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Qt now also licensed under the LGPL

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Lashiec:
I held onto posting this since I expected Ehtyar would mention it in his weekly news report, but he did not so here it is.

Since Nokia bought Trolltech last year, Qt has seen significant improvements in many areas that have made the toolkit even more interesting to work with. Despite this, the licensing terms governing its usage made difficult for many developers to use it in their projects as the available options meant they either had to open source the software in order to comply with the GPL and thus be able to use the free edition, or to pay a significant sum of money for the commercial license.

But with the release of Qt 4.5, Nokia will introduce a new licensing option: the LGPL. Technicalities aside, this means developers of non-commercial closed source projects will be able to finally use Qt without having to open the source code of its software. Commercial developers also can take advantage of the new licensing terms to use Qt without paying a cent, but their freedom to develop the software is more constrained and it lacks certain support options.

Another important change is that Trolltech will open a public repository containing the Qt code, which in turn will make more easier for other people to review and enhance the toolkit.

Qt 4.5 also includes other nice new features, like better integration of Qt-based apps in GNOME desktops. Information page about the new license, analysis at Ars Technica and discussion at Slashdot


So, mouser, about that cross-platform FARR...
via Ars Technica and [url=http://slashdot.org/]Slashdot

gexecuter:
I wonder how long Mouser would take to completely rewrite FAAR into QT, 2, 4 or 6 months? rewriting a program into a whole different language seems a lot of work.

Lashiec:
Nah, I wasn't really serious, but the idea was hurled around a while ago. But yeah, it would take a lot of time, despite it's not really using a new language.

But if we consider that mouser was thinking into rewriting FARR, well... ;D

mahesh2k:
Nokia Is spreading its tentacles across software world by  purchasing Symbian & Trolltech, they're in both Mobile and Desktop market now.

I wonder how long Mouser would take to completely rewrite FAAR into QT, 2, 4 or 6 months? rewriting a program into a whole different language seems a lot of work.
--- End quote ---
If most of us on DC starts to develop using Cross-platform toolkits then i'm sure we'll make more linux/mac users happy with software.

mouser:
This is pretty significant news regarding QT.  It's a high-quality, actively developed set of libraries, that had until now pretty restrictive licensing terms.  This definitely makes it more feasible to use QT in projects which are wary of having all of their code open sourced.

Let's not forget that WxWidgets is also an extremely well developed cross-platform library that has long been available.  So now there are two really good choices for (C++ especially, and other) programmers wanting to develop cross platform tools.

Cool news.  I think it would be useful now to see some up to date detailed comparisons of wxWidgets vs Qt.

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