Re: Will the FreeQt foundation actually work?

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Re: Will the FreeQt foundation actually work?
by Diederik van der Boor on Monday 28/Jan/2008, @05:42

You're missing a part of the picture here. Having Qt under the GPL is part of the business model which drives Qt development. Putting it under the LGPL would actually make things worse.

Consider the following:
1. release a beta version of a GPL toolkit
2. receive tons of feedback from KDE developers
3. process feedback to produce an enterprise-quality toolkit
4. release the final product, and commercial version
5. profit!
6. use the income to fund development and KDE developers
7. goto 1.

The model above drives the development of Qt, and has some interesting side effects:
- it's an upward spiral!
- Trolltech does lot of the heavy lifting, since Qt is their primary income.
They also do boring stuff developers wouldn't like to do unless they get paid.
- KDE gets an enterprise-quality toolkit in return.
- Trolltech is able to reach more customers and fund some KDE developers.

Also note the CEO of Trolltech explained recently how Trolltech became succesful because of KDE, not despite KDE. Customers are confident Qt is a good product since it's used to build a complete desktop environment, and often hear about Qt from KDE.

Putting Qt under the LGPL would break this model. It would hurt KDE too. Customers have fewer reasons to buy the commercial version, and there will be less income to fund development.

Related Links

·   Articles on Qt
·   Also by Diederik van der Boor
·   Contact author

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Re: Will the FreeQt foundation actually work?
by Budzes on Monday 28/Jan/2008, @06:50

Releasing Qt under under BSD or at least LGPL license would lead to massive spread of Qt which in turn would lead to improving Qt.

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Re: Will the FreeQt foundation actually work?
by Chani on Monday 28/Jan/2008, @07:47

I'm not sure I'd agree with that. who exactly are you expecting to do the improving?

it would certainly lead to less money going to trolltech, which increases the risk of some talented developers finding themselves out of a job and having to go work on something other than qt/kde to pay the bills.

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Re: Will the FreeQt foundation actually work?
by Hank Miller on Tuesday 29/Jan/2008, @06:31

Motorola, IBM, and KDE develops. This depends on where Nokia wants to go with QT. If they just want to kill Google's (and Apple's) entry into the cell phone market, but don't want to get into monopoly trouble they may want to make QT open source in a BSD type license. In this case they may want to leave just enough Motorola around that regulators won't come looking at them. IF they go this route they may get rid of most of their qt developers (there will never be a qt5), keeping just those who work on parts they need for internal projects.

I can come up with lots of alternatives that they CAN do. I can't tell you what they will do. So long as I can use qt4 in my comercial developments I don't care.

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Re: Will the FreeQt foundation actually work?
by Carlos Cesar on Monday 28/Jan/2008, @09:41

>Having Qt under the GPL is part of the business model which drives Qt development.

Somehow I don't think TT business model is terribly important to Nokia.

Cheers,
CC

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