[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread] 

List:       kde-freeqt
Subject:    Re: [freeqt] GPL vs LGPL
From:       Carl Thompson <cet () elinux ! net>
Date:       1999-04-02 12:44:48
[Download RAW message or body]

Steve Hutton wrote:

> ...

> Then again, after you pay for QT, you can compile the same code on
> Unix and Windows.  You are getting quite a bit more in that respect.
> Is it worth the money to commercial developers?  The market will decide,
> won't it?

Actually, once you pay for Qt for Unix, you can't  use it for Windows
without paying Troll Tech _another_ thousand dollars.

> As for getting "10 times more with MFC", I disagree.  I code MFC every
> day and find QT much nicer...

I've never used Qt so I don't know, but I've heard that it is a truly
excellent toolkit.  What I mean by this is that even though Qt may be a
better GUI toolkit than MFC, MFC is much _much_ more than just a GUI
toolkit.

Of course, from what I understand, the support you get from Troll Tech is
about a billion times better than anything you'd get from Microsoft.  For
many developers, this more than makes up for the price difference.  But
we're talking about programmers that can't afford this...

Even though I no longer write software for a living, to be honest I would
have considered buying Qt myself if I hadn't found FLTK which does the same
thing for free (but I make lots of money).  FLTK is LGPL and is
cross-plaform supporting multiple compilers on Unix systems, and Mingw32,
CygWin, Visual C++ and Borland C++ on Windows.  I have since become one of
the core developers, and the support we give on the mailing list I think is
quite good but also quite free.  Why pay Troll Tech $2,000+ and $300/year
per developer for something we are willing to give you free?  FLTK's user
base is still relatively small, but a very large portion of them are people
using it in companies so it must be good enough for commercial use.  And
before you say something about doing it for commercial interests I'll say
that most of FLTK's core developers work for companies which use or have
used FLTK, and without them there wouldn't even be a FLTK (especially Bill
Spitzak/Digital Domain and Michael Sweet/Easy Software Products.  Yes, they
get to use FLTK in their products, but the contributions they and the other
commercial users have made have been much more than worth it.  This also
means that FLTK is more stable than other free software projects.  You know
that it will be around next year because these companies need to support it
to support their products.  For instance, last year Digital Domain decided
to stop using and supporting FLTK but Easy Software Products stepped in and
took over as the primary provider of resources for FLTK.  Yes, they were
acting in their own best interest, but the benefit to the Free Software
community was also very great.  This type of thing could not happen with the
QPL or even the GPL, so if the primary company has problems, everyone else
is SOL.  (I understand the Free QT thing has some protections against this,
which is good).  This is why we support and encourage commercial use of
FLTK.

I guess what I'm saying is that I disagree with RMS and others who say that
the GPL, QPL, and similar licenses are free.  In reality, the GPL is free
only if you use it in the way RMS says and for projects that RMS wants you
to ("free" software).  That to me is not freedom.  Of course, on the other
extreme truly free licenses like BSD allows commercial interests to usurp
the code and re-release it under much more restrictive licenses as Apple did
with Mach/Darwin and the APSL.  I think a happy medium which still makes
sure the code stays readily available for everyone is the LGPL, and that's
why I support it for everything.

In the context of Harmony and this thread, this means I think Harmony should
be LGPL.  Also, I just don't like the idea of a commercial company
controlling KDE (and consequently Linux) to some degree.  Call me paranoid.

Carl Thompson

[prev in list] [next in list] [prev in thread] [next in thread]