Tuesday 29/Jan/2008, @06:24

Section 6 of my QTopia license states:

(a) modity the licensed Software as limited by section 10 below.

Section 10 seems to deal only with trolltech's rights to audit out process to ensure we have the correct licenses, but it does have the following statement: Licensee does not implicitly grant Trolltech any form of license agreement.

I won't post the full agreement, it is likely protected by copyright laws. I'm pretty sure my company doesn't intend to modify QT, so I assume the above is generic terms they grant to everyone.

I can't tell you how/if Nokia will change those terms.

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Re: Will the FreeQt foundation actually work?
by Segedunum on Monday 28/Jan/2008, @05:52

"You miss the point - it's not in the interests of other manufacturers to use Nokia's toolkit. Simple example: what if Ericsson needs a change to Qt to work on its new device? They have to go rely on their competitor to make the change to help them"

For starters, Qt is an open source platform, and secondly, I see few of Microsoft's competitors having a problem with Windows - and that's even worse.

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Re: Will the FreeQt foundation actually work?
by Sage on Monday 28/Jan/2008, @13:17

Qt may be open source but we are speaking about the commercial license.

As to Microsoft, at this point there is little choice for most people, but it's not at all analogous. A better analogy: Intel relying on AMD to write its microcode for its processors.

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Re: Will the FreeQt foundation actually work?
by Segedunum on Tuesday 29/Jan/2008, @05:57

"Qt may be open source but we are speaking about the commercial license."

So what? What is in Qt is what is in Qt. The open source version has the enterprise source code, and if you're a customer then you get the Qt source code as well.

"As to Microsoft, at this point there is little choice for most people, but it's not at all analogous."

Yes it is - certainly from what you're implying. These days Microsoft's competitors have no choice but to write software for Microsoft's platform and with their development tools, which means that Microsoft is first to market with everything. With Qt, that just isn't the case. If someone is really worried then they can use Qt for some things and not for others.

"A better analogy: Intel relying on AMD to write its microcode for its processors."

As long as they can get control over that microcode and write their own then it's not a problem and a pretty poor example.

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