There is a certain corporate comfort level that comes from knowing that there are a few hundred thousand Java programmers out there to choose from.īut the reason not enough programmers know the language? Too expensive to work in, and licensing too Draconian to encourage independent development and exploration. Not that we'd be likely to develop in Eiffel, anyway: not enough programmers know the language. The ISE/GPL license encourages the same decision. It has been a while since I've read through the TrollTech QT license, but at the time (and the time before) it was sufficiently unclear and mined with legal 'gotchas' that we passed. And the same kind of licensing/control mindset has contributed to keeping Eiffel from being a mainstream language. And the cost per seat is very hefty when compared with (free) Java. It is ambiguous and seems too dangerous to use the 'free' version, even (or especially) for software developed for in-house use only. The QT licensing is why I (and the company I work for) don't use QT. If their goal is to sell an idea (and Eiffel is a bundle of great ideas!), then their licensing scheme is in the way, and my goal is to keep things simple and legal. If their goal is to make that buck, then power to them, but my goal is not to spend that buck, so what's next in line? While I can fully appreciate that the makers of tools such as QT and ISE need to make a buck (don't we all), they are in competition now with Java, Groovy, Ruby, Python, etc. Most people want to contribute back, and don't want to be long-term responsible for maintaining their own source tree. So, bringing this back to languages, the differences in the two platforms, in my eyes, boils down to languages, not licenses or business support!Īs an aside, I don't understand why Public Domain isn't used more often. Yet the call to create something like Vala (or just use Objective-C) was heard in 2001. Gnome has spent time investing in doing similar things with Vala, but this is more recent. Qt had the Moc, and GNUstep and Cocoa both had Objective-C. By contrast, GNU GNUstep, Apple Cocoa and Trolltech Qt frameworks had full-fledged compilers and languages. Gnome's Object Model previously used languages with poor support for component-oriented programming these languages lacked a Delphi-style Properties, Methods and Events (PME) Model. ![]() Gnome lost serious ground to KDE when the lead developers went down the Bonobo route, and KDE went with D-Bus.ģ. Gnome has big commercial support (the project's leader is the VP of Developer Technologies at Novell).Ģ. ![]() Qt+CPP, but if I had to point to the one major reason the latter is leap years ahead I'd have to say it's that Qt has a big commercial backer.ġ. GTK+/Gnome have been playing catch up up until very recently. If Trolltech's licensing was hurting KDE/Qt, then I would expect it to be of lower quality. If you buy a Qt license you can make closed source KDE apps. Developing MS software in the past has meant buying a compiler suite that was at one time more expensive than Qt, not getting any source code in the deal, and having your resultant software only run on one platform.Īlso, just to clarify: the kdelibs are LGPL. ISV's have proven in the past they will subject themselves to far greater lock in than they get with Qt. Before Cairo, KDE clearly had fancier eye candy (and in some areas still does - Metacity still doesn't support fading widgets for instance). Linspire also helps fund KDE development. I would think ISV's would be something he's considering seeing as he's poured quite a bit of money into these projects. Mark Shuttleworth, Ubuntu's creator, has stated that Kubuntu is now his primary desktop and he wants to make it a full fledged distribution. ![]() Ubuntu, although primarily Gnome based at this time, has a spin off Kubuntu. I haven't read anything that suggests the shift was due to licensing. The shift started when they bought Ximian, which was Gnome based. Novell's SUSE has been a KDE based distribution for longer than it has been a Gnome based one. This becomes pretty obvious when you look at the usability pushes from Ubuntu and Novell and the complete lack of headlines about similar efforts from Redhat. Redhat choosing Gnome is almost insignificant. My point was that he's evidence that KDE hackers aren't distraught by QT's licensing scheme. My point with the KDE hacker wasn't that he was a great objective source. That only qualifies as being held hostage if you openly acknowledge that you're developing a platform intended for closed source software.
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