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GNOME GUI KDE Software

A Quick Cost Analysis of Qt vs GTK 19

Posted by timothy from the depends-who's-counting dept.
An anonymous reader writes "George Staikos responds to Michael Meeks' arguments of using GNOME over Qt. There is also a discussion of events at KDE.News. In Meeks' same set of slides, he states that Ximian OpenOffice is much faster to start than native OpenOffice."
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A Quick Cost Analysis of Qt vs GTK More

A Quick Cost Analysis of Qt vs GTK

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  • The Point (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Michael Meeks said he wanted to see 5000+ developers join him and implied that Qt (KDE) wasn't up to the task because Qt required those developers to purchase proprietary licenses. He said that KDE was less Free because it uses a GPL library which is in direct and total contradiction to the FSF and is another putrid example of crap that GNOME people will say to disparage KDE. The title of the slide was 'Why GNOME on Unix' and he conveniently concluded that GNOME was the only solution and then he lists his c

  • Commercial software companies prefer Qt (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 31, 2003 @06:52PM (#5634176)
    One of the biggest lies that the Gtk/GNOME people like to spread is the myth that commercial third-party software companies prefer Gtk over Qt because of the licensing issue. This despite the absolute majority of facts dictating otherwise. Trolltech is perhaps the most successful Free Software company around and they have no shortage of commercial third party software companies that choose Qt. Here is one such statement from the dot:

    As someone who works for a company that owns Qt commercial (for unix), I'd like to offer my point of view.

    Management tended to be overly estatic about this Linux development environment because it's "free". So, obviously, there needed to be some justification of making a $2300 purchase in order to support this "free" linux system.

    When first learning about what was available a few years ago (GNOME and KDE) I set up machines to evaluate both. We chose KDE, and it was 95% because of Qt; it's API, it's professionalism, the signal/slot idea, etc. All of the software we've developed with it has been proprietary in house stuff; we haven't made any money off of software sales - just off of its use.

    But I'm sure other people may feel differently. Obviously if you're a lone consultant, it may be a bit too expensive for you to attempt to spend money up front in order to make money off of software. I suppose that's part of capitalism.

    But I am a happy Qt commercial user, and we will continue to support KDE development, and pay for Qt, as long as we're still writing software for Linux.

    If a GNOME advocate can point me in the direction of information/screen shots of something that can match the power of Qt/KDE/ and KDE kiosk mode, while providing clean documentation, a quarterly newsletter, and 1 year of e-mail support, I'd be interested in finding out more information.

    Until then, KDE and Qt well exceed our needs, and I'm happy to be able to use them.
  • If using Qt means you're more productive then in some cases the extra cost of a Qt license (or licenses) is going to be worth it. I think we all know how TCO figures can be skewed any which way to support almost any point of view. If you like GTK use GTK. If you like Qt and can afford the license fees use Qt, or go GPL and don't worry about license fees.
    • Just take a look at the documentation to know which to use.

      The GTK project seems to have gotten away with not having updated its documentation for 1.2 since it was 75% done in 1999. Looking over the documentation requirements and comparing those to what I expect from good documentation, they were really more like half done.

      The GTK 1.2 documentation is still in that state, & GTK 2.0's documentation doesn't appear to be much better.

      Not every function or object has a complete description, almost every

      • The GTK 1.2 documentation is still in that state, & GTK 2.0's documentation doesn't appear to be much better.

        I like the ambiguity of your using the word "appear" - shows that you know GTK+ 2.0's documentation is in fact much better than 1.2's, but don't want to admit it. Yes, Qt does have nice documentation, but it still uses that poxy slot and signal mechanism along with a daft preprocessor.

        Chris

  • I thought about this when the slides were linked to last week in another story, and I thought I'd throw it out there.

    As I understood it at the time, if you use free Qt then your program can never be non-GPL (or at least non-free). That is, any work done with free Qt has be free software, which means that even the original developer (who is normally free to fork to a non-free version) can't fork his/her project into a commercial, closed version.

    Take, for example, TuxRacer. There is a non-free version of it
    • if you use free Qt then your program can never be non-GPL

      A persistant myth. Free Qt is released under a dual license GPL/QPL. The QPL allows you to use any Free or Open Source license. You are NOT restricted to the GPL.
      • Well, this is the line that seems ambiguous to me (from the FAQ):

        Note that software developed with Qt Free Edition must be distributed as free/Open Source software; i.e. the receivers must be free to give it to whomever they like.

        That seems to say that code developed with free Qt must be free, always. Doesn't that mean that the code in a commercial app which was developed with free Qt must continue to be free. Can you explain how dual licensing means that my reading of the above bit of the FAQ is incorre

        • Maybe I'm missing something, but would it be possible to fork the code, toss out Qt, rewrite to accommodate whatever would replace it, and then license it under whatever terms?

          That approach (obviously) takes sagans more time than using an adaptable library license in the first place, but I imagine it would be legally permissible.
        • But the line you quote is from the FAQ, not the license itself, right?

          I'm interested in this as well. Under my understanding of the GPL, you need to give source to anyone you provide binaries to. If I only give the two other guys on my development team binaries compiled against the GPL'd Qt Free Edition, I'm complying with the letter of the GPL. If we then turn around, purchase a commercial license of Qt and start selling this software, has either license (GPL or Qt commercial) been violated? Sure, maybe

        • Note that software developed with Qt Free Edition must be distributed as free/Open Source software

          Name one Free or Open Source license that does not allow this. There aren't any. Note that this does not specify that ALL people EVERYWHERE must be able to distribute it as free/open, just that the person with the Qt GPL/QPL license must do so; i.e. the original author.

          the receivers must be free to give it to whomever they like.

          Since the receivers got the software in a free/open form, then of course they
        • What he was jumping on is that you initially said using Qt Free required that your product be GPL, not merely free.

          Basically, TrollTech doesn't want a team of developers coding with Qt Free for years, and then buying a single license to build the final closed-source product. They're a friendly, easy-going company and as someone else said, if you really found yourself in the situation of wanting to make a closed fork, they'd be happy to sell you a license.

    • If you used free Qt for a project and later wanted to fork I'm sure Trolltech would sell you a commercial license.

    • As I understood it at the time, if you use free Qt then your program can never be non-GPL (or at least non-free). That is, any work done with free Qt has be free software, which means that even the original developer (who is normally free to fork to a non-free version) can't fork his/her project into a commercial, closed version.

      Depends on your interpretation of "original developer" ... the person writing code in this case it building on top of the Qt codebase. Therefore in some ways the "original deve

    • If you want to transform your OS application into a commercial one, go and buy a Qt license. It is that simple really.

      They got it nail down pretty well: you want to benefit from our work? OK but it is only you or others in an "altruistic" basis.

      You want to become the next Bill Gates? That is fine, but you stood in our shoulders, so cough up the dosh.

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