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List:       kde-freeqt
Subject:    Re: [freeqt] How to start with Harmony? +vote
From:       Carl Thompson <cet () elinux ! net>
Date:       1998-11-23 17:17:09
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Christian Boos wrote:

> ...

> Then, late august, I came in the Harmony project with a new
> implementation idea, which wasn't meant originally to be 100% source
> compatible with Qt. This evolved in a multi-threaded signal/slot
> library which can be found at
> 
> ftp://arthur.u-strasbg.fr/pub/Harmony/Relay++-0.2.tar.gz
> 
> Since this library doesn't need a precompiler and use a slightly
> different syntax for signal and slots, it hasn't merged with Harmony
> yet. But this merge was planned, as in the meantime I found a way to
> make it source compatible with Qt anyway.
> 
> Now, I work on a patch to merge this stuff with an even more Qt-compatible
> library than Harmony was... :)

Which library is this or do you mean the QPLed QT?  Do you or anyone else
have any plans to merge your library with the current Harmony?  Is the
Harmony project moving in that direction, or are they happy with the current
code that uses magna?

>> I've also heard that I can't look at any source code or headers from QT
>> if I'm to work on Harmony. Is this true? What about QT API documentation?
> 
> Look at the QT API documentation only.

Understood.
 
> If you want to continue the Harmony project as it originally started
> (this is, ignoring what TT did in the meantime, which is your right),
> I suggest however that you read the Mailing List archive
> (http://lists.kde.org), especially the messages from RMS, which stated
> that a GNU GPL license was more appropriate. There was a hot debate
> whether to choose between GPL or LGPL, and we finally went LGPL for
> various reasons.

I already have the messages; I've been lurking on the list for several
months...

> But now, I would consider that given the only serious reasons to not
> be happy with the QPL are for GNU technicals, the correct choice is the
> license freeqt under GPL.

My reason is that the way things are now gives TT too much control over
commercial software on Linux if the KDE desktop becomes the standard.  We
need a library that is LGPLed. I am not in the software business (anymore)
and firmly believe that Open Source Software is the best software both
technically and philosophically, but I am not so naive as to believe that
commercial software isn't of vital importance to the success of Linux in the
next few years.  No one company should be allowed to control access to Linux
commercial development.  (Please ignore this paragraph if I am starting to
preach-- I have no desire to start another war of words.)

> ...

> What I'm proposing is a new start for Harmony. Our legacy code should
> still be kept around of course, but we could now focus on
> real 'harmonizing' issues:
> 
> 1. KDE/GNOME interoperability
> 2. Qt 2 enhancements
> 3. KDE/Qt interaction
> 
> I vote yes for that.

Sounds intriguing, but are you talking about a replacement for QT, or just
patches to the QPLed version?  If a replacement, I hope that it would be
LGPLed so that commercial can integrate into the desktop.  If so, I would
sign on board and help out as much as I can...
 
> ...

Thank you for answering my questions,
Carl Thompson

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