Originally posted by funkSTAR
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Qt 4.8 Draws In Platform Abstraction, New WebKit
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Last edited by Teho; 20 December 2011, 04:50 PM.
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I think it comes down to this: If I wanted to buy a product like "Qt Commercial" because it gets improvements before the open source "core", then I could pay a lot less to have someone else make the improvements for me than I would have to pay Digia(?). But that's not what Digia is selling...they're selling support and consultation services:
Originally posted by DigiaCommercial Services Offering:- Requirement Workshop
- Application Development Services
- Porting and Optimization Services
- User Experience and Design Services
- Onsite Consulting Services
- Premium Support Services
- Extended Life Support Services
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Originally posted by funkSTAR View PostDigia is adding "extra value"
On the other hand a distro cannot ship a version of wine that is line-for-line identical to the crossover office (and I can't help but notice you aren't complaining about wine). The difference is that the "value-added" parts of digia's version are still open-source, while the value-added parts of crossover are not. Therefore, for Qt, the entire thing is open, not just the core. They don't have to be shipped together to be open-source.Last edited by TheBlackCat; 21 December 2011, 05:33 AM.
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Originally posted by TheBlackCat View PostIt is only added value in that you save ten minutes adding the patches in yourself. open-core businesses offer things that are not available at all for the open-source version. That is not the case here. The patches are available under the same open-source licenses as the rest of Qt. You can add them in yourself without violating any licenses. Digia just saved their customers a few minutes of time. Claiming that this makes Qt an enemy of the entire open-source world is, frankly, insane. Linux distributions backport upstream patches all the time. Any distro that wants to can ship a version of Qt that is line-for-line identical to digia's version.
On the other hand a distro cannot ship a version of wine that is line-for-line identical to the crossover office (and I can't help but notice you aren't complaining about wine). The difference is that the "value-added" parts of digia's version are still open-source, while the value-added parts of crossover are not. Therefore, for Qt, the entire thing is open, not just the core. They don't have to be shipped together to be open-source.
It's not, nor was it _ever_ intended to make a proprietary fork of Qt.
If you're still confused about selling GPL exceptions, even Richard Stallman has said it is acceptable. See; http://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/selling-exceptions
I think we've all tolerated enough of this silliness already about "ZOMGPROPRIETARYQT!!!!! OH NOEZ!!!!".
I don't really feel like explaining what's going on again and again and again to a person (funkSTAR) who insists on being stupid.
There is no indication that Qt is on the verge of becoming open core or that there will be a proprietary fork with features that are not in the free/open source version. There's a _binding_ agreement that is in effect that says that unless the entire toolkit is developed under the GPL or LGPL, that KDE has the right to fork it and produce Qt under a BSD-style license, or the GPL or LGPL.
See; http://www.kde.org/community/whatisk...foundation.php
The last time there was a problem with Qt was roughly 10 years ago, it has been fully free and open source for a very long time now and even Richard Stallman dropped his objections to it.
On the other hand, GNOME has threatened to leave the GNU project on a few occasions, recently due to the fact that Richard Stallman pointed out the problems of relying on a patent encumbered Microsoft .Net runtime called Mono, which the GNOME developers don't seem to have any problem recommending. Ironic turn of events since GNOME was started due to the Qt licensing problem that existed in the late 90s only to turn around and recommend using software that is covered by patents from a company that called Linux and the GPL a "cancer that attaches itself to everything it touches".
I don't recommend GNOME because GNOME is recommending dangerous patent encumbered software and their developers seem to be more in the open source camp, whereas KDE's usually talk about free software.
Though if you want to use GNOME, you'd be wise to use a distribution that doesn't depend on a Microsoft .NET runtime. Fedora won't include Mono in the default install because they know it is a legal problem.Last edited by DaemonFC; 21 December 2011, 06:21 AM.
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"While doing these, we have made close to 200 contributions in the past few months, but unfortunately not all these have yet been merged in to Qt."
The link for the annoucment is in the lost, so?
"Digia is 100% Committed to Qt"
The link for digia is in the footer of annoucement.
Is not like thete 108 fixes never come to Qt. Probably they are in reviewboard.
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Originally posted by cochise View Post"While doing these, we have made close to 200 contributions in the past few months, but unfortunately not all these have yet been merged in to Qt."
The link for the annoucment is in the lost, so?
"Digia is 100% Committed to Qt"
The link for digia is in the footer of annoucement.
Is not like thete 108 fixes never come to Qt. Probably they are in reviewboard.
The only reason open core works for companies like Oracle is because they fully control what goes into both editions. Qt doesn't work like that.
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Good discussion, and good arguments
Hi There,
Just came across this thread, and wanted to comment on it.
I think this is a good discussion with many good arguments. It is also a discussion that is welcome to be done inside Qt Project as well.
While it is true that there is a delta between commercial and lgpl releases of Qt 4.8.0, it is also true that this is not the intended way to differentiate. Digia wants to differentiate Qt Commercial with combination of licensing, technical support, services, as well as add-on modules created based on the needs of commercial licensees. For the error corrections and modifications to essential parts of Qt, we will always contribute. Both open-source and commercial users get the fixes. Additional value for commercial users comes through selecting the bugs that are especially important for them to be fixed.
At Digia we are working together with the Qt Project in order to improve Qt, and to keep the commercial and lgpl releases better aligned on content. Reason to what happened with 4.8.0 is the fact that the contributions tools for Qt 4.8 were under work when 4.8.0 was done. For what is worth, I would like to point out that the changes were available as merge requests in the old tool, they were just not merged in to 4.8.0.
Going forward the delta will be smaller, as we now have also 4.8 fully under open governance.
Yours,
Tuukka Turunen
Director, R&D
Digia, Qt Commercial
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