Trolltech and KDE Free Qt Foundation Announce Updated Agreement (KDE.News) [LWN.net]

Trolltech and KDE Free Qt Foundation Announce Updated Agreement (KDE.News)

Posted Jul 26, 2004 20:37 UTC (Mon) by proski (subscriber, #104) [Link]

Isn't Qt already under GPL?

Trolltech and KDE Free Qt Foundation Announce Updated Agreement (KDE.News)

Posted Jul 27, 2004 2:53 UTC (Tue) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

Isn't Qt already under GPL?

Yes, it is. Don't let that stop GPL zealots from spouting off though...

Trolltech and KDE Free Qt Foundation Announce Updated Agreement (KDE.News)

Posted Jul 26, 2004 20:55 UTC (Mon) by elanthis (guest, #6227) [Link]

No, it's a good thing. One of the reasons that GNOME is much stronger in the corporate world than KDE is because companies cannot develop a closed KDE application without purchasing a Qt license. With GNOME, all the public libraries are LGPL or BSD/MIT, so a closed application may be developed using the GNOME framework with no need to purchase licenses.

So long as Trolltech sells Qt licenses, they'll of course want things to stay as is, since that's how they make a lot of their money. However, if Trolltech ever goes under or for some other reason can no longer sell Qt licenses, then it would be *impossible* to develop a closed app for KDE - because developers would be required to purchase a license from a company that no longer sells them. Therefor, under this agreement, if Trolltech can no longer sell licenses, the Qt license changes to BSD thus making it possible for closed applications to be developed against Qt. Without this, the death of Trolltech (or the sale of Qt) could very easily result in the complete and absolute death of KDE/Qt as a platform for closed applications.

Trolltech and KDE Free Qt Foundation Announce Updated Agreement (KDE.News)

Posted Jul 26, 2004 21:54 UTC (Mon) by leonscape (guest, #12261) [Link]

One of the reasons that GNOME is much stronger in the corporate world than KDE is because companies cannot develop a closed KDE application without purchasing a Qt license.

I think you've got that the wrong way round. Qt has more commercial applications, than GNOME.

Companies using it are Adobe, HP, IBM, ARM, Shell, Boeing, Sharp, Bosch, Siemens, Lockheed Martin, Sony, DaimlerChrysler, Michelin, NASA, NEC, Fraunhofer, Pioneer, and ESA, To name a few.

Trolltech and KDE Free Qt Foundation Announce Updated Agreement (KDE.News)

Posted Jul 26, 2004 21:57 UTC (Mon) by joedrew (guest, #828) [Link]

True, but he was saying that KDE has less corporate acceptance than GNOME, not Qt vs GTK, which is an entirely different thing. :)

Trolltech and KDE Free Qt Foundation Announce Updated Agreement (KDE.News)

Posted Jul 26, 2004 23:26 UTC (Mon) by leonscape (guest, #12261) [Link]

But if KDE not getting corporate acceptance is a problem with Qt not having the right license, yet Qt is the most successful in corporate circles, how do you square that logic?

When people say GNOME is more successful in the corporate I think they mean Ximian and Sun are trying to sell versions of it. Not that lots of people are flocking to build commercial applications on GNOME. Which to be far their aren't many for KDE either.

It just beginning to annoy me that everytime KDE comes up someone drags the same old tired arguments out again, witch seem to have very little actual basis.

Trolltech and KDE Free Qt Foundation Announce Updated Agreement (KDE.News)

Posted Jul 27, 2004 2:13 UTC (Tue) by lakeland (subscriber, #1157) [Link]

Because QT licences are expensive for individuals, they're only popular
for real commercial projects. Joe and his mate writing an iTunes
replacement for linux won't want to buy a commercial QT licence -- odds
are sales will be lower than the licence costs.

Don't get me wrong, I think QT is an awesome product, but I believe the
current setup strongly discourages people who want to dabble in commercial
use of QT. The free end of the market are happy (with the GPL) and the
mid to top of the market are happy (with their 'cheap' commercial licence)
but the shareware author isn't.

Depending on your POV, this might be a good thing.

Trolltech and KDE Free Qt Foundation Announce Updated Agreement (KDE.News)

Posted Jul 27, 2004 14:19 UTC (Tue) by leonscape (guest, #12261) [Link]

He mentioned corporate, not shareware, shareware is a diffrent matter entirely, but then theres very little ( if any ) shareware at all for GNOME, or KDE. Its mostly a MAC and Windows thing.

Trolltech and KDE Free Qt Foundation Announce Updated Agreement (KDE.News)

Posted Jul 27, 2004 22:01 UTC (Tue) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link]

Simple. There are two types of persons who use Qt and GTK+:
1. Companies who use it like "widget library or today". Yesterday they used Zinc (or sometimes even Turbo Vision - remember this beast?), today it's Qt, tomorrow it'll be TheNextBigThing(tm).
2. Companies who actually do care about free software. Yet thay did not think they can open source for everything (indid - for most big programs it's long and painfull process since there are a lot of libraries which can not be outsourced).

Most companies of first type will go with Qt: after all it's "normal proprietary library with normal support and everything". KDE and obviously "KDE Free Qt Foundation" exist in other world for them and not important. Qt for them is "crossplatform toolkit", nothing more.

Most companies of second type will go with GNOME (and thus GTK+).

Yes, there are currently more companies of first type and thus Qt used more by companies then GTK+ but when KDE vs GNOME is concerned situation is different.

Of course if GNOME will continue to throw good features away then eventually sheer usability problem will push KDE on top: right now GNOME is much less usable for knowleadgeable person and get more and more dumb as time goes on :(

Trolltech and KDE Free Qt Foundation Announce Updated Agreement (KDE.News)

Posted Jul 26, 2004 20:55 UTC (Mon) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

As far as I know, it is perfectly permissible under the (3-clause) BSD license to essentially relicense the code under the GPL or LGPL. So, if Trolltech released Qt under the BSD license, the community could form a new project and contribute all of the changes under the GPL or LGPL, and the resulting terms would be those of the chosen GNU license. The BSD license (or, perhaps, the MIT license) is really the right one for what is essentially source escrow to the open source community, since it allows the community to choose the desired license for future work by the community.

Trolltech and KDE Free Qt Foundation Announce Updated Agreement (KDE.News)

Posted Jul 27, 2004 2:52 UTC (Tue) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

As far as I know, it is perfectly permissible under the (3-clause) BSD license to essentially relicense the code under the GPL or LGPL.

For your information, Qt is already under the GPL and has been for a long time. And if it weren't, what you're suggesting ("essentially relicense it" without making your own contributions) is pointless because the BSD version would be already out there and offers no particular restrictions or disadvantages under the GPL. What is it with you GPL zealots? Why don't you demand relicensing of OpenSSH, XFree86/XOrg and other BSD/MIT-licensed software that every free operating system uses today?

Trolltech and KDE Free Qt Foundation Announce Updated Agreement (KDE.News)

Posted Jul 27, 2004 3:39 UTC (Tue) by iabervon (subscriber, #722) [Link]

I was actually pointing out an advantage of the BSD license over the
(L)GPL: that, should a group which takes over maintainership of the
project down the road want to change the license, they can. If Trolltech
were to go under, and the new Qt maintainers decided to choose the LGPL
to keep their contributions from being used in a closed-source version of
Qt, they would need to use BSD release and not the (currently-available)
GPL release to change the license from, because the GPL doesn't permit
changing the license to the LGPL.

There's no reason to change a license from the BSD to the (L)GPL unless
the development community changes radically to a group that doesn't
approve of closed-source modifications of their contributions. There is,
on the other hand, no real possibility for most projects of changing a
license from the (L)GPL to anything else. If the XOrg team were (for some
insane reason) fed up with the X in Solaris using their extensions, they
could relicense with the LGPL and GPL.

Of course, a new group taking over Qt from Trolltech could decide they
want any license for their version, and the availability of the BSD would
let them use their choice (within reason).

Trolltech and KDE Free Qt Foundation Announce Updated Agreement (KDE.News)

Posted Jul 27, 2004 1:45 UTC (Tue) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]

" Interesting... the BSD license instead of the GPL, hey? Can't say as I like that too much..."

I belive the intention is that if Trolltech "goes under" of some sort, it will enable those now with commercial licences for Windows and Mac, to take newer and upgraded code of QT librarys from the foundation, and include it in their proprietary projects. Its only fair.

Trolltech and KDE Free Qt Foundation Announce Updated Agreement (KDE.News)

Posted Jul 27, 2004 10:05 UTC (Tue) by French_Guest (guest, #16946) [Link]

I think that the reason for the BSD license is much better than that :

In the current economical and financial context, nothing protects a relatively small company like TrollTech from all sorts of sharks : people trying to take control of TrollTech by various ways (patent or contract infrigement claims, stock price manipulation, bribery, FUD addressed to Qt customers => income down, forcing bankruptcy...).

Once those people got the company, they could do everything what they want with Qt and other assets. For example (pure imagination), what if Microsoft letting TrollTech go bankrupt, and cheaply buying all of the remaining TrollTech's assets ?

The BSD Licence would allow former TrollTech founders and engineers to create a NewTroll company, releasing a New-T product, with the same licenses and services to customers as before. They have the experience, knowledge and know-how.

This means that even a "completely successful" attack to bring down TrollTech would not be able to destroy the technology and the people. I think that this is a very clever chess move from TrollTech.

Trolltech and KDE Free Qt Foundation Announce Updated Agreement (KDE.News)

Posted Jul 27, 2004 14:11 UTC (Tue) by rsidd (subscriber, #2582) [Link]

This is the first insightful comment I've seen on this page. I think
you're spot-on.

Trolltech and KDE Free Qt Foundation Announce Updated Agreement (KDE.News)

Posted Jul 27, 2004 16:31 UTC (Tue) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]

"The BSD Licence would allow former TrollTech founders and engineers to create a NewTroll company, releasing a New-T product, with the same licenses and services to customers as before. They have the experience, knowledge and know-how."

But they could achieve exactly the same of what you describe with the plain old GPL license,... even better, because if Microsoft "rips them off" by a low live buy out, they Microsoft could just dump the worst and incorporate the best parts of the QT librarys no matter if the license was GPL or BSD(they just own it, period)... but if the code wore to be passed to the foundation with a GPL license only, it would not permit any future incorporation of any future QT Free Edition developed library into Microsoft or any other proprietary software... and if the former founders and engineers gain control again of the the new QT (new-T), and create a new Trolltech (NewTroll), they just could do that better with the GPL because it will force Microsoft to continuously try to buy them off if they want to stop the Troll...

In a more rushed commnet i could say, that TrollTech wants to be bought by a good money, by adding value, permitting anyone that buys the company to benefit by enabling the incorporation of any further developed QT Free Edition code, to even a completly and only proprietary edition of the Official TrollTech QT librarys... the BSD license just permits that...

... but i rest my case with a mere thought of wanting to protect actual proprietary customers.

Trolltech and KDE Free Qt Foundation Announce Updated Agreement (KDE.News)

Posted Jul 27, 2004 17:40 UTC (Tue) by huffd (guest, #10382) [Link]

Gasp! A real thinker! I hope you know you've become problematic for the QT people. As soon as Microsoft buys TrollTech, your job will immediately be outsourced. Of course this is what it is all about. This is purely an announcement that TrollTech sales of their non-GPL libraries deadpanned over 18 months ago and they are looking for a buyer. Thanks for putting words to their actions.

Trolltech and KDE Free Qt Foundation Announce Updated Agreement (KDE.News)

Posted Jul 27, 2004 19:39 UTC (Tue) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]

Sorry, no offense intended... just see below.

Trolltech and KDE Free Qt Foundation Announce Updated Agreement (KDE.News)

Posted Jul 27, 2004 19:32 UTC (Tue) by mmarq (guest, #2332) [Link]

Reflecting about the ideia...

It will never be a new TrollTech (NewTroll or whatever) and neither a new QT (New-T or whatever) with the same licenses and services to costumers as before,... no matter what happens in the future... sorry but the ideia suddenly just seem too stupid and unfeasible...

The QT Free Edition could only be licensed with BSD by the foundation, as stated in the agreement, with the foundation having a non-exclusive, irrevocable right for X-systems. That is, there is a new Open Source compatible with GPL license, called QT Free Edition License, that is granted by TrollTech and TrollTech only,... but if the TrollTech or the actual 'status Quo' for whatever the reason 'goes under', the last release for X-systems will stay BSD available for as long as the foundation will exist, but only for X-systems... hmmm... lets see...

1) If TrollTech just dies of natural causes or is bought and terminated, no matter how many companys try to take advantage of the BSD licensed code... the dual license business of late TrollTech, althought feasible based on X-systems, will not be practically replicable even by the same engineers and former founders, and impossible on Windows and Mac. Proprietary customers for Windows and Mac will only have, what is dependend on contract agreements,...nothing more. There will be a considerable impulse to fork the X-systems BSD based code... no competion on X-systems is foreseeable though.

2) If TrollTech is bought out, and continue the actual 'status quo', no matter how many companys try to take advantage of the BSD licensed code... althought feasible for X-systems, its business model will continue to just not being practically replicable by anyone else, and impossible to replicate on Windows and Mac. Proprietary customers for Windows and Mac will continue business as usual,... and everything stays the same with no fork foreseeable for x-systems.

3) If TrollTech does not die, naturaly or by forced termination, but just stop releasing the QT Free Edition, no matter how many companys try to take advantage of the BSD licensed code... althought feasible for X-systems, its business model will continue to just not being practically replicable by anyone else, and impossible on Windows and Mac also. Proprietary customers for Windows and Mac will continue business as usual. There will be a tremendous impulse to fork the X-systems BSD based code.

So the conclusion is not that of protecting proprietary customers, or a desire to sell, but to avoid license issues, with a clever and somehow complicated "mechanism", that enables TrollTech to also profit from the development in open source... what passes in BSD on X-systems would never conflit with GPL if it passes to Windows or Mac sytems. So i emend past statements.

From their point of view i belive TrollTech thinks they are going to stay here for a very long time. Pity they see the X-system as only a development oportunity, and the Open Source world with very little commercial value,... is there no place for services in software development in their vision ??