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List:       kde
Subject:    Re: QT license
From:       Stephen Davies <molten () tpgi ! com ! au>
Date:       1997-05-26 22:17:03
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On Mon, 26 May 1997, Aaron Granick wrote:

> I was just visiting the TrollTech web page, and decided to glance at the
> commercial license section, and noticed that commercial use of QT costs
> almost $1500!  This could be a serious hinderance to commercial KDE
> development ( which I believe is vital to make KDE universally
> popular...one of the main reasons windows has succeeded so well is
> simply the number and quality of apps available, not the OS itself).  To
> expect truly high quality applications, you are going to have to be
> willing to pay for it.

Ohhh, truly high quality applications like Xemacs, gcc and The GIMP you
mean? How about KDE, which will also be a truly high quality application
(suite and more) once it's finished. Things like Netscape and even IE, which
whilst not truly high quality are the best you are going to get in their
fields right now.

But you can't mean them, coz they're free.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if KDE were to be a commercial product then
apart from defeating the purpose of it's existance (Kool Desktop Environment
becomes Expensive Desktop Environment Which U Aint Gonna Buy If Ur A Newbie
Even Tho It's Aimed At You) hardly anyone would use it. And if they did, it
would be because someone pirated it.

I don't know about you, but I personally would rather cobble my way along
with netscape, pine, and all the other applications that I use now than have
to buy something which maybe looked nicer and was better integrated but
which cost money. I'm sure most of the UN*X community would agree with me on
that.

> This license fee could pose a significant problem, imho. (I was playing
> with the idea of making an IDE native to KDE, but a $1500  license fee
> would mean that I could not sell it as a commercial product.

Hmmm, large CAD applications sell for that much per license, that would be
about 10 copies of Borland C++'s IDE, about 100 of a $15 shareware program.
Would you go to the trouble of creating an IDE for the purpose of selling it
(when a completely functional one already exists... http://www.xemacs.org/)
when you expect to make _less_ than $1500 so that you "could not sell it"?
Would you be willing to deny 90% of potential users the ability to use your
brilliant new IDE just so you could make a few bucks if the licence was
cheaper or you expected TrollTech to go out of business with no means of
income?

> Has anyone else discussed this problem? Are there any solutions in the
> works (like a free version of QT, like lesstif to motif )?

haha

> Or perhaps someone knows of a nice GUI library out there that is free? 
> QT is really nice, and i like the programming model.  I don't really
> like Motif, and the others seem to be quite limited (perhaps this is why
> QT was chosen in the first place?)

You hit the nail on the head. There are others, and they do suck, or at
least aren't as good as Qt. Even commercial "truly high quality" class
libraries like Borland's OWL are IMHO inferior to Qt.

In the sense that Qt is "truly high quality" then according to your
reasoning it *should* be commercial. And it is, but TrollTech had the
kindness of heart to let free software developers (and isn't free software
the whole spirit behind Linux?) use it for free.

The idea is, if you aren't selling your software, you can't afford to pay
for Qt so you get it for free. If you are selling your software, you can
afford the license.

> Comments?

Think about it.

> Aaron
 
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