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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: Does KDE want to limit or destroy its commercial acceptance?
From:       Waldo Bastian <bastian () kde ! org>
Date:       2003-12-30 11:04:48
Message-ID: 200312301204.49748.bastian () kde ! org
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On Mon December 29 2003 22:49, Paul Hampson wrote:
> Should we not encourage people/companies to port their software to Linux?

Yes, we should.

> This then comes to the issue of Qt, which is an excellent tool for
> compiling on many platforms and allows developers to deploy an a wide
> variety of systems. Isnt this just what Linux needs?

Yes, it is.

> It needs to encourage top quality applications to port to Linux so people
> can see what we have to offer. 

That is what is happening already. An increasing number of Qt-based commercial 
applications become available for Linux.

> If we get people using proprietary on Linux, we can get them to 
> begin to use Opensource software. KDE's statement at the start of the
> email, is quoted from their site [see
> http://developer.kde.org/documentation/books/kde-2.0-development/ch19lev1se
>c2.html ] seems to hinder development of what could be a lifeline for linux
> to pulled out of its seeming obscurity.

That's just a misunderstanding. See my other mail.

> The following quote is taken from
> http://pauillac.inria.fr/~lang/hotlist/free/licence/troll/faq-freeedition.h
>tml :
>
> "The LGPL is designed to "permit developers of non-free programs to use
> free libraries" (quote from the LGPL). In other words, if Qt were LGPL'd,
> companies would not have to buy the Professional Edition in order to make
> commercial (non-free) software, they could just use the Free Edition, free
> of charge. That would mean Troll Tech would not get the revenue necessary
> for improving and extending Qt."
>
> But having the software under LGPL would mean that commercial companies
> would develop commercial software, thus bringing Linux to the general
> market place, which it is not at the moment.

Commercial companies are using Qt already today for developing their software 
because Qt is one of the best toolkits available on the market. The decision 
to develop commercial software for Linux is based on many factors, including 
the amount of prospective revenue and overall development cost. I would say 
that at the moment the amount of prospective revenue is the most dominant 
factor which is closely tied to the market-share that Linux has on the 
desktop. The price of a commercial Qt license is a rather insignificant part 
in all that. Looking at those commercial applications that are available 
today suggests that companies that decide to make their products available on 
Linux very often do so using the Qt Professional Edition despite the fact 
that other toolkits are available that are cheaper to purchase. 

> If we consider Qt's closest rival, GTK+ we find several things. If we look
> at http://www.gtk.org/success/ we see that several companies chose the GTK+
> system for development because of the license. This is not evident in all
> the success stories as many are to do with the quality of the software
> (which by the way i am _NOT_ discussing in this email), however i am sure
> if we did a survey of several companies and told them that if they had the
> choice between free, powerful development software that would allow them to
> port to many types of systems with little engineering and gave them the
> ability to choose their liscense (as GTK+ is LGPL'd) over one that is very
> similar yet they have to pay for they would choose the free one.

If you look at 
http://www.trolltech.com/company/customers.html
then you will see that many companies made a different decision. Apearrantly 
they think that Qt is so much better than GTK+ that they don't mind paying 
for it.

> GTK and therefore GNOME gives this facility, and as I see it will be
> adopted by the commercial sector a lot quicker.

When I look at the market place I actually see the exact opposite. I see 
commercial companies choosing Qt/KDE quite massively.

Cheers,
Waldo
- -- 
bastian@kde.org -=|[ KDE: K Desktop for the Enterprise ]|=- bastian@suse.com
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