[olug] Qt 4.5 - LGPL

[T. J. Brumfield]

I've already made comments on Slashdot (enderandrew) and dot.kde.org
on the matter.  I assume many people here are already reading articles
at those two places.  I don't feel the need to repeat my sentiments
too much, but what I'd really like to see, although it is a major
long-shot, is to see Gnome 3.x to be built upon Qt.

Even Shuttleworth has noted that we have these fractured Gnome
experiences versus KDE experiences.  And while both desktops should
provide choice and competition, it does make sense to have some
compatibility and common frameworks between them.  That is why we have
HAL, d-bus, and other Free Desktop standards.

The Gnome devs seem split on the future of Gnome.  A few people
without community support decided to announce a future direction of
Gnome called Gnome 3.0 that is basically Gnome 2.x with some
deprecation and clean-up.  It will be API compatible, and doesn't
remotely address the multiple failings of GTK.  GTK was developed for
the Gimp, and was never meant to power a cross-platform desktop
framework.

There are those who have been calling for a new GTK+ 3.0, written from
the ground-up, breaking APIs all over the place.  Others are leaning
more on Mono to fill in the gaps.

Qt provides a Clearlooks engline, and can reproduce the Gnome "look".
Qt uses less memory and is more efficient.  Qt is available today, and
it doesn't require the community to develop a new GTK+ 3.0 from the
ground up.  Qt has language bindings that would allow Gnome devs to
still use C if they want, though many seem to be shifting to C#
anyways.

If Gnome and KDE shared more core underlying technologies, and could
more easily share advancements, isn't that a win-win?

Gnome could still provide a unique desktop vision apart from KDE.  The
toolkit has nothing to do with that.

-- T. J.

On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 10:43 AM, Dave Rowe <dave at roweware.com> wrote:
> Nokia is opening up the licensing for Qt, starting on 4.5
>
> http://dot.kde.org/1231920504/
>
> Any thoughts?  Not wanting to start a license-war, but this seems like a
> good opportunity for closed-source developers to use the framework, and
> still be able to contribute back to the project.
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