3 ms·
> gtk was chosen due to licensing considerations since ironically qt was “too free” ie pure gpl which limited its use in closed source software without licensin
by hisham_hm 9y ago
> gtk was chosen due to licensing considerations since ironically qt was “too free” ie pure gpl which limited its use in closed source software without licensing
This is wrong. GNOME was already well underway when Qt switched to GPL. Before that it used QPL and before that yet another license.
- homarp 9y agoThe GNOME desktop environment - https://www.usenix.org/legacy/publications/library/proceedings/usenix98/freenix/icaza.pdf https://www.usenix.org/legacy/publications/library/proceedin... "Sadly, the KDE effort is based on the Qt user interface toolkit which is a non-free library. The main problem is that modification of the toolkit is not allowed. The ability to modify the interface toolkit is a requirement of free software[6] and of the Open Source Software Guidelines[17]. Although Qt is released in source form, permission to redistribute changes made to it is denied."
- yiyus 9y agoIndeed, there even was an attempt to produce an open source clone of Qt for KDE when Gnome was still getting started: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmony_(toolkit) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmony_(toolkit)