Original BeOS Developer Now at Trolltech

UltimaGuy writes "Benoit Schillings, co-creator of the Be operating system and former CTO of Openwave, has been appointed to the newly created position of chief technology officer (CTO) at Trolltech. In the meantime, Trolltech has also joined the new mobile OSDL initiative."

Issues With Trolltech Lower Excitement

[gbulmash]

Unless you're doing pure open source GPL'ed programming, entry level for a version of QT you can use for commercial code is nearly $1800. You can't even use the free version to get your sea legs under you, because the license does not allow you to use code you wrote with the free version in the paid versions.

Microsoft, Borland, etc. usually have an entry level version of most of their programming products (with which you can still write proprietary code) that is less than my car payment. Entry level on QT is more than my mortgage.

Yes, they support open source, but unless you're an open source coder or a well-funded enterprise coder, they basically tell you to F off. I don't like that and it detracts from any excitement I could have about these announcements.

- Greg

Re:license issues

[benjamindees]

the license does not allow you to use code you wrote with the free version in the paid versions.

Sure it does. It just doesn't allow you to distribute that code. You can sit down, write all the programs you'd like with the free version, test it out yourself, then switch to the commercial version when it's time to release.

Re:Trolltech..

[StonedRat]

I think the troll in trolltech refers to :

A supernatural creature of Scandinavian folklore, variously portrayed as a friendly or mischievous dwarf or as a giant, that lives in caves, in the hills, or under bridges.

as aposed to people who troll for arguments which is

To trail (a baited line) in fishing.

Re:Issues With Trolltech Lower Excitement

[eosp]

Or the cheap solution...use WxWidgets.

Re:Issues With Trolltech Lower Excitement

[xfmr_expert]

Look again...that "Per Platform". If you want Linux\Unix and Windows, it'll cost you $2,990 for the "Desktop Light" edition per seat.

Re:Not exactly.

[NormalVisual]

GTK is LGPL, so as I understand the license it should be okay to use it in both free and proprietary projects.

IANAL, this isn't legal advice, etc....

Re:A question on dual licensing

[xfmr_expert]

For you contribution to be accepted, you must assign copyright to Trolltech, allowing them to release your contributions under whatever license they choose. If you don't, they don't incorporate it. No skin off their back.

Re:license issues

[nighty5]

Sure it does. It just doesn't allow you to distribute that code. You can sit down, write all the programs you'd like with the free version, test it out yourself, then switch to the commercial version when it's time to release.


This is actually *NOT* the case. As per the QT license, you must BUY the licence before you start coding the application.

Refer to the license FAQ: http://www.trolltech.com/developer/faqs/index.html ?catid=1953&id=182 [trolltech.com]


"Can we use the Open Source Edition while developing our non-opensource application and then purchase commercial licenses when we start to sell it?

No. Our commercial license agreements only apply to software that was developed with Qt under the commercial license agreement. They do not apply to code that was developed with the Qt Open Source Edition prior to the agreement. Any software developed with Qt without a commercial license agreement must be released as Open Source software."

Re:Issues With Trolltech Lower Excitement

[Trejkaz]

It forces software vendors to share the source code, but does not prohibit vendors from selling binaries.

It's actually better than that. It forced the vendor to share the source code to the same parties with which they shared the binaries. In other words if you only have, say, half a dozen very trustworthy clients, or clients who would never even think to ask for the source code, then you're in a fairly good place.

On the other hand, it only takes one client with knowledge of the GPL to redistribute your code to the entire world... but that's another story.

Re:A question on dual licensing

[oliverthered]

Ok, years ago you could get all kinds of pirated software on DAT tape, software that cost much more money than most people could afford.
Like today people installed and ran that pirated software, learned how to use it and when the .COM boom started they went to work for companies already knowing how to use all this expensive software. When the company turned around and asked their employees which software to use they told their boss to use the same software they got on pirated on the DAT tapes, and the companies that produced that software proffit ed. By allowing people to use/learn Qt for free Qt gain hundreds of people who already know how to use their toolkit when they enter a commercial environment.

That probably still doesn't make sense.... one day...

It's actually a good name

[ari_j]

Trolltech is headquartered in Oslo, Norway. Trolls are a very central part of Norwegian popular culture and folklore. See the Wikipedia article on trolls [wikipedia.org] for more information about this Scandinavian cultural element, and this article about the Troll Oil Platform [wikipedia.org] for another example of Norwegian companies using this tie to their folklore.

Re:Someone's gotta say it.

[Fandango]

Ah, yes, but the original developers of BeOS are still great engineers, so it's newsworthy to hear about their new pursuits. As a former BeOS hacker and an intern at Be in 1997, it's great to see what's happened to the various engineers that I used to work with. Dominic Giampaolo [wikipedia.org] is now at Apple where he is the chief architect behind Spotlight [wikipedia.org] and other cool stuff, and several Be engineers, including myself, are now working at Danger, Inc. [danger.com], the company behind the Hiptop/Sidekick [wikipedia.org] and Hiptop2 [danger.com] smart phones.

I remember Benoit as an über-hacker who wrote something like 50% of the original BeOS single-handedly. It was great to hear about his new job while I'm waiting for KDE 3.5.0 beta 2 to compile on my Gentoo box.

Re:Benaphores

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, actually, I met with a bunch of people at Be and he was a quite good engineer and one of those at Be with the least attitude (that place was packed with higher-than-thou nerds). So he was a fairly good guy, as I remember. But none of these Be guys had a lot of vision or maturity. It was all about technology for the sake of technology. That plus the attitude nailed the coffin.

Re:Issues With Trolltech Lower Excitement

[be-fan]

Seriously. $1800 isn't a lot of money. In many engineering fields (mechanical, aerospace, maybe chemical and electrical), a full suite of software for a single engineer can cost well over $20,000. Something like CATIA's product-life-management suite starts at $12,000, and can cost over $30,000 per seat over 5 years when maintainence and support are factored in. Heck, even something like Matlab will cost you $2000 for the initial license, then another $4000-$7000 for all the plugins you need for your particular field.

Re:I wish

[temojen]

I wish they would make QT thread safe so that when web plugins and konquerer tabs crashed they didn't take all my konqueror windows with them.

I wish you would learn what threading means and how it relates to what you can expect from the memory state of other threads if one of them crashes.

Re:A question on dual licensing

[k98sven]

It's not an open source project.

BTW, you'll get that same response from projects like GCC too. They require copyright assignment on all code, and they won't look at a (non-trivial) patch either.

And they have the same reasons.

Seriously?

[hummassa]

Why is $1800 considered a lot of money for a programmer?
Maybe because in some countries it's the yearly wage of said programmer?????? Hint: a high-pay programmer in my country makes circa US$ 10000/yr.

Re:I wish

[Bogtha]

I wish they would make QT thread safe so that when web plugins and konquerer tabs crashed they didn't take all my konqueror windows with them.

"Thread-safe" means that an API can be used in two threads simultaneously without them interfering with each other. It does not mean that a process is protected from being killed when one of its threads causes a segfault or whatever. Qt is thread-safe.

What you are complaining about is not thread-safety, but the fact that Konqueror uses threads for separate windows and not processes. Unsurprisingly, this is configurable - go to Control Centre | KDE Components | KDE Performance, and change Minimise Memory Usage to Never. It sounds like you have it set to Always, which is not the default.