Re: My two cents ... again and again

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Re: My two cents ... again and again
by Segedunum on Saturday 29/Mar/2008, @16:47

"However KDE will not ever become a good development platform without the things I've mentioned."

KDE is the only Linux desktop with a half-decent development platform, and that comes from using Qt. Gnome doesn't have any kind of development platform that developers can pick up and use in a straightforward fashion, unless they use Mono. Beyond that, you're pulling in GTK, libXML, Cairo and all sorts of other libraries that behave and program completely differently. No ISV looking from the Windows and Mac worlds will touch that with a ten foot barge pole.

"Even relicensing of Qt/KDE libraries under LGPL will greatly increase the adoption of KDE amongst developers."

Qt already has a very vibrant software community, and quite frankly, I see very few actual ISVs out there using GTK (at all) because it is simply LGPLed. ISVs want quality development tools they can pick up, not zero cost stuff that doesn't work well and isn't usable.

The dual licensing means that investment goes into Qt, and KDE then gets better with each successive version of Qt. LGPLing something means that you accept people will have less incentive to contribute code back to the software, and that's the price you pay for 'developing for nothing'.

I suggest you do some googling, because this has been discussed umpteen times before.

"Even most prominent distros (Ubuntu and Fedora/RHEL) have chosen GTK over Qt due to this reason."

Ah, not that old chestnut. It's done Ubuntu and Red Hat a fat lot of good supposedly standardising on GTK. The quality and depth of the graphical tools produced is woeful, and as long as that continues GTK will continue to hold Ubuntu and Red Hat back.

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