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Thanks in part to the discussions held here by the freshmeat community, Trolltech has decided to release the next version of Qt under the GNU General Public License. In today's editorial, Eirik Eng and Matthias Ettrich explain the reasoning behind their decision. Copyright notice: All reader-contributed material on freshmeat.net is the property and responsibility of its author; for reprint rights, please contact the author directly. Since the appearance of the July 1st freshmeat editorial by Eirik Eng, we have received many comments on our stance in the licensing discussions concerning the QPL and the GPL. As mentioned in that editorial, we have been actively working for some time to make the QPL compatible with the GPL. When we made the QPL almost two years ago, we were afraid of harming the growing Qt programming community with several incompatible versions of Qt. We felt that we lacked the resources to provide an infrastructure to let other parties interested in Qt development cooperate with us instead of splitting the development. This is not achieved with just a public CVS, but requires careful code review, intensive discussions about design, and a very short response time to suggestions and requests from the community. Without these, we would not be able to keep the high quality of the code base. Today, Trolltech is a much bigger company (five times more developers, to be precise) with a fast-growing second development department in Australia, so this is no longer an issue. We want to give a strong sign that we have never wanted to control the graphical interface of the free Unices (and GNU, which, as we know, is Not Unix). Instead, we want to provide the best technology possible to write great applications. Thanks to the K Desktop Environment (KDE), the quality of free applications finally reached and even went beyond the level of quality represented in applications on MS Windows. Recently, several vendors of Open Source applications have enhanced their commitment to the GPL, favoring it over their more specific Open Source licenses. Mozilla and Staroffice are two examples. In more and more cases, newly opened software is distributed under the GPL. While we believe there are clarity problems with the GPL and strongly encourage the FSF to speed up work on an improved version 3, we see this standardization process as being very important to the success of the free Unices. It would be a shame if Qt, the base library of many of the available applications and the foundation of KDE, were to be an exception. Under these considerations, using an unmodified GNU General Public License appears a wise thing to do. However, we hesitated due to recent discussions about the strength and validity of the GPL in regard to protecting libraries. Several features on the Web raised this question, including a freshmeat editorial by one of the authors (Eirik Eng). We read James Ramsey's editorial on July 15th with interest. We could see that we agreed on many points, and the points James brought up concerning the definition of "modules" in the GPL were interesting. We have been in contact with Richard Stallman (President of the Free Software Foundation) on the issue, and he has been kind enough to offer his help and analysis. He has also sent us comments from Professor Eben Moglen, Professor of Law & Legal history and General Counsel for the Free Software Foundation. Professor Moglen points to clause 2 b) in the GPL that speaks about a work that "in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program". After having looked more closely into the matter and the definition of source code in clause 3 (as pointed to by Mr. Ramsey), we have concluded that our fears of people legally making closed source software with a GPLed library were exaggerated. Another item that has been brought to our attention relates to functions defined in C++ header files. There are a number of functions implemented in our header files (inline functions). These are not a part of the binary Qt library but are put into the application or library that uses Qt at compilation time. There can be no doubt that, for any non-trivial program that uses Qt, parts of our code are contained in the binary version of the program. It is clearly in the spirit of the GPL that you must not use a GPLed class library for non-free software development, and there are strong arguments that this is legally binding. We were happy to see wide support within the community to spread this word and hope the community will continue doing so. In short, we have been convinced that the GPL does indeed protect a library from being used to develop non-free software. This is how we interpret the GPL and this is also how the free software community, including the Free Software Foundation, interprets the GPL. Non-free software, in this respect, of course, includes software developed internally in an organization and software with users who do not get access to the source code under a free software license. We have thus decided to license our next version, Qt 2.2, under the GNU General Public License in addition to the QPL and our commercial license. By still offering Qt under the QPL, developers can choose the Open Source license that best fits their needs. This guarantees that existing and future programs that use, for example, the Artistic license can also use Qt. Finally, we would like to thank everybody in the community who has supported us during this process. Now, if you excuse us, we will go back to making Qt even better.
Eirik Eng (eirik.eng@trolltech.com) is the President and co-founder of Trolltech and holds an M.Sc. in Computer Science. He wrote the first versions of Qt together with Haavard Nord, but has been transformed into a pointy-haired boss. Despite his ripe age of 34, he sometimes lurks around the Trolltech offices with an armed nerf gun. He is married to a beautiful French woman and is the father of 2 boys. Matthias Ettrich can be reached at ettrich@trolltech.com; we'll post a bio of him when we have it. :)
T-Shirts and Fame!We're eager to find people interested in writing editorials on software-related topics. We're flexible on length, style, and topic, so long as you know what you're talking about and back up your opinions with facts. Anyone who writes an editorial gets a freshmeat t-shirt from ThinkGeek in addition to 15 minutes of fame. If you think you'd like to try your hand at it, let jeff.covey@freshmeat.net know what you'd like to write about.[Comments are disabled]
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Is the license the problem? I've never cared about the license of QT. The only thing that stops me from
using KDE and other QT programs is that QT looks so much like Windows
(especially the open dialog, it's like a low resolution copy of the windows
open dialog. when you copy an interface, do it in a good way and not such
an ugly looking thing, that's not what I call powerfull or whatever.).
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LGPL? Qt is a library, and should therefore be licensed under LGPL.
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Woohoo! Even though I'm pretty ambivalent about licenses, I'm relieved to hear that
the licensing issues have (apparently) been resolved, I hope that this
leads to more co-operation between the two best options for a *nix desktop
environment, and maybe even (please?!) a common, consistent theme-engine
between KDE and GNOME applications. It's time to rise above the petty and
childish GNOME vs KDE war (not to mention the C++ vs C, and Qt vs GTK
wars), and start acting like you're developing for the same platform in
different ways, for different purposes, with differing goals. There is no
absolute best language/toolkit/desktop environment/OS/computer
architecture/cheese/shoe it's a matter of choosing what works best for you
for the task at hand.
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Doh ! Thanks TrollTech, for making this decision ! I don't understand the flaming gnome/gtk guys & girls. Maybe if you're a core C programmer, and like editing code with a a simple text editor, entering 20 lines of code by hand to display a simple button, you should use GTK. For me, GTK just sucks. I've tried to create a simple program using the GTK library, I had to use about 4 different tools to get it done. There isn't a decent RAD tool available that works nicely with GTK/Gnome. QT has QTDesigner, and ofcourse for KDE there's kdevelop. Not to mention that Borland/Inprise (the kings of RAD tools) will show up with Kylix this year, which makes use of the QT library. Finally a RAD tool for Linux that will allow me and lots of other (commercial) developers to easily create neat Linux applications.
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programming GTK/QT > Gnome is doing it better than KDE.
Me too. I like GTK better for programming.
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Sad, but not for what you think. First, I use GTK+ myself, I don't use Qt at all. I don't care about GNOME
vs. KDE war. --
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Qt - GPL, yet restricted still First, thankyou TrollTech for listening to the community. At the least, this will make including KDE in the Debian distribution easier, and will also encourage development in Qt. However, I had two reasons for not using Qt. The license was a pretty strong reason, but the other reason is just as important. Language. Qt is too strongly bound to C++. I am a C programmer at heart, but I often use other languages when it's more appropriate. If I was to develop Qt apps, I would find myself almost certainly required to use C++. And so I still won't use Qt. btw, there's a discussion on this, including information about a C binding, at http://qt-interest.trolltech.com/apt5.html. I found this by searching for "language bindings" on the www.trolltech.com front page. Go to www.gtk.org and look in the sidebar on the left, it caters to a very large number of languages. As for Win32, there may well be a Qt port to it in fairly short order. There is a Win32 port of GTK+, for instance. No, this is not about C vs C++, it is about choice, nor is it
about GTK+ vs Qt, beyond why I chose GTK+, it is about my reasons
for avoiding Qt despite the license. Open Source to me is about choice and
freedom. (So use Qt if you like, and thanks TrollTech, for the freedom
part of it.)
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GPL License... If this is released under the GPL, then source will be available; if
whatever they release doesn't compile out of the box for Windows, I'm sure
someone will port it.
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It's still a company Very nice, of course. But why? Charity? Remember that TrollTech is a
company. Goal: making profit. They say it's the license...euch there
_marketing_ says it's because of the license. The real reason? Not
profitable enough. The primary market they want to address is the same as
GTK does. Second is Windows. But this has never been a big success. Name me
one "big" application that is using it, except the ones TrollTech
did write. When writing commercial (= Windows) software one doesn't have
time to lear a new API.
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Trends in licensing The one thing that bothers me is that many companies and individuals or
groups are beginning to design software from the ground up with a
closed-source license, presumably to protect their initial investment.
Then, when things look stable, they go GPL for community acceptance.
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The trolls go the second mile Kudos to trolltech for moving to a completely non-restrictive license on qt
- it is indeed a superior toolkit, and hopefully it will now see greater
adoption from those who might have been wavering between qt and gtk due to
license questions.
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Perfect Resolution I've been frustrated and worried by the kde license situation for a while now. It's kept my from using a whole lot of very interesting software and what looks to be a well designed app framework. I had hoped that the kde folks would fix the problem at their end, but this is even better. Excellent job trolltech!
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great... i think that´s great, although i personally don´t like KDE (I
tried KDE 2 beta 3. It was unstable, which is ok - it´s a beta - ,
but it was very slow. That´s not ok) It may be late, but late is
better than never.
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Windows version still proprietary In my opinion it is perfectly fair that the windows version is still proprietary. IMHO if you use a non-free OS where the source is not available, then you are a follower of the closed source community and should be punished by paying the license fees. You might argue that this is a fascist opinion, but hey, it's only an opinion.
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Why not use LGPL? If you were concerned about library issues, why not use the LGPL? In any event, it will interesting to see what happens between GNOME and KDE now that their licenses are the same. For many GTK+/GNOME developers out there, the only thing holding them back from using Qt was the lack of GPL licensing. As a current GNOME hacker, I'm off to learn some Qt now, if you'll excuse me too ;)
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Re: Why not use LGPL? They didn't want LGPL because LGPL is more liberal in that it would let you develop non-GPL programs with the QT library. The GPL license requires you to develop GPL programs with the QT library.
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Looking the gift-horse in the mouth On the one hand, you have cheapskate users who want something for nothing, and will quite happily and disingenuously bang the gong of Free Software if it gets them software for $0. On the other hand, you have quasi-religious zealots who harp on about the principles of Free Software, choosing to ignore (or just plain being ignorant of) the needs of companies to make money. It's hard to convince your shareholders that you should let yourself fall backwards & hope that the Linux community catches you. TrollTech can't win. All they can do is continue to worship the dollar, as is the case with most companies. They sure as hell aren't going to listen to people who do nothing but engage in destructive criticism. They have just given away the family jewels. The least we can do is use an appreciative tone in our criticism.
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negativity Wow, people are so negative. You're all entitled to be that way, of course, but I say: thanks TrollTech. This is a nice gift.
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in other words this is what they mean.
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Sad, sad, sad. Some points: 1.Windows version still propietary. 2.It can't fight with a comparable LGPL toolkit (GTK). 3.Late, always late. The QPL was late (after Gnome 1.0), and the GPL is late (after the Gnome Foundation, Mozilla and GTK+ based StarOffice). Sorry about this guys, QT begins to look like abandonware, like GEM, and CP/M.
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Windows version Why not release the windows version under GPL also? The only thing that keeps me away from Qt, is the fact that I can't develop free software for windows (without paying TT). I know, that with the GPL release of Qt, I could start my own free (as in free beer) port of Qt to windows (or someone else could :), but I'm not sure that this is in anyones best interest.
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Way to go This is the best thing I have heard from Troll Tech yet.
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