4 ms·

As a supposedly guide to writing app, the introduction reads more like an opinion piece. The author has a very anti-C stance to say the least. For an article a

As a supposedly guide to writing app, the introduction reads more like an opinion piece. The author has a very anti-C stance to say the least. For an article about writing UI, it spends a lot of time laying out all the short-coming of using C to build a UI toolkit. Amusingly, Qt is mentioned as initially not having a FOSS license but "now available in version 6 with much less restricted licenses"... that's quite a weak praise given that it is available as LGPL, GPL or commercial non FOSS licensing. He then goes on criticizing Qt for being bloated. Most people would rather say that is very feature-rich. Qt is also modular. You don't need to include libraries you don't use. English does not seems to be the author native language; there are many bad choices of word, like saying that C in "restricted"; I think he meant it is "limited".

j1elo 6y ago
> "now available in version 6 with much less restricted licenses"... that's quite a weak praise given that it is available as LGPL, GPL or commercial non FOSS licensing. I was already writing UI applications with an LGPL licensed Qt 4.x, so the version 6 hasn't changed in that regard, just like version 5 didn't change either. And I'm sure Qt was already FOSS in earlier versions, but 4 and 5 are the ones I can confirm having FOSS licenses.
- seba_dos1 6y ago
  Qt3 was GPL (or commercial); with Qt4 LGPL option was added.
- paulryanrogers 6y ago
  IIRC Qt now requires registration to download their releases. And some drama around how frequently OSS releases would get updates.
  - jcelerier 6y ago
    > IIRC Qt now requires registration to download their releases. not if you use it throuh vcpkg or https://pypi.org/project/aqtinstall/ https://pypi.org/project/aqtinstall/ or your distro's package manager or mingw or...
    - paulryanrogers 6y ago
      Aren't these all downstream sources, and therefore may lag or fork? IME it used to be possible to anonymously get binaries and sources from Qt themselves.
      - jcelerier 6y ago
        aqt uses the upstream qt repos
- konjin 6y ago
  From memory version 2 is the one that moved to gpl and this happened before 2001. So this is reheating a 20 year old talking point.
ognarb 6y ago
Qt is fully open source since 2000 and nowadays most of the components are lgpl3. I'm still sad that some people are spreading so much fud about it 20 years later. Same with the bloated thing, people complained that qt and kdelibs were bloated and now that qt and the kde frameworks are modular they complains about too much librairies.
- Rochus 6y ago
  > Qt is fully open source since 2000 Not fully; only the X11 and embedded version was open source (GPL). The Windows version was only available under a commercial license until 2005. Because of GPL I had to pay for a commercial license for three platforms until 2008. LGPL became available in 2009. > I'm still sad that some people are spreading so much fud about it 20 years later It is not exactly the case that the Qt Company clearly points out to users that they can use Qt free of charge under LGPL; rather the opposite seems to be the case. I know various people who primarily bought a commercial licence because they did not consult their own legal advisor and instead followed the recommendations of the QTC sales people.
  - franga2000 6y ago
    > I know various people who primarily bought a commercial licence because they did not consult their own legal advisor and instead followed the recommendations of the QTC sales people. To be fair, if they weren't willing to put in the relatively small amount of effort required to find out how it was licensed, they can clearly affort to pay for the commercial license and if that's true, they probably should do so anyways in order to fund its development. And yes, I know a very similar argument can be made for horrible dark patterns like the crap TurboTax in the US pulls, but B2B and B2C are very different situations (power imbalance).
    - Rochus 6y ago
      > if they weren't willing to put in the relatively small amount of effort required to find out how it was licensed That's not the point. They are single developers or start-ups not used to match what they intended to develop with the LGPL license terms. Their primary mistake was to trust the sales guys. I had personal contact with some of them, and in no case was a commercial licence objectively necessary. Sure, it's not the only way inexperienced people get ripped off, but it doesn't help confidence and clarity, which is what this thread is about.
h_anna_h 6y ago
Qt seems to use less memory compared to gtk in my experience (not qtquick though)
- baybal2 6y ago
  I saw that, and am still amazed at how much effort they poured into that. They are beating GTK 2.0 here.
turminal 6y ago
From a C or Nim programmer's perspective any C++ project can appear bloated so perhaps that was a part of what he was trying to say.

j1elo 6y ago

> "now available in version 6 with much less restricted licenses"... that's quite a weak praise given that it is available as LGPL, GPL or commercial non FOSS licensing. I was already writing UI applications with an LGPL licensed Qt 4.x, so the version 6 hasn't changed in that regard, just like version 5 didn't change either. And I'm sure Qt was already FOSS in earlier versions, but 4 and 5 are the ones I can confirm having FOSS licenses.

seba_dos1 6y ago
Qt3 was GPL (or commercial); with Qt4 LGPL option was added.
paulryanrogers 6y ago
IIRC Qt now requires registration to download their releases. And some drama around how frequently OSS releases would get updates.
- jcelerier 6y ago
  > IIRC Qt now requires registration to download their releases. not if you use it throuh vcpkg or https://pypi.org/project/aqtinstall/ https://pypi.org/project/aqtinstall/ or your distro's package manager or mingw or...
  - paulryanrogers 6y ago
    Aren't these all downstream sources, and therefore may lag or fork? IME it used to be possible to anonymously get binaries and sources from Qt themselves.
    - jcelerier 6y ago
      aqt uses the upstream qt repos
konjin 6y ago
From memory version 2 is the one that moved to gpl and this happened before 2001. So this is reheating a 20 year old talking point.

ognarb 6y ago

Qt is fully open source since 2000 and nowadays most of the components are lgpl3. I'm still sad that some people are spreading so much fud about it 20 years later. Same with the bloated thing, people complained that qt and kdelibs were bloated and now that qt and the kde frameworks are modular they complains about too much librairies.

Rochus 6y ago
> Qt is fully open source since 2000 Not fully; only the X11 and embedded version was open source (GPL). The Windows version was only available under a commercial license until 2005. Because of GPL I had to pay for a commercial license for three platforms until 2008. LGPL became available in 2009. > I'm still sad that some people are spreading so much fud about it 20 years later It is not exactly the case that the Qt Company clearly points out to users that they can use Qt free of charge under LGPL; rather the opposite seems to be the case. I know various people who primarily bought a commercial licence because they did not consult their own legal advisor and instead followed the recommendations of the QTC sales people.
- franga2000 6y ago
  > I know various people who primarily bought a commercial licence because they did not consult their own legal advisor and instead followed the recommendations of the QTC sales people. To be fair, if they weren't willing to put in the relatively small amount of effort required to find out how it was licensed, they can clearly affort to pay for the commercial license and if that's true, they probably should do so anyways in order to fund its development. And yes, I know a very similar argument can be made for horrible dark patterns like the crap TurboTax in the US pulls, but B2B and B2C are very different situations (power imbalance).
  - Rochus 6y ago
    > if they weren't willing to put in the relatively small amount of effort required to find out how it was licensed That's not the point. They are single developers or start-ups not used to match what they intended to develop with the LGPL license terms. Their primary mistake was to trust the sales guys. I had personal contact with some of them, and in no case was a commercial licence objectively necessary. Sure, it's not the only way inexperienced people get ripped off, but it doesn't help confidence and clarity, which is what this thread is about.

h_anna_h 6y ago

Qt seems to use less memory compared to gtk in my experience (not qtquick though)

baybal2 6y ago
I saw that, and am still amazed at how much effort they poured into that. They are beating GTK 2.0 here.

turminal 6y ago

From a C or Nim programmer's perspective any C++ project can appear bloated so perhaps that was a part of what he was trying to say.