From: Michael Dingler <Michael.Ding...@munich.netsurf.de> Subject: Qt: Widget Project Date: 1996/08/15 Message-ID: <3212731D.F4887DD@munich.netsurf.de>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 174252973 content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii organization: ccn - computer consultant network GmbH mime-version: 1.0 newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development.apps x-mailer: Mozilla 2.02 (X11; I; Linux 2.0.8 i486) Here's my 2 cent to the 'new X-Library needed': There's already a good lib out there: Qt (http://www.troll.no ?) It's fast, has a good access to the drawings interface (not much slower than pure Xlib, but _much_ faster to program). It's completely object-oriented (C++) and already lots of classes (widgets, utilities...). Now the bad news: - It looks like Motif. This may sound _good_ to someone, but anyone who has seen Star -Office for Linux knows that it's really inferior to Win95. (Qt can be switched to Win95-like look-and-feel but we don't want THAT!!!) - It doesn't have enough widgets. No notebooks, not even scales (sliders...)! But I think we can solve that problem. Join me in creating a widget library for Qt, which also implements a new look-and-feel for the existing widgets. No Motif and no Win95 anymore. But it's a huge task for a single programmer. I need your help. And I think, there are already other programmers who want to do (or have already done) somthing similar. So let's join our efforts. Email me! (A Homepage will soon be there)
From: i...@chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk (Ian Jackson) Subject: Do not add your work to non-free QT ! (was Re: Qt: Widget Project) Date: 1996/08/20 Message-ID: <d8*M1MHm@chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 175359849 references: <3212731D.F4887DD@munich.netsurf.de> organization: Linux Unlimited newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development.apps originator: i...@chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk ([131.111.131.114]) In article <3212731D.F488...@munich.netsurf.de>, ... >There's already a good lib out there: Qt >(http://www.troll.no ?) ... >Now the bad news: ... You forgot: - It has a bad semi-restricted licence. Modification of Qt is not allowed according to the licence. You may not even repackage the library into a different archive format or distribute your own compiled binaries. Commercial organisations can't use Qt for internal projects because in this case `your software must be suitable for use outside your organization'. It is questionable whether linking GPL'd code against Qt is a violation of the Qt licence or of the GPL. The overall effect of this is that Qt cannot be used by something like the Debian Project. Red Hat could use it, but they'd have to get a special licence and probably pay money. Therefore: do not spend any of your valuable effort writing code for someone else's benefit by helping to develop their non-free software. Instead, why not put your effort into something that is really free ? tcl/tk comes to mind. -- Ian Jackson, at home. i...@chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk + 44 1223 3 31579 General: ijack...@chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk Permanent: ijack...@gnu.ai.mit.edu Churchill College, Cambridge, CB3 0DS. http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/iwj10/
From: Arnt Gulbrandsen <agul...@troll.no> Subject: Re: Do not add your work to non-free QT ! (was Re: Qt: Widget Project) Date: 1996/08/21 Message-ID: <d6wpw4l15e0.fsf@lupinella.troll.no>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 175512643 sender: agul...@lupinella.troll.no references: <3212731D.F4887DD@munich.netsurf.de> organization: 42 newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development.apps i...@chiark.chu.cam.ac.uk (Ian Jackson) > > In article <3212731D.F488...@munich.netsurf.de>, > .... > >There's already a good lib out there: Qt > >(http://www.troll.no ?) > .... > >Now the bad news: > .... > > You forgot: > > - It has a bad semi-restricted licence. It's very difficult to write a concise license which allows what we want to allow while being hard to evade. We concede that there are some arguable incompatibilities between the GPL and the non-commercial Qt license. We intend to modify or clarify the license for Qt 0.99, to remove any doubt. While Qt itself is not free software, Troll Tech AS firmly intends it to be possible to write free software which uses the Qt API. If you want to see or comment on the new license, please send mail to qt-i...@troll.no ASAP. > Modification of Qt is not allowed according to the licence. That's almost right. You may not distribute a modified library or any program which depends on your modifications. Qt is a C++ library, and the right way to use a C++ library is to subclass, not to hack the library itself. > You may > not even repackage the library into a different archive format or > distribute your own compiled binaries. We've allowed this on a case by case basis, and if, for instance, someone wanted to make a .deb file we'd almost certainly say yes, but we will not give a blanket permission. Qt is the property of Troll Tech, and we care deeply about it. At one point, archie located no less than 28 different versions of traceroute. We do not want 28 different versions of Qt, some incomplete, some with undocumented patches, and a few good ones. > Commercial organisations can't use Qt for internal projects because in > this case `your software must be suitable for use outside your > organization'. Not quite correct. Commercial organizations can't use Qt for internal projects _for_free_. Buy a commercial license and all those limitations are gone. We think such internal projects are a loss, not a gain, to the free software community. (Those of you who remember the GNU Modula-2 saga may understand our concerns.) > It is questionable whether linking GPL'd code against Qt is a > violation of the Qt licence or of the GPL. We want it to be okay, and we'll make it okay. > The overall effect of this is that Qt cannot be used by something like > the Debian Project. Red Hat could use it, but they'd have to get a > special licence and probably pay money. ... and probably not pay money. They might need a special license - can't say for sure as long as they haven't asked. As for Debian, we'd almost certainly give the Debian project a special license covering its specific needs. But if we were to add that complexity to the ordinary non-commercial license, it would become twice as long and four times as hard to read. > Therefore: do not spend any of your valuable effort writing code for > someone else's benefit by helping to develop their non-free software. Exactly. That's why the current licenses for Qt do not allow those pesky internal projects to use Qt free of charge. > Instead, why not put your effort into something that is really free ? > tcl/tk comes to mind. By all means. You choose what to spend your time and energy on. Speaking for the company, --Arnt
From: Michael Dingler <Michael.Ding...@munich.netsurf.de> Subject: WE WON'T USE QT!!! (was Re: Do not add your work to non-free QT !) Date: 1996/08/23 Message-ID: <321CFD59.58933FCA@munich.netsurf.de>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 175964569 references: <3212731D.F4887DD@munich.netsurf.de> content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii organization: ccn - computer consultant network GmbH mime-version: 1.0 newsgroups: comp.os.linux.development.apps x-mailer: Mozilla 2.02 (X11; I; Linux 2.0.8 i486) Hello, everybody! Being the one who started this whole mess, I feel obliged to inform you of some new developments in the LWP. READ THIS: ~~~~~~~~~~~ I started the project to see if I could find two or three people who could help me in writing some widgets for Qt. And then I got about 50 mails of people who were interested and suggested _really_ interesting things. So the Linux Widget Project has evolved a little bit: Our goal is to write a whole GUI API with everything in it: Widgets, a thing like OLE or CORBA, Drag and Drop, Multi-Threading, a binding to an interpreted language and more... (No, it won't be bloated. As we plan to use dynamic loading, you'll just have the things you need) No, I'm no megalomaniac, we've got enough developers to do this and their number is still growing! The majority of the people who wrote me complained about the restrictions of Qt. And developing this kind of library, we don't want to be restricted by our basis library. Therefore, we choose to write a library of our own, so we won't be obliged to do something the Qt way and not the LWL one. (The discussion is not finished yet... Visit the homepage http://homepages.munich.netsurf.de/Michael.Dingler/lwp.html for new things - updated almost daily) There were other, non-commercial libraries out there, but we wanted to do it our way. See you on the LWL homepage, Michael Dingler PS: Any questions?