Actually, the biggest problem (apart from historical peeves) I have with Qt is that it's not C++. When I use gtkmm, I have a full C++ experience. With Qt is a bizarre trip, because the toolkit uses Trolltech's own, non-standard C++ dialect which doesn't really add anything of value.

Here I go for the troll mod, but oh well.

First, the article says nothing of the sort. As usual, the summary is completely off the point.

But to address the summary and the other comments, rather than the article:

The Free OS world (whether you call yours Linux, GNU, GNU/Linux, OpenBSD, NetBSD, OpenSolaris, etc etc) does NOT suffer from a lack of standardization. I've been hearing this for 13 years (people who are in the community longer than me have been hearing it for longer) and I'm sick of it. It wasn't true then and it wasn't true now. We have lots of standards, maybe more than I would prefer. We have standards for a lot of things that other OSes don't.

And we also have a lot of people who choose not to follow them. It's a freedom we have and it's one of the things that makes it so great.

Standard UI toolkit? We had one in the 90s, and it sucked. So people decided to write Qt and GTK+ and we're much better off now. Standard HIG? KDE has one, GNOME has one, and XFCE has one, take your pick. Standards for binary compatibility? Yes we can, and as another commenter mentioned, Skype uses it rather effectively for their crapware.

Now, does all that choice pose a minor problem to proprietary vendors who want to offer non-free, closed-source software in our platform(s)? Yes, it does. However, I don't care. They have a very simple solution: give us the source, and if the product is good, the people who care will help you port. You can provide one, bare-bones port, and the GNOME/XFCE/KDE/portable/etc people will work out the customisation and integration for you. Don't want to give us the source? Then I'm sorry, it's going to be your problem.

Incidentally, this is exactly Google's solution, well, almost exactly. I doubt there's going to be, say, a XFCE port of Chrome, but chances are there will be a XFCE-integration version of Chromium (or an add-on that does it). Everybody wins, nothing to bitch about.

The title is technically correct, if misleading. The text in the link to the translation is just wrong.

Sean did not say development is stopped. Development of the software stack is continuing. What has stopped (for now!) is the development of the next phone, codename GTA03.

First: what everybody else is saying re "just say no".

Second: if there are good people working there, then good for them, the layoff is an opportunity and incentive for each and every one of them to go find a morally acceptable job which won't ruin their health with buried guilt.

But that's exactly the point. "Loss" here does NOT refer to price of acquisition. That would be "cost". In fact, for corporate or large-scale use, open source wouldn't even have lower cost, or not much lower, because you'd want to buy from Red Hat, Ubuntu, Sun, etc anyway, in order to have support.

I'm not the OP and therefore I can't speak for him wrt what he meant; but if he read the same studies I read last week, and it sounds like he did, the "cost" refers exactly to what you're assuming it doesn't: vulnerabilities that are only closed too late; work-arounds for applications that don't do exactly what your company needs, for missing features, or simple bugs, that if you were using open source your IT team could correct in just a few hours; expensive boxes, and dead-tree manuals that nobody (ever!) opens; bribes and lobbying; money spent by the industry combating "software piracy"; the list goes on.

What it doesn't include, and IMO it should, is long-term costs, like loss of innovation due to semi-monopolies, indoctrination of the young by pushing Windows and Office to schools / Photoshop to college students, etc.

Not at all. TFA said "the global loss due to proprietary software", not the global costs. It's not no-evidence figure pushing, there have been studies. Me, I think the figure is conservative.

well... my experience is almost the same as yours, but I have no delusions as for the reason :-)

(Not saying you do, though.)

I do type faster because of less finger movement.

I do also get less pain, but that's NOT because of less movement. It's because having to re-learn typing from scratch gave me an excuse to learn proper ten-finger, touch-typing, with the correct arm and hand posture.

Now on the other hand... one of the replies says less movement is worse for RSI. That's just not true. The ideal is a middle ground; too little or too much movement both cause RSI. If you're doing 140wpm on qwerty, then you clearly have much more finger movement than it's healthy.

Might also be good to get a keyboard with the right amount of key resistance... 150wpm on one of those clunky, clicky boards would kill me.