Cross-Platform Development For Windows and OS X

An anonymous reader writes to let us know about an article in RegDeveloper detailing the use of Qt, Trolltech's cross-platform C++ toolkit, for development across Windows and Mac OS X. From the article: "QT not only goes across desktops but onto embedded devices as well. So any app you write with Qt will port to an embedded device with a frame buffer running Trolltech's embedded version of QT, called QtopiaCore."

Isn't that what YellowBox is for?

[parvenu74]

There are the persistent rumors that the YellowBox technology from NextSTEP is still alive and well on the Apple Campus, and is just waiting for The Steve to give the "And one more thing..." signal for it to come back into the light. But whom does that help, exactly?

Re:Don't Waste Unnecssary Resources

[MightyMartian]

So I gather you guys sell Windows licenses as well, right? Or are you advocating your customers commit acts of piracy just because you're too cheap and/or incompetent to do a little leg work to recompile for OSX.

Have a point

[willy_me]

While everyone here appears to think that this is a troll, he actually has a point. Depending on the market it could be the best solution. However, if there is enough demand a competitor could release a MacOS version and steal your clients. And not just the MacOS clients. A company of say 100 with 2 Macs could decide to go with your competitor because of those two lousy Macs... Or a company thinking that someday they might want a Mac would have that much more incentive to avoid your product.

I read a blog about the business decisions behind the upcoming Mac port of IBM Notes (or do they still call it Lotus Notes?) Anyway, the comment was that Macs make up only 1% of the market but carry 99% of the weight. (Probably a slight exaggeration on their part.) When I say weight I'm referring to making purchasing decisions. They're a very vocal group and the decision to make a *good* native version of Notes was not based on Mac numbers but on the influence that those few Mac users wielded. Moral of the story, don't dismiss Macs just because only a few of your clients have them.

Willy

Re:Better alternative

[kimvette]

yet strangely people who have no problem with GPLed software are always bitching about Trolltech's licensing options.

. . . because the commercial version is unreasonably restricted. If you develop a project and release it under the GPL, and later decide to release it as a commercial app, you are forbidden to do so, or you have to reimplement the Qt components in your app. Honestly, I don't think ANYONE will abide by this and will simply just buy the commercial license, recompile, and release, but technically you are not allowed to do so.

Trolltech Offers Both Commercial and Open Source Licenses

        * Trolltech's Commercial licenses allow customers to develop, use and distribute their applications under standard commercial terms.
        * Trolltech's Open Source versions are available under the terms of the GPL - General Public License. The main obligation for software development under the GPL is that anyone using your software must have access to complete source code, and must be able to modify and redistribute that software to anyone free of charge.
        * Please note that it is necessary to choose either the Open Source or Commercial license at the outset of development. Trolltech's commercial license terms do not allow you to start developing proprietary software using the Open Source edition.

This, IMHO, is unreasonable. Obviously, their goal is to prevent a company from rolling out Qt to hundreds of developers' workstations, developing using the open source license, and then buying ONE seat for the release engineer to compile the final product. A very reasonable concern, of course, but their solution is unreasonable.

A happy medium would be to simply require that one buy a seat of Qt per Qt developer prior to release of the commercial product. After all, folks ARE going to develop prototype code prior to choosing an API, and that prototype code may be retained in the final product. Also, some companies may choose to keep startup costs low by delaying the cost until later in the project, so that $2,000 per seat could be spent on better workstations, salaries, and whatnot, let capital reap interest, and THEN buy commercial licenses for the open-source libraries. They're not going to throw away prototype code.

This is why you see more commerical Gtk apps than commercial Qt/KDE apps (despite GTK's annoying, retarded, fudged-up-for-simpletons file dialogs). GTK does not have this restriction, plus it's LGPL.