George Staikos: A Quick Cost Analysis of Qt vs GTK

Last week, CORBA-lover Michael Meeks released some slides that caused something of a stir amongst some in the KDE community. In his slide, Michael Meeks attempted to make the case for GNOME as the only viable desktop on Unix by directing the heat of his argument at the cost of Trolltech's Qt -- the wonderful cross-platform toolkit on which KDE is based -- for proprietary development. Rising up to the challenge, George Staikos has written a nice article that compares the cost of Qt vs GTK in the real world.

George successfully makes his case independent of the specifics, but there are few things in particular about Michael's slide that bother me. For one, Michael seems to be making a skewed comparison of GNOME to Qt as opposed to comparing GNOME/GTK to KDE/Qt. If comparing KDE to GNOME, then certainly two of the three points in favour of GNOME count for KDE.

Other than the points George makes in Qt's favour (check out the dirt on the new tab widget!), and the fact that KDE more or less maintains a copy of Qt in CVS, KDE has a very open development model, and I would even argue that in many ways KDE development is more open and accommodating to contributors than the GNOME development model which is heavily influenced by the commercial powers behind the GNOME Foundation. Personally, I have also seen a lot of whining about how closely-controlled (by Red Hat) GTK development is. And, of course, the ABI/API stability Michael claims for GNOME certainly applies just as equally to KDE/Qt.

Another thing that puzzles me are the prices Michael quotes for proprietary Qt development. He is talking about proprietary development on Unix, and yet he quotes the prices for Qt on three platforms (Mac/Windows/X11) which is twice the price of Qt for X11 alone. And if he does that, he really ought to take into account the state of GTK on Windows and Mac (ports of which do indeed exist). But these quibbles are sort of besides the point, since indeed Qt does cost something for proprietary development whereas GTK is gratis up front.

So, by all means, read George's article carefully, then tell us what you think about this whole matter. Have you used Qt for free or proprietary development? If so, what have been your experiences?

Comments

by anon (not verified)

Unfortunately the Gnome people are trolling this place today...

by oGALAXYo (not verified)

Well, that's a normal attitude of GNOME people. They do not necessarily troll here, they troll on all places. I had various comments with Mike HEarn myself where he namecalled me on various places for no reason but hey, he is not the only one, there are a lot of them. I have quit all my GNOME support for now and using KDE now. The people and community is much more friendly and the Desktop is targetting in the right direction of a cool Desktop environment.

by Roberto Alsina (not verified)

Let me guess: You are using KDE for a couple of weeks now, right?

by oGALAXYo (not verified)

oh, my argentinian trolling friend.

by Roberto Alsina (not verified)

Well, at least you are not calling me a GNOME troll anymore!

by AN (not verified)

Galaxy wrote: "Well, that's a normal attitude of GNOME people. They do not necessarily troll here, they troll on all places."

ROTFL... The irony here is hilarious!

by makkus (not verified)

>Galaxy wrote: "Well, that's a normal attitude of GNOME people. They do not >necessarily troll here, they troll on all places."

>ROTFL... The irony here is hilarious!

Yeah, beautiful.

Every discussion on internet where the word Gnome or Ximian is mentioned you can expect a venemous reply from oGALAXYo. It's becoming so obvious I can determine blind which AC comments on slashdot are from this person.

by oGALAXYo (not verified)

Oh and the way you reply now isn't an argument to criticise ? Most of the forums where I reply to are open forums or open places where people are allowed to comment with their own opinion and that's what I'm actually doing. The problem here is that many answers I get from Trolling people (like you for example) are not going into the context of what I wrote they are only meant to blame me in the public. Such as your reply. I wrote a lot of replies only describing and explaining what I personally think about GNOME from personal experience from own investigation from coding and instead getting replies from people to have a technical conversations I only get blamed because I was criticising their Desktop. None of the replies that I got from people was going into the technical things, they only replied to blame the person.

by Soup (not verified)

" I have quit all my GNOME support"

Thank heavens. Hopefully you will stay away from GNOME, and GNOME lists, and GNOME bugzilla, and GNOME .... forever! In short just forget that GNOME exists. Actually assume that GNOME never existed. If you can do this, then maybe you'll earn the respect that you conspicuosly lack.

by oGALAXYo (not verified)

Stop the support doesn't mean that I gonna stay away from it, from Bugzilla, from their Mailinglists, from IRC and from all the developers that I still have good relationship to regardless of what dumb people such as you gonna Troll in the public and try others to make belive.

Strange is that I only get blamed from shitheads that I don't know and never heard about and who never contributed one patch to GNOME. I bet that you Troll on more places than GOD knows.

Anyways everyone is welcome reading what I have written on all sorts of places and If these people read carefully they will realize that I make a lot of points. Even now I get eMails from people to my private address who agree with me, either from the KDE corner, from the GNOME corner and from other places.

by Soup (not verified)

You are one sad human being. We pity you.

by oGALAXYo (not verified)

OK, you criticise me for Trolling, well what do you call what you are doing ? Only proves what I initially wrote. If you pity me or if you call me a sad human is irrelevant. What matters is I at least did contribute to GNOME and still have a super relationship with the people. How about you ? People have problems differencing your ass with your face.

by FooBar (not verified)

Give it up, it's more than obvious now that YOU wrote that fake Slashdot post.

by Navindra Umanee (not verified)

Oh, gee. Could it have been *you*? dc/Stof/FooBar or whatever you've been going under here?

[gnomedesktop.com]

Nice signature and link to autopackage.org, eh?

[gnomedesktop.com]

Nice IP address too. Funny how well I remember that IP pattern. Interesting things must have come from there...

All very coincidental, eh? Oh and btw, autopackage.org has your full name and email address. That's some nice patches you did... oh and wrote an entire module or two.

by FooBar (not verified)

Good for you. I never claimed I'm somebody else. If you can see my IP - great. I knew that for years already.

> Oh, gee. Could it have been *you*?

And why would I post an anonymous Slashdot post imitate Mike Hearn?

by Navindra Umanee (not verified)

No doubt it helps to troll when you're anonymous, though.

by FooBar (not verified)

You're contradicting yourself. To troll on what?
On Mike Hearn? Oh wait that can't be, I'm a fellow Autopackage developer.
On KDE? Can't be, that Slashdot post contains no reference to KDE whatsoever.

by Navindra Umanee (not verified)

Oh gee, Hongli, I was hoping you would stop trolling this site... but I guess not. If you post one more repetitive message like "Lost track of the REAL enemy" like you have been posting AGAIN and AGAIN and AGAIN ever since this site was first launched, or any of other trollish/fudish stuff you've done under other nicks and IPs, well I'll make sure your ban sticks this time.

If you don't want to talk seriously about GNOME and KDE, then don't. Just don't use serious discussions as an excuse for your anti-KDE propaganda.

by Richard Moore (not verified)

Just a note - I don't think Mike posted that message either - and it was in reply to me!

Rich.

by FooBar (not verified)

> while Qt is somehow not 'real C++'

Then you explain what moc is.

by anon (not verified)

http://doc.trolltech.com/3.1/metaobjects.html
http://doc.trolltech.com/3.1/moc.html

You'll be happy to know that KDE also uses this technology in eg. DCOP, a technology which Gnome is still trying to copy.

by Roberto Alsina (not verified)

A code generator?

You know, if it compiles using a C++ compiler, then it is C++.
Saying something else is stupid.

by FooBar (not verified)

And why in the world do we need a code generator AT ALL? Why not just do *everything* in C++ directly?

by Roberto Alsina (not verified)

Because it's boilerplate code? You know, You *could* create all the metaobject stuff manually. It would just be VERY BORING!

by Roberto Alsina (not verified)

Ok, two replies to the same post :-P

It *is* C++. What part of it isn't? Take any KDE source file, and modulo bugs, it should pass any criteria defining what is C++ and what isn't.

Maybr¡e you think macros make it not C++?????

Because that's all "signals:" "slots:" "SIGNAL" "SLOT" "Q_OBJECT" are! Plain old silly (realy silly, look them up) cpp macros!

I bet even gtkmm based programs have a macro or two somewhere in them ;-)

by Til (not verified)

Why would you when you could just use a code generator?

Please trolling please.

by FooBar (not verified)

> Why would you when you could just use a code generator?

The same reason why people say GOB is evil? -_-

by Ryan (not verified)

I honestly dont think you actually know what "passive-agressive" means.

Cheers,
Ryan

by J. E. Brown (not verified)

As someone who's studied a bit of psychology,
I *know* "anon" doesn't know what "passive-aggressive" means!

In fact I'm spending an hour today searching the Web,
trying to learn the exact lay ("street") definition of "passive-aggressive",
and looking for the worst misuse of the term,
and I must say "anon" is the winner
(or opposite thereof ;^) )

The curious can see the correct, clinical definition at
http://www.merck.com/pubs/mmanual/section15/chapter191/191a.htm

Sincerely,

J. E. Brown (mr.)
Relationshop
Materials for Good Relationships
http://vla.com/Relationshop
Los Alamos, New Mexico USA

P.S. Incidentally a common "street" usage of the term is ...
... frankly off the topic, but write me if you're really interested.

by Derek Kite (not verified)

>I do in fact read them though (well, skim the cvs updates, they are rather long).

I'm insulted. You must be a troll!

Derek :-}

by meh (not verified)

> a) Very knowlegable about KDE and
> b) Slightly (sometimes strongly) biased in its favour.

No shit?

WE HAVE A SMART ONE HERE!

by KDE User (not verified)

> Slightly (sometimes strongly) biased in its favour

And why so? It's the dot.kde.org !!

by Ryan (not verified)

I cant stand such openly angry people like you. Learn tolerance child.

Have a nice day,
Ryan

by Iuri Fiedoruk (not verified)

Really nice, improved a lot really. I hope I can use it with php-gtk.

by Eric Laffoon (not verified)

> Really nice, improved a lot really. I hope I can use it with php-gtk.

If you can use PHP-GTK. You can also use Kommander with PHP 4.3 which enables scripting more easily outside of a web environment. (You can use it with any scripting language but PHP 4.3 makes it easier.) Kommander is released now, has DCOP abilities and is stable. It's in the Quanta 3.1 and greater packages. Best of all you have the ability to visually draw dialogs as well as integrate with apps like Quanta.

by Iuri Fiedoruk (not verified)

Can you please elaborete a bit more?
I have Quanta 3.1, but didn't find komander on it.

Anyway, what is the relation of komander with php-gtk, it this a kind of php bindings for qt or just a tool to help programming for php-gtk?

Thanks in advance.

by Datschge (not verified)

Mike Hearn, I think you should know already that the news site for KDE/QT apps is apps.kde.com. There's even a board for every single program/project, why should dot.kde.org duplicate everything when it already shows the bunch of apps releases on apps.kde.com in a neat box on the right side of every single page here?

by Anonymous Coward (not verified)

My statement:

"I think all GNOME developers should work on a GPL stand-in for QT"

This way they'll have something usefull to do that eventually will stop them wining!

Uh, Qt is already GPL. GNOME developers will never stop whining about Qt no matter what... It's in the blood ;)

by sadened kde user (not verified)

because they dont spend all day bitching about what the KDE guys are up to and build awsome applications instead. maybe you should take a hint.

by FooBar (not verified)

And which article exactly bitch about KDE?

I'm waiting for an answer...

by FooBar (not verified)

That's not an article on Gnomedesktop.

by anon (not verified)

Go read the comments, genius. Read it from people like redtux and the endless GNOME trolls over at gnomedesktop.com who always take potshots at KDE and when they can't get enough, they come over here and spread their FUD.

by anon (not verified)

Look at this GNOME troll spreading FUD about the KDE project:

http://www.gnomedesktop.com/comments.php?op=Reply&pid=6543&sid=908

Do more searches and you see a lot more. These same people organise trolls against KDE on other sites like dot.kde.org, Slashdot and Linux Today.

by FooBar (not verified)

FUD? Those were *exact quotes* from dot.kde.org. You cannot deny that Mr Magoo, goosnargh and anonymous never said those things.

by anon (not verified)

"It's quite clear that KDE people refuse to cooporate."

This is an exact quote from the KDE people? Idiot.

by FooBar (not verified)

Then are you saying that that is untrue and that you DO want to cooporate?

by Navindra Umanee (not verified)

Don't be a moron, okay? What do you think Open-HCI and freedesktop.org are for? For cooperating. For cooperation between KDE, GNOME and anyone else who wants to cooperate.

Now please take your FUD and go away if you are incapable of holding a serious discussion.