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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: Does KDE want to limit or destroy its commercial acceptance?
From:       Shaheed <srhaque () iee ! org>
Date:       2003-12-30 10:37:09
Message-ID: 200312301037.09541.srhaque () iee ! org
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I was resisting replying to this *KDE* thread, but since the thread has 
already started spiralling into Qt, perhaps I can give a first hand account 
of the selection of Qt in a commercial setting?

- A team of 4 engineers was responsible for mainting and developing a 
distributed server suite of some 970,000 lines of highly-portable, 
soft-realtime C code. The code achieved its portability partially by using 
its own custom VM for exceptions, threads, memory, interrupts and ORB rather 
than any standard C libraries.

- We wanted to open the codebase up to C++ and Java code while keeping the 
portability to allow the development team to grow (and not to have to learn 
the custom VM or ORB).

- We did a search for supported products that could help us on our way. We 
looked at all the major C++ libraries, and when we examined the portability 
issues (including potential Windows support), support for threading 
(including TLS), support for databases, files and network I/O, potential 
longevity of the codebase/company, the choice was VERY limited and VERY easy: 
Qt. Note that GUI support was just a nice to have for us.

- We *then* looked at the cost: management laughed when they were told it 
would cost $1000 for each developer per year with no runtime charge!

The reason is that the fully loaded cost of an engineer is now between $100k 
and $200k per annum. The figures explain why so many others have stated that 
Qt licensing cost is not an issue.

Thanks, Shaheed
 
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