Qt, the GPL, Business and Freedom (OfB) [LWN.net]

Qt, the GPL, Business and Freedom (OfB)

Posted Aug 8, 2005 23:49 UTC (Mon) by pynm0001 (guest, #18379)
In reply to: Qt, the GPL, Business and Freedom (OfB) by ajross
Parent article: Qt, the GPL, Business and Freedom (OfB)

So in a real-world situation a corporation developing an application is
going to choose a GUI toolkit with no commercial support instead of one
with? You pointed out a similar example yourself: Many companies
willingly buy MSDN licenses when they don't have to. The Platform SDK is
available from Microsoft for free, and they'll even mail you the CD for a
very reasonable fee. And yet, companies spend big bucks on a MSDN
license.

Why is this? Perhaps it's because of the support that such a license
buys the company and its developers. Perhaps they want someone to yell
at when something doesn't work. Perhaps they just feel better knowing
that somewhere in Redmond is a Microserf whose only duty is to make sure
that they are able to easily develop their needed software.

Who is the GTK+-serf that is doing this today? When a bug in GTK+ is
breaking their application, who do they contact? Novell? Red Hat?

The fact is that in the "real world", the PHBs and executives in the
corporations like being able to hold someone accountable. It's called
Covering Your Ass, and it's the basis of the business plans of many
companies that make money from taking shit from executives in a panic,
including the companies behind MySQL, JBoss, and yes, even Qt.

I would like to know what is up with the FUD regarding: 'Your software
stays "yours", and the platform stays the platform.' This sounds very
similar to the GPL-as-a-virus argument that has been parroted and quickly
discredited many times before. Except that in this case you bought the
*QPL*-ed edition. If you have not read the QPL before, it appears to be
similar to the LGPL by my reading, you can read it at
http://www.trolltech.com/licenses/qpl-annotated.html

But to try and head off the flame war: You're right when you say that
companies trying to develop proprietary software using a Free library are
going to have trouble. Trolltech offers them a way out, a way that for
the vast majority of corporations is a net money saver. For users of
Free software such as KDE and Scribus, we get a commercial-quality
library backed by dozens of the smartest developers money can hire. This
is not to mention the developers sponsored by Trolltech to work on non-Qt
software, such as the upcoming Exa hardware acceleration patches for
X.org.

So if a few companies are legally restrained from leeching off of the
hard work of others without either paying the Trolls for their trouble,
or sharing the results of their burden like the rest of us, I'll go ahead
and say that I honestly would not shed a tear.

Regards,
- Michael Pyne

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Qt, the GPL, Business and Freedom (OfB)

Posted Aug 9, 2005 0:14 UTC (Tue) by ajross (subscriber, #4563) [Link]

> So in a real-world situation a corporation developing an application
> is going to choose a GUI toolkit with no commercial support instead
> of one with?

This is a straw man. Commercial customers that buy their linux from distributors like Red Hat or Novell most certainly do get a GUI toolkit with commercial support. And yes, Red Hat and Novell both track bugs in Gtk+ (and Qt, for that matter) for their customers.

The problem (trying to state this very carefully so as not to be misinterpreted again) is that Red Hat and Novell aren't able to offer support for non-GPL'ed KDE application development in the same way that they are able to for Gnome applications. This is not "bad" from a free software perspective. But it is "complicated" for the customers insofar as it differs from the way it works with competing products (Gnome, OS/X, MSDN, Solaris, etc...)

I'll stop now. But *please* re-read my earlier posts, with an eye to the facts that (1) I'm not arguing that developers should be choosing Gnome/Gtk over KDE/Qt and (2) I'm personally very much a fan of the GPL. But that doesn't mean that all things Troll are a good thing for KDE, either. You don't have to be pro-Gnome to think that, perhaps, a less "complicated" relationship with the underlying toolkit might be a good thing for KDE.

Qt, the GPL, Business and Freedom (OfB)

Posted Aug 9, 2005 2:06 UTC (Tue) by pynm0001 (guest, #18379) [Link]

> The problem (trying to state this very carefully so as not to be
> misinterpreted again) is that Red Hat and Novell aren't able to
> offer support for non-GPL'ed KDE application development in the
> same way that they are able to for Gnome applications.

Although very true, the point to this is that Trolltech *can*. Sure it's
a different entry that must be entered into Accounts Payable, but I think
we've already established that for most serious businesses, the license
cost is not a large factor. The question in this case then is... who do
you pay for support.

With LGPL'ed software like GTK+, you pay whoever can help you. With
GPL'ed software like Qt and MySQL, you *also* pay whoever can help you.
In these cases there happen to be companies behind the software
development, who have chosen the GPL so that if you use their library
commercially they at least get a piece of the action.

> But it is "complicated" for the customers insofar as it differs
> from the way it works with competing products (Gnome, OS/X,
> MSDN, Solaris, etc...)

But that's what I'm not seeing. How does this differ? With MSDN you pay
Microsoft their fee and do what you want. With Solaris you pay Sun their
fee and do what they want (for a long time you had to pay just for decent
dev tools, same with MS). Likewise with Apple and OS/X. When using Qt
(for *commercial* development!), you pay Trolltech. Simple. Just like
companies have done for years now.

In fact the odd one out in this case is GTK+ based software. There's
certainly corporate support behind it with the likes of Red Hat and
Novell, and all the other companies making good software with it. But
there's not really that *one* company you go to for GTK+ support. Not
that this is a problem per se for users of GTK+, but I don't see how this
complicates commercial development using Qt either.

> I'll stop now. But *please* re-read my earlier posts, with an eye
> to the facts that (1) I'm not arguing that developers should
> be choosing Gnome/Gtk over KDE/Qt and

Noted. Although I hope you understand why it is that a lot of KDE devs
have come to the defense of their chosen toolkit. ;)

> (2) I'm personally very much a fan of the GPL. But that doesn't mean
> that all things Troll are a good thing for KDE, either. You don't
> have to be pro-Gnome to think that, perhaps, a less "complicated"
> relationship with the underlying toolkit might be a good thing
> for KDE.

Well there are certainly things that have been in Qt that KDE has had to
ignore, or to do better. Sometimes it gets recycled back into Qt (I
believe Qt 4 has a lot of improvements inspired by KDE code). And it's
obvious as a general rule that a desktop environment should not live and
die by its toolkit.

Luckily that's not an issue for KDE. It's certainly true that KDE has
*had* a complicated relationship with Qt. That's not true anymore. Qt
is even more Free than Gtk+ is now. Of course, this will inconvenience
some people, just as there are devs out there anxiously awaiting the day
that Trolltech loses their minds and BSD's Qt. ;)

Trolltech can't make everyone happy, and nor should they try. KDE, on
the other hand, needs to look after their best interest. Right now, I
can tell you that there is no viable competition to Qt toolkit-wise for
use with KDE. Since KDE is in the business of making the best Free
Desktop Environment out there, this isn't a bad thing for KDE. The fact
that there is a vibrant commercial development environment around Qt/KDE
is icing on the cake. :)