Qt Could Go Proprietary, KDE Relationship and Qt-Based Free Software in Jeopardy
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I wish free software advocates would stop calling proprietary software immoral. If anything, free software underlies and has enables the locked in, sever based, surveillance monetizing world we live in.
Back when software ran on your machine, you defacto owned your data because it was on your machine. Now, because the data is not on your machine, you don’t own the data.
Selling proprietary software for money is a lot less immoral than using free software to sell user data for money, or using scale to run roughshod over regulations which seems how a lot of software engineers are ultimately paid these days.
The software used for collecting and selling user data is proprietary, all of it. This is because:
1. if it were developed as open source, in the open, people could inspect what it does
2. profiling user data is most often a company's core competency, the trade secret that they won't give away
If not, then please point out to free software packages I can use to collect and profile user data, because I have a business idea I'd like to try and no resources for software development.
Oh, do you mean those companies run their proprietary stuff on top of Linux? Well, if not Linux, it would have been Solaris, or Windows. The higher cost wouldn't have been much of a deterrence, in capitalism due to competition the cost does eventually come down.
You can sell user data using free or proprietary software.
People call it immoral, in part because you can't modify it to tailor it to your needs, which I understand. When you buy a computer, you can repair or modify it.
No one has called it immoral because of the usage that was done of it (ie good or evil).
I was very surprised by that sentence, because "immoral commercial software" is absolutely not a common term in FOSS circles, afaik. This is the first time I heard it. Most FOSS developers are employed by commercial companies and have no problem developing commercial software - in fact, most people decry the lack of commercial software on FOSS platforms. Please don't build it up into a strawman.
I suspect this formulation has something to do with this particular reporter being from China, where there is still a lingering link between morality and industrial production.
This does not mean all proprietary software is like this, but the developer/user power imbalance is present in all proprietary software to a much greater extent than free* software.
*Free does not mean non-commercial, it's cool to want to get paid for software, including free software.
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-even-more-impor...
Being commercial is independent to being proprietary; there is a lot of non-commercial proprietary software and there is also some commercial free software. Regarding the immorality, it is definitely common to justify the necessity of free software on the grounds that proprietary software is immoral towards the users: they cannot know, verify, or control what the program does to them. In the writings of Richard Stallman you certainly find the notion that free software is a necessity precisely because proprietary software is unethical.
The GameBoy used proprietary software. Was that unethical?
Modern consoles are able to offer a multiplayer experience free of the cheating that plagues many PC games. That's because they're bolted-down and deny users the freedom the modify the software. To the customer, that has real value.
The fact that people can cheat, does not force you to cheat when playing. This is exactly the same thing in sports.
In online PC gaming, cheating is a real problem, as people are able to modify the game to their advantage. This is next to impossible on modern consoles, and cheating is much less of a problem there.
I don't begrudge anyone who wants to opt-in to a designated cheat-based multiplayer session, of course, but it can be a real problem for 'ordinary' gamers.
And it doesn't offer me any value if I do wish to cheat
Stallman's position is not extreme. It is consistent and firm, but he tries to reach a reasonable compromise. In political parlance you could say that he's a reformist, not a radical. Notice that he argues that it is OK to use proprietary softare, for example for developing free software if it is the only option, or for communicating with other people that cannot use free software at the moment (e.g., zoom meetings). If that is the case, he urges you to at least tell your colleagues from time to time that there are other options and that you would prefer to use free software:
https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/saying-no-even-once.html
The linked text is very clear and cannot be construed at all as "extreme". At the same time, he holds that while we can reach temporary compromises, proprietary software is always unethical and that we should strive towards freer options.
Right, and that's exactly what I'm referring to. It's pretty extreme how categorically the FSF applies the term 'unethical'. I'm not saying Stallman is incapable of ever making compromises.
If Vim were proprietary, I probably wouldn't use it, but freeware isn't unethical.
On the point of Zoom meetings, the FSF have just begun offering a Jitsi service to all Associate Members of the FSF.
https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/fsf-gives-freedom-respec...
However, with respect to the GamBoy itself, the issue is that when I buy a GameBoy, I am not able to inspect it, nor am I able to correct it if it is not not working properly. The GameBoy is not unethical in itself. It is forcing your customers to accept a "No user serviceable parts" license in terms of the software that is deemed unethical. Not being able to inspect the code to see what it is doing may have ramifications for the user -- perhaps not so obvious on a device that has no network, but it is where it starts.
One of the big problems with the Free Software movement, IMHO, is that it has been confused as being a software creation issue. It is not. It is 100% a consumer rights issue. One of the most important parts of free software is that if I did not give my software to you, then I have no responsibilities towards you at all. If I don't give you a binary, then I never have to give you source code. If you get the binary from somewhere else, I still don't have to give you source code -- the person who gave you the binary does.
This is about choosing a license that treats your customer well and about nothing else at all. For decades people have wittingly and unwittingly attempted to spin this as some frothing at the mouth religious issue. It is not. It is purely a consumer rights issue.
Good point.
> Not being able to inspect the code to see what it is doing may have ramifications for the user -- perhaps not so obvious on a device that has no network, but it is where it starts.
Sure. This connects to data and privacy concerns.
> If I don't give you a binary, then I never have to give you source code.
True of the GPL, but not of the Affero GPL. Also, permissive Free Software licences like Apache impose no such requirements, but are still Free Software licences. Free Software isn't the same thing as copyleft. (Of course, if you distribute binaries but refuse to share the source, then what you are doing is no longer Free Software.)
> It is purely a consumer rights issue.
This makes for easy contrast with the Open Source movement, which is good, but I think it's a little misleading. As an analogy, the right-to-repair movement doesn't expect hardware companies to hand over their design documents, they're just seeking to end open hostility toward third-party repairs.
I fully appreciate Stallman's 4 Freedoms, including Freedom 1, the right to study software, but I'm not sure I'd quite call it a consumer rights matter. Payware proprietary software licenses prevent you from freely copying/distributing the software. Patents and design patents can do a similar thing with hardware. That's not really a consumer rights problem.
To put that another way, I can see the sense in treating Freedom 0 (freedom to run the program as you wish) and Freedom 1 (freedom to study how the program works) as consumer rights issues. I'm not convinced though that Freedom 2 (freedom to redistribute copies) and Freedom 3 (freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions) are consumer rights issues.
Games that are only meant to be played once are a good example and can be compared to a ticket to the cinema. It does not make sense to allow to resell those games.
They are clearly consumer rights issues, to me. Whether you think they are important consumer rights issues is quite another matter ;-). Freedom 3, IMHO is definitely more important that Freedom 2. If you've managed to fix an issue, but are prevented from helping other people to fix the issue, I think it's problematic. As a consumer, I definitely value Freedom 2. Personally, I'm not sure I would consider it an ethical issue.
However, whether or not Freedom 2 is really an ethical issue, I think it's fairly straightforward to understand how people find Free software, as a whole, an ethical consumer rights issue. I'm not saying that everybody in the world is going to agree with the stance (and clearly many don't), but it's not much of a stretch to at least understand the position.
More edits for clarity. I should probably just go to sleep :-)
> the Affero GPL only differs in that I would have to give you source code (edit: previously typed "software") if I supply a binary for you to use over a network
That doesn't sound right. You don't have to distribute a binary for the Affero GPL to require you to release your source. From the FSF:
> The GNU Affero General Public License is a modified version of the ordinary GNU GPL version 3. It has one added requirement: if you run a modified program on a server and let other users communicate with it there, your server must also allow them to download the source code corresponding to the modified version running there.
Edit (programmer needs sleep badly): Clearly it doesn't have to be a binary. It's any executable over a network. But you don't have to give the source cod to everyone, that's really my only point :-)
The confusion is on your end. Section 3 of GPLv2 requires you make the source available to any third party, not just your customer (and GPLv3's provisions are similar).
There is exactly one set of circumstances that permit you to say "no" to any and all non-customers, and it involves not limiting the initial distribution to just binaries. That is, iff you provide binaries together with the source to the customer who's giving out copies of the binaries themselves, then it is their responsibility and not yours, and only in that instance are you allowed to turn down third-party requests for source. This would also hinge on having a customer who would be fine giving out copies of the binaries they received from you in step 1 but for some reason wants not to give out copies of the source code that they received with it.
See also https://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0-faq.en.htm...
Do you want to force every company (not just software ones) to release the entire business details, processes, designs, contacts, experience... for every product they sell? Do you want to force every company (not just software ones) to give each customer an easy way to clone every product?
Because for software-only or design-only companies, that is what it means.
There are alternative means to make companies behave, like regulations, certifications, inspections, fines, contracts, etc. in every other field. Why software/design companies need to be different?
you can verify, modify a program without having access to processes, designs, contacts, etc. It's much harder without those but it's definitely possible. You're also aware that you can fix your own car, your fridge, your house if you ever want it. Those objects don't actively fight to stay un-repair-able (although the times are changing)
as far as cloning goes, I'm sure you're aware that there are many clones of your television, phone, etc. sold every day.
But in the end, it's a political choice. Either you agree with the fact that some people protect "their" idea (that they had by studying others' ideas), make profit out of it by keeping it a secret, that is, making sure it won't reach the greater part of mankind but only their customer base. Or you don't agree with that. RMS doesn't and he shows he can do it with an appropriate level of incoherence (notice that most free software, in turns, is written or proprietary hardware : just try to reverse engineer a CPU).
So it's not black and white. And if in some field there are rules, laws, etc. don't forget they were put in place also to protect commercial interest (in place of general interest). Software being new, it gives us (the idealists) an opportunity to propose another approach.
You can fix material defects. You cannot change the design, which is what you can do if you release the source code.
The same way you can make small fixes in a program relatively easily, for instance updating a dependency or patching small bugs in the binary.
So you are agreeing with me.
> as far as cloning goes, I'm sure you're aware that there are many clones of your television, phone, etc. sold every day.
You cannot clone them for free without cost, which is the problem with software given the source code.
> making sure it won't reach the greater part of mankind but only their customer base
Do you really think a business does not want to sell? Marketing is about telling everyone about your product.
Dude, I don't want to force anybody to do anything. Even if it is unethical, nobody's saying that proprietary software should be illegal (except maybe when it is paid for by public resources, but this is another issue).
I'm just refusing to partake in the proliferation of proprietary software, by my acts, and by telling other people why they might consider to do so.
I don’t like closed software either and always prefer a open source product if it is good enough. But going to the point of calling "immoral" and "unethical" the work of other engineers who do sell their software as fairly as possible given the constraints of reality is a bit rude.
To improve the use of proprietary systems is a misguided goal. Our aim, rather, is to eliminate them. We include support for some proprietary systems in GNU Emacs in the hope that running Emacs on them will give users a taste of freedom and thus lead them to free themselves.
Free software is software that respects the 4 freedoms:
The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose.
The freedom to study how the program works, and change it so it does your computing as you wish.
The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor.
The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others.
Cloud services are not free software, whatever the license. Nonfree software is immoral.
That depends on the cloud service in question. The "big three" (AWS, Azure, GCP) certainly are not, but there are a lot of small/niche hosters running Kubernetes, OpenStack and other FOSS cloud software.
What part of that doesn't make sense? If the program is going to run on someone else's system then you'll need access to that system to be able to modify it to do your computing as you wish.
If you borrow my linux notebook for an hour and I don't give you access to chaning the software on it, doesn't change that linux is free software.
In the same way that free software distributers are not required to distribute your desired patches. They perform a service of distribution (or cloud providers: running the software)
But I think I get that you consider cloud services non-free outside of the pure software aspect. I think, though, that there's still meaningful distinction between providers running direct free software which you could essentially clone completely and run your own version and such that run closed versions, which do not allow that.
With regard to the individual software each customer uses, often small/niche hosts do allow each customer to inspect and modify the software. That's kind of the point of cloud VM hosting, that you "have root" and can even modify your kernel if you wish.
But that changes if you publish an interface to the software on your cloud machine, and allow others to use it. Now it's a "service" and that software is no longer free, because you have denied the four freedoms to its users.
Software as a service cannot be free software - it is a fundamental contradiction.
Propriatery for me means closed source, not free (as in freedom). All the free applications that spy on you do not share their source code, therefore are in nature propriatery.
As far as I understand Qt considers to put a 12-month delay before opening up its source code.
I think this would be a zero-sum game for Qt in the long term. They will continue to milk their existing commercial userbase, but lose the support of the community.
Erm, you appear to be too young to remember mainframes. The wheel merely turns.
> If anything, free software underlies and has enables the locked in, sever based, surveillance monetizing world we live in.
Complaining about frying pans because someone whacked you over the head with one is silly.
Just because someone is running their proprietary software on top of open source infrastructure does not make their software any less proprietary.
Like seriously, "seems how a lot of software engineers* are ultimately paid these data" (by proprietary companies). Google is a proprietary software company, so is Facebook, so is twitter. All companies that relentlessly abuse users.
Free software advocates meanwhile have a social network with a few hundred thousand active users, they've got privacy-respecting search engines, and have operating systems that don't spy on you.
Proprietary software caused the problems you're ranting about, and your comment reeks of "I work at a company that sells proprietary software and am trying desperately to pin my own sins on people releasing software making the world more free."
I'm nowhere near a free software extremist. Many of the people I find admirable release proprietary software. But your comment is ridiculous. Proprietary software is undeniably immoral.
* "Engineers" is the wrong term because software engineers don't exist.
- GPL code can be used in a program you do not distribute
- Not distributing can be done by running it on a server instead of local machines
- Run on server almost always means users don't own data
It's missing a step, which is that the GPL code in the world was so important that people NEEDED to use it so much that they were willing to change the way they distribute (or don't) their software... that's a pretty tough claim to make out. What's the evidence for that?
The AGPL is one of the strangest licenses to me, coming from a foundation that considers running code you can't read or modify as a violation of your human rights, but also making a license designed for software running on someone else's computer entirely, where you have no possibility of any amount of control.
In general I think it is wrong to try and characterize Amazon's developers as being some kind of strange beasts who have somehow figured out how to use open source better than everyone else. They are the same as every other corporate developer in that they'll always take the easiest and cheapest path to success.
This would include the freedom to know what code is running,and the freedom to modify that code and run you own version. The ideal outcome of someone running an AGPL server would be that if you find a bug or if they decide to terminate the service, you can host your own version, so you are not locked in.
Unfortunately, it turns out that this freedom is very hard to actually guarantee, as the deployment and monitoring of a server can be as daunting as the actual application logic itself. This is somewhat similar to the case of releasing GPL code without the instructions for building that code, but probably far worse.
You seem to have assumed I am personally someone who was bitten by this, which is not the case. I am not even a firm believer in FLOSS values. I am just a by-stander observing how these things are used in practice as opposed to their ideals.
By the way, even Mongo's initial use of the AGPL was somewhat counter to the spirit of the thing - they also believed that the deployment part is going to be too hard for many companies, so they hoped that companies would come to them to pay for hosted deployments. If they were using the AGPL according to its spirit, they could have made their own deployment and monitoring scripts public and would have defeated Amazon's lock-in attempts that way (of course they could never do that, their whole purpose was to create that lock-in effect for themselves).
Assuming the terms and prices are fair and no "bad practices" are going on (no excessive EULA/DRM, no ads, no enforced subscriptions, no online requirement, etc.), how is that immoral?
The world does not owe devs a business model, you are right. The same way, the world does not owe users a solution under whatever terms they want, either.
If pacemakers really need software updates, then regulate that companies are required to provide the updates or release the code if unable to do so for any reason.
I think there's an argument to be made that the work that compilers perform might as well be DRM. Granted, the obfuscating effect of source-to-binary translation is in most cases incidental to the compiler's main purpose, but it's an effect that can be felt nonetheless.
It is like people going to the cinema expecting to be given all the details, including technical documents and whatnot about how the movie was made.
If there's a bug, the user can fix it only if the source code is available.
> It is like people going to the cinema expecting to be given all the details, including technical documents and whatnot about how the movie was made.
Well, movies do include credits, detailing who did what. From there, you could research what the "what" is and know more or less how the movie was made.
Disclaimer: I have no care either way between OSS or commercial software, beyond liking to contribute and support OSS projects, and working on proprietary applications (and being generally ok with it). So I'm replying not with an intent to proselytize; just thought I could address your points.
The point is that proprietary software is inherently that kind of bad practice - it means users can't fix bugs they encounter, or can't share their bugfixes. This is particularly vexing when the vendor also disclaims all warranties on the software, which is usual practice - reserving the right to sell something broken and unfixable.
Compare e.g. car right-to-repair laws that require manufacturers to make their repair manuals available.
I don't know what would work for you. If you're doing in-person support for your users, that may well be a lot more valuable than the software itself. Maybe that's a viable business, or maybe it isn't. Again, the world doesn't owe you a business model. If you're selling shrink-wrapped software then my honest opinion is that that business is dying (with or without the open-source movement) and it's better to get out of it.
One of the most ridiculous things I've ever heard. Also a complete failure to understand the philosophy behind the success of FLOSS.
Generic problems that are widely shared with limited variations in functional need are successful FLOSS solutions or platforms.
Specific problems that are more nuanced and meet niche requirements are what works best in commercial software.
It philosophically makes no sense to call something immoral because a subset of entities are happy to pay for it to achieve their goals. Symbiotically most FLOSS is supported by these solutions which are often based on them.
Paying or not paying has nothing to do with the immorality of proprietary software.
You can pay for software even if it is not proprietary.
I suggest you to watch any talk by Richard Stallman, if you want to understand why some people think proprietary software to be immoral. You might not agree, but for sure it is not something that "philosophically makes no sense".
Yea, I've met Stallman, been to plenty of his talks and had this same discussion for the last 15-20 years. Thanks for the advice though.
> immorality of proprietary software.
I don't believe it is. Plenty of others accept a perfectly valid dual magisteria as I proposed. Even in the commonly cited logically incongruous value systems that redefine the baseline of ethics I think that view can be accommodated.
But the blanket statement that "proprietary software is immoral" is fundamentally broken
You can, hardly anyone does though. Donate buttons make a pittance. Nearly all the times I've given one I get back an almost embarrassingly grateful response because A. the amount I give is always a small fraction of the value I've gained and B. it's obviously a rare event for the receiver.
And offering paid support or development is not unheard of either.
And open source vs. closed source doesn't really drastically change anything here, since you could just charge support per installation (and they could try to lie about how many installations there are, etc.).
Care to elaborate on that statement?
Is there something wrong with jobs at local market rates? No different to how you are paid.
Software engineers not only do exist on my home country, it is a professional title protected by law, not something that one calls themselves after a six week bootcamp.
And lots of Windows software isn't available on OSX either (and vice versa).. How are you gonna blame that on the FOSS community?
Announce any "evil proprietary" software in places like HN, which should be about doing business to start with, and the top comments happen to be about forking, making FOSS clones and not paying a dime to evil overloards.
Qt being discussed here is a very good example, tons of comments on how not to pay Qt, switch to alternatives, and how much evil they are for wanting remuneration for their work.
Naturally companies then turn into the Apple, Google and Microsoft customer communities instead.
You are essentially arguing that making software available for Linux as well increases the probability of FOSS clones. I would argue the inverse, since the motivation to create a FOSS clone is much higher if such software doesn't exist at all for a given platform (since some people will just buy the software and be done with it).
At this point no discussion can be had as it depends on a persons own beliefs which are rarely changed by fact or argument. This also skips over any nuance concerning the benefits, costs, and externalities of a particular subject.
There are definitely many exceptions, such as Mozilla and GNU and others, but some of the highest profile software fall in either the first category (Linux, Clang, Kubernetes, Docker, MySQL, OpenJDK, PostgreSQL) or the second (old AGPL MongoDB, ElasticSearch, CentOS).
> (...)
> Selling proprietary software for money is a lot less immoral than
So, you are also calling proprietary software immoral? Not that there's anything wrong with that!
Regarding your argument; of course, there may be some free software that is also immoral due to other reasons than its licensing.
Back when free software was still a new thing on college campuses, there were proprietary software vendors who owned and monetized a heck of a lot.
Whether Microsoft's Server CALs for IIS (yes, that was a thing) or Oracle or Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Bell or ATT, there were a lot of vendors monetizing on both the server and the desktop.
Yes, software running on my machine might have been my data but there were numerous cases of that very same proprietary software where the data files were inaccessible.
In short, you owned the machine and that was fine but you didn't have a license to the data format and that meant you were...well, locked in and monetized by that particular vendor.
I'm not really going to speak to the moral judgement you made about free software since free software or proprietary software can both be used for whatever immoral ends.
Except you're wrong, it's the fact we never got property rights and software became licensed to begin with. We should be living in a world where we had rights to source code and program ownership from the beginning. You don't seem to get Microsoft and big software companies benefited from 200 years of big media companies lobbying away the public domain and any rights to own works. Copyright was the back door to get rid of property rights from the public.
Software licensing is what lead us to this DRM dystopia, you can't have DRM if you own the bits you buy outright at point of purchase instead of "licensing them".
It's the software licensing model for the public where the public has no right to own the software it buys that's at the root of the madness. Not free software advocates.
The reality is we desperately needs property rights for consumers, I've watched for 20 years as the PC game industry stole PC games by client-server back ending them to take the files hostage on remote PC's...
Software as a service and DRM enabled by lack of property rights for the public is the real enemy of privacy and freedom buddy.
We should have had the right to own software like we own our clothes and houses. We can own our cars, houses and repair them, but we can't do that with software.
So huge swatches of human history are being kept in corporate vaults behind lock and key.
Companies like irdeto are pure scum in trying to game encrypt binaries. Don't get me started on mobile gacha games.
The whole software ecosystem is made on bad american IP law where the software buyer has no rights and all the cards are held by big tech companies.
Don't blame free software advocates. Blame lack of the public having any ownership rights over the software it buys.
We now live in a world where Microsoft can claim they "own" the files on my computer via American IP law magic and I don't really have a right to use my software and computer how I see fit because of bs IP laws written by american corporate lobbyists.
So whole swaths of video game and PC software history are being actively destroyed and done knowingly so.
Microsoft is planning to lock down the PC and, DRM like steam, origin, uplay, MMO's, client-server software is all about the end of freedom on the PC as an open platform.
That doesn't sound right. There's an asymmetry here that you're ignoring. To use FSF-esque terminology:
Freedom-respecting software must be Free Software, and any software it relies on must be Free.
Surveillance technology can use Free Software, but can just as easily use proprietary solutions.
> Selling proprietary software for money is a lot less immoral than using free software to sell user data for money, or using scale to run roughshod over regulations
Agree.
I believe open-source is about altruism. It's not a business model to gain users and thereafter trick them or forcing them to pay.
Vendor lock-in is immoral, though.
Actually if you admit the existence of SAAS and regardless of its own issues, it using Free Software is still strictly better than it using only proprietary software.
And in regard to owning your own data thanks to proprietary software on your own devices, in practice this is just plainly false now: look at Windows 10 vs most Linux distro.
Makes sense. I don't mind proprietary software as long as it doesn't exploit its users.
> If anything, free software underlies and has enables the locked in, sever based, surveillance monetizing world we live in.
Um, what? This is one of the most absurd statements I've seen this week. Whether a software is free or proprietary has absolutely nothing to do with the surveillance business. I fail to understand how you can demonize free software developers for enabling the surveillance economy or whatever when there are many, many proprietary software out there that's specifically developed for the sole purpose of spying on you. You might as well condemn hardware companies for selling computers because that also enables the surveillance economy too.
You imply that immorality cannot be avoided, so let's accept it. According to your reasoning, some people are killers so lets close prisons.
Most notably, it contains a discussion about the feasibility of a fork (and even a name is discussed). What emerges from the discussion is that the OSS community around the Qt project is quite large even outside of KDE (I remember VLC being cited, for example), and that if efforts are united, it would be feasible. The KDE project could provide the necessary infrastructure for development, including CI (which would necessitate some startup work to change framework if I understood correctly) and distribution.
https://scan.coverity.com/projects/qt-project https://scan.coverity.com/projects/gtk
Say goodbye to: - Installing on multiple PCs at once - Installing on PCs without internet connections.
It's also possible that the online installer collects telemetry data.
FORK YOU, Qt Company!
> But last week, the company suddenly informed both the KDE e.V. board and the KDE Free QT Foundation that the economic outlook caused by the Corona virus puts more pressure on them to increase short-term revenue. As a result, they are thinking about restricting ALL Qt releases to paid license holders for the first 12 months. They are aware that this would mean the end of contributions via Open Governance in practice. [0]
> Starting with Qt 5.15, long term support (LTS) will only be available to commercial customers. This means open-source users will receive patch-level releases of 5.15 until the next minor release will become available. [1]
[0] https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-community/2020q2/006098.h...
That said, the most suitable way to get Qt binaries for development may be using a C++ package manager such as Conan or Vcpkg which can cache the library compilation output and reuse it on many different projects without recompilation, unless the current compiler has an incompatible ABI.
Conan C++ package manager recipes can also provide pre-compiled binaries which reduces the compile time pain. Another interesting tool is the conan server which allow fetching conan recipes and pre-compiled binaries on the local network or across the internet.
Personally I don't work with package managers, but prefer so setup and control the environment myself. It's not that difficult, and there is also Docker.
The advantage of a package manager is the reuse of binary artifact on many projects and also the control over the library version. Conan package manager could be used for providing pre-compiled binary artifacts of Qt library. For instance, provides pre-compiled boost library and poco library for lots of different compilers, compiler versions and operating systems which saves one from building and installing those libraries.
Then it's good that it doesn't do that.
What do you think it would take?
The last published version, even if its 12 months old, is and will be open source and free software, so it's up to the users and developers to keep it security updated. As with all free software. Is not as if Qt does not fix it nobody will. This is not closed software.
That's with Android which is somewhat self-contained system and changes in external interfaces wifi protocols, mobile networks take long time and are incremental. Once a new version of windows or macOS comes out waiting 12 months is a big deal.
I've not heard anything after the rumbles in April, but nothing seems to have changed, according to the website, so the 2015 agreement continues to be valid, afaik.
> Yes, of course Qt will remain open-source. I don't think anybody in our company is making any claims other than that and... let's be very practical: the only way we're going to have a big ecosystem going forward is to have open-source available. And we will have patch releases available for 5.15 until Qt 6.0 comes out and after that we will focus our efforts on 6.0. Having said that of course we will do the patch releases for our commercial only branch -- for our paying customers. But rest assured there's going to be a lot of different patch releases available for open-source and you'll always have the latest available. [1]
I'd never seen this site before, not sure why it's suddenly making HN front page for rehashing a story from April.
Talk about the dangers of a “good” domain name...
Since this is their own website, I can't really be frustrated at all honestly. Still seems a little quaint, but I guess that's how a lot of 'ordinary' folks view those of us into Japanese otaku culture as well. Shrug.
I'm just weary of watching "sexist, or not sexist?" get asked about something until every shred of femininity has been deemed unacceptable and removed. Maybe just removing some photos[0] of women from our web pages. Maybe another group of work teammates stop inviting me to lunch or out on smoke breaks with them for fear of saying something offensive, losing their job, and seeing their name/address/SSN/rootpw dragged across Twitter during the Two Minutes Hate. Keep asking and it might eventually become Less Sexist to motion-capturing a real-life woman's face but then alter[@] her to not be so indecently-attractive for a major video game. Hopefully there's a farrier somewhere in this city who can explain this stuff to me.
The potential consequences for deemed-offensive speech are severe enough that risk avoidance becomes the only rational choice. All I can do is share how much and how many times this pattern has hurt me personally, hope enough other people feel similarly, and hope talking about it at all might help people feel more empowered and safe enough to make decisions about these topics and not have to defer to the inevitable lowest common denominator when we ask the machines.
[0] https://fstoppers.com/product/ikea-saudi-arabia-photoshops-w...
[1] https://mattbors.com/blog/2013/03/27/the-gay-marriage-rush/i...
[2] http://68.media.tumblr.com/747b5d8397547e41efb7980eb554838c/...
Worth mentioning that is KDE 3 in the screenshot. KDE 4 was released over ten years ago and we are on 5 now.
Others, including some German dude and his "Kool" desktop project were a lot more pragmatic. Still seems the better approach, or otherwise we'd all be using the Hurd.
There will be tensions when business interests diverge. For open source people the interest is just few platforms: PC and Android and Apple. For Qt the direction is embedded and operating systems and customers that use embedded.
If no common ground is found you get only what you have agreed on contract. In this case GPLed code after 12 months. Open source people have to maintain security patches themselves. There are also companies working on KDE and Qt that can do it. Alternatively just fork the Qt (again) and go on your merry way.
The Qt company is very shortsighted since KDE has meant a lot for them in terms of legitimacy and valuable feedback. The KDE developers also made some important contributions, such as KHTML (the basis for WebKit and Chromium, used in billions of web browsers).
Why don't they apply this new license only to their Embedded and mobile versions? That's where the real money is being made by Qt anyway.
The way to make money in open source is to sell service attached to software, software development as QT does it where services is small component is just not generating enough money. That's why RedHat is owned by IBM and Canonical Ltd. has revenue only 2x of Qt despite large number of users.
I personally prefer wxWigets over Qt, but I'm a user of both.
So maybe it is worth another look.
However even OWL and VCL were better than MFC. :)
They are the only viable alternative to WPF/Win32 on medical devices, automotive infotainment systems, factory automation dashboards, MCUs displays, ticketing machines,...
I bet that whatever KDE decides to do it will hardly affect Qt's profits.
First they have to make KDevelop match QtCreator, 3D Studio and Design Studio, then we'll see.
That is a big threat to the bottom line of Trolltech.
While Blackberry, Nokia and so on contributed a lot of money, KDE contributed a lot of the product and to the technical system. That poses a unique threat of replacement.
To think that such tiny contributions would scale up to replace what Qt offers today, including supporting devices that require NDAs is utopian.
For some the risk could justify switching from Qt to other libraries or to a GPL fork of Qt, right now, before it's too late.
QT is the recommended framework for app development in Ubuntu Touch and other smartphone Linux OS; Postmarketos uses KDE Plasma.
All these would be in extreme trouble if Qt goes ahead with this plan.
"The 12 month restriction would, in principle, not make Qt proprietary software, but it might as well be proprietary from a practical point of view."
TOPAZ was essentially a "coup" made by 3 RedHat affiliated developers. They worked completely behind closed door, and then came with fait accompli almost overnight, saying that the buggy hell of Gnome Shell, and its hello world level was the GNOME 3.0, and we will be wrapping all 2.0 development.
It always come to a point where they first manage to alienate all worthy maintainers, and then complain that "nobody maintains this crap, and I now do what I want"
Now, how do you go against such takeovers?
Are you involved in any toolkit stuff these days?
EDIT: hahah i'm getting trashed for my "yeah...yeahh..." comment above. sorry I wasn't clear about my agreement. :D
Microsoft have been much more friendly to open source in recent years. dotnet core is now supported and up to date on Linux. You can develop on Linux with VSCode (Visual Studio is still Windows only) or JetBrains Rider. You can consider dotnet core to be uncoupled from Windows. There are still parts of the .net frameworks which are coupled to windows, but they can be avoided with libraries like Avalonia.
Although Visual Studio for Mac started as just a rebranded version from Xamarin Studio, nowadays it shares several key parts with Visual Studio proper, implemented in .NET Core and shared across macOS and Windows.
Nowadays, it's not so much the FOSS world's favourite toolkit as the toolkit that every newcomer uses because it's the one they're most likely to encounter first (via Ubuntu) and then ditches for Qt (or whatever else) as soon as they have to work with upstream or maintain their program for more than two or three years. The erosion isn't obvious because the largest players -- the likes of Canonical -- can throw enough volunteer (and sometimes money) at this problem and get to keep GTK-based programs working for everyone, not just the (ironically, very narrow) user base that Gnome cares about. But nothing lasts forever in tech.
There are still people doing amazing work with it. The folks at System76 with popOS are more or less at the design "forefront" (but they aren't doing that much with it, if we're being realistic), and the folks behind XFCE, Mate and Cinnamon somehow manage to "encapsulate" a toolkit developed by a rather hostile community in desktop environments that are nothing like that. But the writing has been on the wall among older developers for a few years now, and Qt's change of licensing -- if that ever were to happen -- wouldn't be enough to erase it IMHO.
There's (part of) the answer.
GTK, on the other hand, yeah, it hasn't been a good choice for cross-platform development for years now. The only platform it properly supports is Gnome.
Chromium started out using gtk2 and then switched to Aura? Do any projects use aura directly?
Good job corps.
The real question is, why is he using a wiki to post articles?
Now, the only option they have left is to fork QT, which would put enormous pressure on them since it would require a lot of effort to maintain.