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List:       kde-freeqt
Subject:    Re: [freeqt] Harmony Revival
From:       Merlin <duchet01 () condor ! stcloudstate ! edu>
Date:       1999-03-25 23:10:00
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>>Merlin wrote:
>> 
>> Well, why don't we ask Troll Tech what they think?  We can make some
>> kind of arrangement with them to avoid any problems...can we not?

>Carl Thompson <cet@elinux.net>  
>This was tried by the original Harmony team.  Troll Tech refused to say
>that they would not sue if the team did not violate their copyright.

Well, since they can't sue over an API, I don't see a problem, although
I'm obviously concerned.

>However, some members of the KDE team have said on the list recently that
>KDE would not switch from QT even if a free compatible alternative
>existed.  To me, that is much more of a concern than Troll Tech.

Yes, this is, if this is truly their attitude.  I have to wonder as to
their intentions on the matter of Qt.

------- Jo Dillon <emily@thelonious.new.ox.ac.uk> ---------------------  
>>Merlin (duchet01@condor.stcloudstate.edu) spake thusly:
>> We're just honest programmers, trying to do something useful.  We are 

>>not trying to cheat TT.  We want to be certain that TT understands that.
>>We just want more options.

>The trouble from their point of view is that a Harmony usable by
>commercial companies could eat into their revenues. They're honest
>programmers too, and they depend on Qt for their livelihood.

Yeah, I understand that, Jo. Trust me.  I also program/consult for a
living, when I am not taking classes and I understand exactly where they
stand. 

>  I feel I should just mention at this point that we (the old team ;)
>did talk to Trolltech a while back. They were fairly sympathetic to a
>GPL'd Qt (which couldn't be used in closed-source projects), less so to
>an LGPL one.

What kind of hassle would it be to get Harmony from LGPL to GPL status?
Just agreement?

>>However, some members of the KDE team have said on the list recently that
>>KDE would not switch from QT even if a free compatible alternative existed.
>>To me, that is much more of a concern than Troll Tech.

Yes, that is.  I don't understand their attitude, if that is true.

 
>  What you're not thinking of here is the problems of keeping up with
>Qt; KDE developers have said they'll use spiffy new Qt features as soon
>as Qt comes out, which Harmony would have to spend time cloning. So
>Harmony would normally be some way behind the latest-and-greatest KDE.

That is true, there would be no avoiding that.

------ Wolfgang Thaller <wolfgang.thaller@gmx.net> --------  

>If Harmony is fully Qt compatible, KDE won't need to be forked;
>there will be just a few changes to the makefiles and maybe a few diffs
>here and there. I think many Linux distributors (especially RedHat) would
>prefer KDE/Harmony to KDE/Qt. So if it's not too much of an effort to
>port a Qt app to Harmony, KDE will work with Harmony, even if half of the
>KDE developers would prefer Qt or a GPLed library.

Yes, indeed.   That is the definate idea.


Another thought occurred to me while I was writing this...  What is the
possibility of writing a GTK compatibility layer that would allow Qt
and hence KDE apps to be compiled using GTK or GNOME?  If we did that
with Harmony's code, the legal crap could be avoided to an extent, but
only so far.

I haven't looked at either API yet, so don't flame me if it is a
"braindead" idea...

Personally, I would like to see Harmony (if we can restart the
project) remain separate from GNOME so that they don't end up being
exactly the same, too much alike thinking kills originality, but hey -
could this be a viable idea?

Thanks for reading all of this.

T.J. Duchene
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