[PyKDE] PyQwt win32 binary?

[Scott Prive]

Phil Thompson wrote:

> > > And does this mean the PyQt binary for windows won't be free in the
> > > future?  Oh well, Tk it is then.
> >
> > I believe so, but I'd leave commenting on that to Phil and The Kompany. PyQt
> > is the only I'll code for windows.  I find PyQt much more "intuitive" as a
> > newcomer to GUI Toolkits than Tk.  I needed a book for my first Tk program,
> > but only an article for writing my first using PyQt, so I'm hooked.
>
> Yes, I will no longer be producing a binary release of PyQt for Windows.

Respectfully, I would ask "why"? I'm not sure  how many people use PyQT, but I
suspect it is important to at least a few. The spirit of the answer is important.

If you mean, "no time, someone else can do it", or "it's competition with Black
Adder" (not really, but the runtime is a valid arguement) then that just means
someone else can step up and provide Windows-based packaging, provided they have
the standard Qt development license (right?). Or, hopefully someone would.

If however, this is due to erm, the confusing nature of Troll Tech's licensing,
or if for example TT adopted the attitude "people won't license our Qt
development tools if you provide one for free", then that IS distrurbing...
especially after all the PR Troll Tech generated by making Qt "free". Personally,
a freely distributable runtime means I am *more* likely to buy something.

I'm no expert on licenses -- but I think Troll Tech's bass-ackwards licensing,
especially towards crossplatform distribution (esp. Windows) has done MUCH to
keep Tk alive, and relegating their great toolkit to various free Linux/UNIX apps
and internal-use applications. For example, my company makes IRIX and
NT software, and was looking for common toolkit options. They wanted to consider
Qt, but the arguement against it was it's "too low profile" -- the job market is
full of MFC programmers. We went with MS MFC and some UNIX portability libraries,
much to my disgust.

This last paragraph is not so much a question, but a rant.   I think a lot of
people want to write Linux software, but at the same time offer it for Windows
(even though Windows users don't deserve it. heh :)

>
> I used to do all my scripting in Tcl/Tk, but finally got tired of
> producing visually ugly applications with a very limited set of widgets.
> So I wrote PyQt.

And it looks very cool; thank you. :)

Scott

>
>
> Phil
>
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