Win32 native port
Bill Baxter
baxter at cs.unc.edu
Tue Jul 29 18:03:43 CEST 2003
I just wanted to send you guys my words of encouragement on your GPL
port of Qt to native win32. I am a graduate student and I make mostly
research prototype apps -- nothing for sale. Typically I prefer to work
on Windows, but I like to maintain portability because many of the
people I work with use only Linux. I used the Qt 2.3 non-commercial
version for a while on research projects until I discovered that
TrollTech actually considers academic research a commercial activity!
How bizarre is that? I don't have any problem with making my source
code available under the GPL, I just want to be able to use Qt because
it is a great toolkit, and be able to use it on both Linux and Windows.
I know a lot of people have voiced the opinion that making a port to
native win32 is going to kill TrollTech, but I can say at least from my
perspective, not having a GPL version of Qt for Windows has basically
kept me from using it, and kept me from recommending it to my
collegues. These days I suggest wxWindows instead, athough I find it
much more difficult to work with than Qt. Anyway, the point is I think
TrollTech is missing out on the opportunity to win over easily
influenced young minds because of their guarded, somewhat
user-antagonistic stance on licensing the Windows version of their
product. There is a way to get Qt free for the classroom, but for some
reason they don't extend this to all academic activities.
Anyway, I just wanted to encourage your efforts! Maybe I'll even see if
I can contribute a bit of my time to the effort, in between trying to
graduate.
--Bill
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