[PyKDE] PyQwt win32 binary?

[Hans-Peter Jansen]

Scott Prive wrote:
> 
> Philippe Fremy wrote:
> 
> >         Hi all,
> >
> > I had the chance to meet Eirik Eng (the president of Troll Tech) at the
> > french Linux Expo. I didn't know that there where a whole thread on this
> > list but I have asked him a few questions about PyQt and ohter things.
> >
> > He is a very nice guy and was in charge of the licensing nightmare of Qt.
> > Some of you probably remember that he was the author of one freshmeat
> > editorial one month before they released Qt under GPL, where he tried to
> > remember people that Qt was doing free software and that it didn't deserve
> > all the bashing it was getting.
> >
> > My question to him was something like "I consider it strange that you
> > allowed one guy to distribute a working windows Qt for free, because it
> > breaks your business model. Why did you let him do so ?". Well, his answer
> > was that what Phil Thompson was doing was illegal and that they contacted
> > him as soon as they realised it was there, to make an arrangment with
> > TheKomany.
> >
> > I precise that my company owns a Qt windows license and that we were
> > distributing a DLL of our own, statically linked to Qt. When we asked Troll
> > Tech if this was legal, their answer was that it was ok if our library
> > wasn't providing access to Qt or if it wasn't a wrapper around Qt. I don't
> > have a copy of their commercial license but I guess they know what they are
> > saying. And Phil was just distributing a wrapper around Qt, so it is
> > illegal to distribute it, now you know it.
> >
> > It was really cool to have free PyQt for windows, but hey, it was illegal.
> > According to this it looks like it is even illegal to recompile PyQt under
> > windows with a Qt windows license and to distribute it.
> >
> > What remains legal though is to port the GPL Qt to windows, compile PyQt
> > with it and redistribute the whole thing.
> >
> > Some unrelated informations I also got that might interest you if you are a
> > Qt enthusiast :
> > -> Qt sells good. 20 % of the license are Unix only, 75 % are unix-windows,
> > 5 % are windows only. They have an income of 2 millions $ by month (I not
> > sure if I remembered the correct number). They double the number of sales
> > licences every 6 month.
> > -> Troll Tech has now 30 employee and is expanding (anybody interested ?
> > You might need to move to Oslo).
> > -> they will probably release a beta of Qt 3.0 for march. It will feature a
> > plugin system, a database backend, dynamic dialog generation from ui files,
> > and probably a lot of other cool stuff. :-)
> > -> they are working on mac support but don't want to talk about it until it
> > is ready. So please don't spread this. Unofficial release date goal is,
> > well, I won't say it but it is before the end of the year, and probably
> > even long before.
> > -> they were taking a big risk when they released Qt under GPL. Their
> > greatest fear was that Red Hat could fork Qt and release their own version,
> > that could concurrence Troll Tech itself. Now, they are not afraid of that
> > anymore, nobody could really make Qt cooler than Troll Tech does, at the
> > speed at which they are doing it.
> >
> > It means that we might have a PyQt for unix, windows and mac. That would
> > really rocks :-)))) Ok, except for the fact that cross platform PyQt is not
> > free. :-(
> >
> > About blackadder, I'm concerned about this problem: even if I buy a home
> > user license, I won't be able to distribute my program, right ? So this
> > license is almost useless to me and I can't afford a commercial license,
> > especially to distribute free software.
> >
> > Like many others, I think it would make sense to allow people to distribute
> > free PyQt software, if not for free, at least for a small amount of money -
> > hence for a home user license.
> >
> > I think I will ask a few more questions to Eirik Eng about this. If you
> > have specific questions, tell me and I will forward.
> 
> Forking the UNIX Qt into a Windows DLL branch remains a improbability. The
> Free Software guys *don't care* -- they've settled on GTK. The Open Source
> people would feel this would be an attack on Troll Tech. So the problem from
> my point is, there is enough steam pressure being let off that there is no
> push for a true free runtime. wxPython is undocumented... Tk is ugly (and
> sends Windows users scurrying back to VB)... GTK on Windows is a
> *joke* (except GIMP/Win32).

Well, may have a look on wxPython. At least, the library is free, allows
cross platform development on windows and unix, and has some nice features.
Docs and some (non) free gui builder are available. Phil Thompson is 
called Robin Dunn in wxPython world. Robin used swig for wrapping. An in 
deep comparison of these two opponents would be nice...

http://wxPython.org
 
> My questions have been answered, but my comment is the TT license should be
> the same on both Linux and Windows. I'd like free software to work on both.
> PART of the reason Windows users only know Shareware or no-source freeware is
> the cost of development on that platform.

See you on wxpython-users at lists.sourceforge.net

I apologize my intrusional message. I won't offend anybody. I'm observing the development of PyQT &
PyKDE with much interrest. KDE2 and python rocks. All 
python GUI wrappers have their own upsides and downsides.

Sorry Phil, but you have a strong opponent over there.

> >
> >
> >         regards,
> >
> >         Philippe
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > http://mats.gmd.de/mailman/listinfo/pykde
> 
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precede-with-nightly-work-ly yours, hp
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