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GUI toolkit

Andreas Kostyrka andreas at mtg.co.at
Sun Nov 25 03:41:51 EST 2001 
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Am Dienstag, 20. November 2001 11:01 schrieb Magnus Lie Hetland:
> "Bernhard Reiter" <bernhard at intevation.de> wrote in message
> news:9tb6ke$1evoq$3 at ID-
>
> > It is less know that Qt is only Free Software (as in freedom) for X11,
> > not for Windows or MacOSX.
> >
> > (For me that's a big argument.
> > Everybody should be aware of it, I've seen this stated wrong many times.)
>
> At least the Professional edition costs money... But does it prevent
> you from building Free software? The FAQ only says that it allows you
> (as opposed to the free/Free version) to make non-Free software...
Well, yes and no. Some facts ;) I'm from a small software company. I've been 
considering Qt/PyQt for my actual project (as a side note, a small 
"one-person" one). One caveat: IANAL ;)

I've been considering to put the solution under the GPL. But I'm not sure if 
I'll be able to do because of local legal consideration. (There are some 
rules applied here, that forbid opensourcing some part of the certified 
application. I know, that's 80's-thinking, and that's probably when the legal 
documents have been drawn up.) Perhaps I'll stick with some Mozilla license. 
Or perhaps I'll go ahead with a closed source version (even as I consider 
opensourcing it a quite nice marketing argument :( )

Now to follow the license faq from Trolltech I'd have to fork over 5k$ (for a 
tripple license, I'm interested in PDA and Win32 versions too ;) ). For an 
app I'll try to release under GPL?

Additionally, there is no possible way to compile GPL'ed Qt software for 
Windows. Trolltech gives out the the tip to release the software under a "GPL 
but allowed to link Qt" license. But this just kills the possibility of using 
third party GPL software.

>
> And the Free version is very Free (in a very negative sense, IMO) in that
> it contaminates software that has been *developed* with the Free version,
That's obviously wrong. This kind of contamination isn't even tried by the 
GPL. Consider following scenario:
1.) Develop your app with a LICENSE file linked to GPL ;)
ad 1.) This is legal, because there is a GPL'ed version of Qt/X11
2.) Before starting to distribute (distribution is what the GPL regulates), 
change the LICENSE file to "property closed-source". Buy a developer licence.
ad 2.) This is legal, because one can have multiple licenses for software, 
and I am the legal owner of that source code. The GPL doesn't try to be an 
exclusive license. Example Qt/X11: for-pay licensed, QPL licensed and GPL 
licensed.
> even if you ship it with the Professional software... Scary... I'm glad
> Emacs doesn't come with a license like that. <shudder>
Well, it is propably not enforcable. But actually, why should I bother with 
Qt, if it gives me that much (legal) headaches? I rather stick with wxPython.

Andreas
- -- 
Andreas Kostyrka; Raiffeisenstr. 16/9; 2320 Zwölfaxing
Tel: +43/676/4091256; Fax: +43/1/7065299
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