[HN Gopher] The KDE Free Qt Foundation: 25 Years of Celebration
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The KDE Free Qt Foundation: 25 Years of Celebration
Author : LorenDB
Score : 117 points
Date : 2023-06-29 18:52 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.qt.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.qt.io)
| MaxBarraclough wrote:
| > Qt is developed as a true open source project.
|
| Apart from when they deliberately withhold features from the Open
| Source releases.
|
| https://www.qt.io/blog/the-new-qt-quick-compiler-is-coming-i...
| synergy20 wrote:
| if Qt is a true open source project, it will be way more widely
| used these days, its commercial model hurts itself badly.
|
| make it fully truly open source, charge premium for those who
| need your professional service to make profits, then it will
| fly to the sky.
| freedomben wrote:
| I think you have a different definition of "open source" than
| I do at least. LGPL is (IMHO) a true open source license.
|
| I agree though that some licensing changes would really help
| them grow. I think they've hurt long term adoption in
| exchange for short term revenue. I don't blame them, baby
| needs new shoes after all, but as a huge fan of Qt I would
| love to see them become a standard. The product is good
| enough that they deserve it, but the license can be a bit
| scary for people who aren't already familiar with it.
| jenadine wrote:
| > charge premium for those who need your professional service
| to make profits
|
| How exactly does that work? Why would the company invest a
| lot in the library if they can just offer professional
| services without it? For example, KDAB already offer
| professional services around Qt and do not need to spend much
| in R&D.
| pjmlp wrote:
| The "success" of others prove otherwise.
| asdlfkjasdlfjkh wrote:
| [flagged]
| tylerag wrote:
| I dunno, that isn't terrible.
|
| The terrible part is where if you pay for a commercial license
| to use it in a proprietary application, you can't stand within
| 50 feet of the LGPL version.
|
| https://www.qt.io/terms-conditions/:
|
| "Prohibited Combination" shall mean any effort to use, combine,
| incorporate, link or integrate Licensed Software with any
| software created with or incorporating Open Source Qt, or use
| Licensed Software for creation of any such software.
|
| So you can't use KDE to write a program that links against the
| proprietary QT libraries.
| lmm wrote:
| > So you can't use KDE to write a program that links against
| the proprietary QT libraries.
|
| The way I read it that's fine, it's the other way around
| that's forbidden - you're not allowed to use the commercial-
| licensed version to work on KDE.
| fluoridation wrote:
| I think what it's saying is that you can't use licensed Qt to
| create software that uses both it and OSS Qt, not that you
| can't use software that uses OSS Qt to create software that
| uses licensed Qt.
| jonhohle wrote:
| Is it ABI compatible? You could run KDE with the proprietary
| libraries.
| jenadine wrote:
| That would be violating the proprietary licence terms
| ktm5j wrote:
| Forgive me if I'm missing something obvious, but could
| you explain why that is?
| tylerag wrote:
| KDE was created with open source Qt. As in, the
| developers that wrote KDE used the LGPL version of Qt.
|
| To repeat myself, "Prohibited Combination" shall mean any
| effort to use, combine, incorporate, link or integrate
| Licensed Software with any software created with or
| incorporating Open Source Qt.
| tguvot wrote:
| sometimes i miss days of kde/gnome and qt/gtk discussions on
| slashdot. good times.
| akiselev wrote:
| The good ol' days when the internet was the battleground for
| harmless religious wars to decide spaces vs tabs, vim vs emacs,
| braces vs indentation, static vs dynamic typing, OOP vs FP,
| Windows vs Mac!
|
| Now it's all donkeys and elephants, trolls and partisans.
| asdlfkjasdlfjkh wrote:
| the harmless discussions were boring filler for the
| interesting ones. but we lost them all.
|
| The discussion GPL vs the corps. The corps wanted to use
| linux for free and make money. they won when linus gave up
| and added "tainted" message. now everyone just skin the
| reference implementation and ship a vulnerable modem or iot
| and we like that.
|
| Google and samsung ships billions of android devices *with no
| source code for most of the system* and we think that is fine
| and that android is open source and that linux is healthy
| when all it does is host a bunch of binary blobs for every
| piece of the hardware.
|
| then we had discussions on hosted GPL vs the corps. Where the
| corps won again when we all gave up and came up with the agpl
| compromise. aws business model is "bigger Cpanel, with more
| OSS software we get for free". They sold RH business model to
| everyone who thought RHEL was too expensive, by charging even
| more. genius.
| tguvot wrote:
| i see an oldtimer here :)
|
| yea.. well.. gpl/etc fight was lost. On the upside, we can
| take a look at wider benefit to society at whole. Through
| usage of gpl software, even in non-compliant way, were
| created a whole lot of companies (and jobs) and products
| that are widely used. Without it we might have had 1% of
| current selection and it would have been based on vxworks
| and totally locked down.
|
| you win some, you loose some
| tguvot wrote:
| back then internet was exciting. back then there was internet
| NayamAmarshe wrote:
| I will always love KDE! When I first used it, I said to myself,
| "How is this free!?"
|
| I was surprised to see how a free software organization made a
| much better software than a trillion dollar corpo.
|
| I just wish they had enough resources. KDE is the hope for the
| future of free software. I hope Valve can help them become
| mainstream. Just waiting for the day a big corpo will appear and
| make Linux compete with macOS and Apple's hardware directly.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _I was surprised to see how a free software organization made
| a much better software than a trillion dollar corpo._
|
| The surprise wears off as you start using more and more open
| source software that's either on-par with or significantly
| better than paid software.
| gumballindie wrote:
| Thats what happens when you allow engineers to do engineering
| stuff. I just wish there was a way to turn projects such as
| kde into commercial success stories, without compromising
| open source, privacy and tech. If financed properly kde and
| similar projects can survive long term.
| msie wrote:
| It's not free if you want to sell a product made with it.
| freedomben wrote:
| Incorrect. The open source license is LGPL. If you
| dynamically link you can even keep your app code proprietary.
| If you want to statically link Qt then your code must be
| LGPL, but that also doesn't prevent you from selling the
| product.
| msie wrote:
| Yeah, I am mistaken but you do have to give away source to
| your product because of the viral nature of the LPGL. So
| it's not completely free to do what you want. And I've
| always been suspicious of the dynamic linking loophole.
| fluoridation wrote:
| The so-called dynamic linking loophole applies to the
| GPL, not the LGPL. An LGPL library can be linked and
| distributed with a closed source program if the end user
| is able to replace the library with a build of their own.
|
| The loophole you're referring to involves creating a
| generic plugin interface that allows the program to use
| any library as long as it meets the requirements of the
| plugin system. If the program can function even when no
| plugins are present, the program cannot be said to be
| derivative of any plugin; it's the plugins that depend on
| the program, not vice versa. Therefore, you could for
| example develop an open source plugin that extends the
| functionality of your program and depends on GPL'd
| components and distribute that plugin binary and its
| source code with your closed source application.
| michaelsbradley wrote:
| Incorrect.
| [deleted]
| michaelsbradley wrote:
| You don't have to make your code LGPL even if you
| statically link, though that is a common misunderstanding
| (sometimes a promoted misunderstanding).
|
| https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-
| faq.html#LGPLStaticVsDynami... If you
| statically link against an LGPLed library, you must also
| provide your application in an object (not necessarily
| source) format, so that a user has the opportunity to
| modify the library and relink the application.
| msie wrote:
| Cool
| mattl wrote:
| KDE? Sure it is.
| fluoridation wrote:
| So if I give away milk to convince people to buy my cheese,
| that means the milk isn't free?
| msie wrote:
| Free as in keeping the source to your product closed-
| source. Otherwise you have to buy a license if you want to
| keep it close-source while statically linking it.
| michaelsbradley wrote:
| Incorrect.
| cosmojg wrote:
| This is just plainly false.
| mikae1 wrote:
| KDE Plasma made getting back to desktop Linux after 15 years of
| macOS an easy task. Despite GNOME often being described as closer
| to macOS and Plasma closer to Windows I've found that no DE comes
| close to the configurability and polish that Plasma has.
| Congratulations!
| asdlfkjasdlfjkh wrote:
| gnome is not closer to macOS. sadly gnome is coopted into
| making bad decisions under the guise of copying macOS.
|
| As soon as the "designers" got more funding than the coding
| contributors, the whole gnome org went down the drain. They
| often trhow away complete systems and replace them with
| something that are unusable "to drive coding contributors".
| They are completely disconnected from the community. Ubuntu
| tries to work around all that (by making their own shell,
| settings apps, etc) so it is not too obvious, but if you use
| debian, you probably spend several months without basic desktop
| funcionality every time they pushed something. Gnome is the
| inspiration for the systemD politics.
|
| So, no gnome is not closer to macOS. but gnome is broken by
| using copying macOS as an excuse by the designer teams.
| hamandcheese wrote:
| > Gnome is the inspiration for the systemD politics.
|
| Could you clarify what you mean by this?
| simion314 wrote:
| Not parent , GNOME is not a community project, there seems
| to be one or a few big ego persons that do not even use
| GNOME and that push a "vision".
|
| Like they wanted CSD and they decreed that everyone, even
| non-GNOME apps like old games that nobody works on should
| implement CSD because they are not going to be backwards
| compatible.
|
| Same with notifications, old apps, third party apps should
| implement the GNOME way, they do not care for supporting
| non-GNOME stuff.
|
| But more power for them, they self select a niche user, a
| "GNOME user" that either is compatible with the GNOME way
| or they will contort themselves into it.
| lmm wrote:
| Gnome introduced a hard-dependency on systemd (and later
| denied it / claimed it had been an accident) in what looked
| very much like a deliberate move to force distros to ship
| systemd.
| _benj wrote:
| Same experience here. I was getting fed up with every new gnome
| release taking away more features and at the same time was
| missing the niceties of macOS. Decided to give plasma a try and
| it quickly turn into my daily driver. No need for gnome tweaks,
| or even confit files, right-click whatever I want to change and
| there's a setting to change it!
| edbaskerville wrote:
| And here! I switched from Mac to a Framework with
| Ubuntu/GNOME six months ago. Switched to Fedora/KDE Plasma
| this week and it's been so much better--everything is so much
| more discoverable.
|
| That said, Dolphin just got a bug where it crashes during
| thumbnail generation, and I'm seeing artifacts in Wayland
| with fractional scaling, but the KDE bug system is very
| visible and easy to navigate, so that I'm pretty confident
| these will be fixed soon. (I did know what I was getting into
| when I left Apple for the Wild West.)
| pjmlp wrote:
| GNOME is closer only in look, it isn't in feel, and certainly
| isn't in development experience.
| p4bl0 wrote:
| See also the post on KDE's website:
| https://dot.kde.org/2023/06/21/celebrating-25-years-kde-free...
|
| I submitted it to HN but it didn't get any traction at the time:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36430030 /
| gjvc wrote:
| I remember being so impressed using KDE Konqueror for the first
| time where the filer and browser were seamlessly integrated in
| one style of window -- this was a big deal and not imitated
| enough.
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(page generated 2023-06-29 23:01 UTC)