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Qt-interest Archive, March 2008
leaving freenode. open letter to the Qt community

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Message 31 in thread

On 11.03.08 13:14:54, Arvid Ephraim Picciani wrote:
> On Tuesday 11 March 2008 11:20:29 Uwe Rathmann wrote:
> > I don't know the reason behind the qt-copy fork ( I didn't even know, that
> > it exists ). But as we have this discussion here, could someone explain
> > what it is about and why it is a problem for other Qt related projects ?
> Thiago already answered the technical side of it, better then i could do.
> My issue with it, is that most "qt"  binary  packages in the main distros are 
> now  taken from the kde sources and not from trolltech any longer.

Are you sure about that? I don't know how the rpm-based distro's build
their binary packages from sources, but I pretty much doubt they do an
svn co to get something compileable. .deb based distro's simply use the
tar.gz from TT which TT releases.

But almost (or maybe all?) all distro's add a set of distro-specific
patches to those releases. Reasons are manyfold, especially for the Qt3
series. For example there are some patches that are needed for proper
cooperation of Qt and not-so-ancient X11 distributions (xrandr 1.2
specifically).

You think this wouldn't happen when qt-copy wouldn't exist? I'll bet all
my money that this is not the case. Distro's patch the hell out of any
source package if they see the need for it (be it bugfixing, support
something their customers ask for or simply feeling that way on a
particular day). They even keep those patches "kind of private",
shipping it only in their source-packages.

> direction, although some projects want to clearly seperate themself from kde 
> and build on Trolltech-qt.

Then they should do so, however as Thiago already said, there are pretty
strict rules on what is allowed to go into qt-copy. If you find a patch
that violates the rules, please report that to kde-devel@xxxxxxx or
kde-core-devel@xxxxxxxx


So if your application doesn't work with qt-copy, it might as well just
have a dependency on a specific Qt bug thats not been fixed yet.

Andreas

-- 
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Message 32 in thread

Andreas,
> Are you sure about that? I don't know how the rpm-based distro's build
> their binary packages from sources, but I pretty much doubt they do an
> svn co to get something compileable.
nah. they grab the pacthes from the kde repo. at least thats how my distro 
does it.
> .deb based distro's simply use the 
> tar.gz from TT which TT releases.
yeah thats becoue debian is always one step after :P
> But almost (or maybe all?) all distro's add a set of distro-specific
> patches to those releases. Reasons are manyfold, especially for the Qt3
> series. For example there are some patches that are needed for proper
> cooperation of Qt and not-so-ancient X11 distributions (xrandr 1.2
> specifically).
should be patched upstream. if that didn't happen, Trolltech is to blame. But 
forking and hiding is not the way.
> You think this wouldn't happen when qt-copy wouldn't exist? I'll bet all
> my money that this is not the case. 
you're right there.
> Distro's patch the hell out of any 
> source package if they see the need for it (be it bugfixing, support
> something their customers ask for or simply feeling that way on a
> particular day).
not all of them. archlinux used to have a policy agains that, before the 
founder retired. and afaik slackware still does.
> They even keep those patches "kind of private", 
> shipping it only in their source-packages.
which sucks and must be changed. But i can't fight at all fronts. Thats 
exhausting.
> > direction, although some projects want to clearly seperate themself from
> > kde and build on Trolltech-qt.
>
> Then they should do so, however as Thiago already said, there are pretty
> strict rules on what is allowed to go into qt-copy. If you find a patch
> that violates the rules, please report that to kde-devel@xxxxxxx or
> kde-core-devel@xxxxxxxx
bin there. except aseigo, no kde dev EVER read my mails completly before 
starting to rant imidiatly about how i dare to opose kde. maybe i'm just an 
asshole.
Example: the kde4 kicker violated NETWM specs in the early days (4 months?), 
but obviously worked with  kde apps (since they violate the spec too) .
I patched it and sent it to various kde folks. the response was from "fuck 
you, you are this qxt dude" to "wtf is xembedd?". 

Anyway. i do NOT agree with kde beeing the athority for Qt.  why do i have to 
send a mail to kde bugs if Qt is broken?  thats so absolutly wrong.
> So if your application doesn't work with qt-copy, it might as well just
> have a dependency on a specific Qt bug thats not been fixed yet.
nah. that was no reallife example. 


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Message 33 in thread

On Tuesday 11 March 2008 15:41:04 Arvid Ephraim Picciani wrote:
> should be patched upstream. if that didn't happen, Trolltech is to blame.

Hey, that's exactly what KDE developers think.

Why do you think qt-copy patches exists in the first place? It's not because 
the developers want to fork Qt. It's because some of the patches are not 
accepted into Qt, for a variety of reasons like I said in another email.

And I'm pretty sure some of the developers think it's Trolltech's fault that 
we just ignore patches coming from KDE developers. (I've heard more than once 
some people saying qt-bugs@xxxxxxxxxxxxx = /dev/null)

Unfortunately, there are only so many hands and eyes in Trolltech.

-- 
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Message 34 in thread

On 11.03.08 15:41:04, Arvid Ephraim Picciani wrote:
> Andreas,
> > Are you sure about that? I don't know how the rpm-based distro's build
> > their binary packages from sources, but I pretty much doubt they do an
> > svn co to get something compileable.
> nah. they grab the pacthes from the kde repo. at least thats how my distro 
> does it.

Well, not all of them unfortunately.

> > But almost (or maybe all?) all distro's add a set of distro-specific
> > patches to those releases. Reasons are manyfold, especially for the Qt3
> > series. For example there are some patches that are needed for proper
> > cooperation of Qt and not-so-ancient X11 distributions (xrandr 1.2
> > specifically).
> should be patched upstream. if that didn't happen, Trolltech is to blame. But 
> forking and hiding is not the way.

But what if it is not patched upstream? Should distro's just try to
explain to their paying customers why X doesn't work in their
distribution of Qt? 
.
> > Distro's patch the hell out of any 
> > source package if they see the need for it (be it bugfixing, support
> > something their customers ask for or simply feeling that way on a
> > particular day).
> not all of them. archlinux used to have a policy agains that, before the 
> founder retired. and afaik slackware still does.

Yes, there are exceptions. There always are :) But those distributions
then possibly get fewer users, for example I simply can't use any
distribution which ships without the XRandR-patches for Qt3 as I'm using
a multi-head setup.

> > > direction, although some projects want to clearly seperate themself from
> > > kde and build on Trolltech-qt.
> >
> > Then they should do so, however as Thiago already said, there are pretty
> > strict rules on what is allowed to go into qt-copy. If you find a patch
> > that violates the rules, please report that to kde-devel@xxxxxxx or
> > kde-core-devel@xxxxxxxx
> bin there. except aseigo, no kde dev EVER read my mails completly before 
> starting to rant imidiatly about how i dare to opose kde. maybe i'm just an 
> asshole.

Maybe ;) Seriously though, I can't find you in any of the kde archives -
strange.

> Example: the kde4 kicker violated NETWM specs in the early days (4 months?), 
> but obviously worked with  kde apps (since they violate the spec too) .
> I patched it and sent it to various kde folks. the response was from "fuck 
> you, you are this qxt dude" to "wtf is xembedd?".

Would you mind sharing a link to an archive that has this?

> Anyway. i do NOT agree with kde beeing the athority for Qt.

Its not the authority for Qt. But qt-copy is a place where patches to Qt
that might (or might not) end up in Qt sources can be gathered so that
people that want to get bugfixes early don't have to hunt through the
net.

> why do i have to send a mail to kde bugs if Qt is broken?  thats so
> absolutly wrong.

If you use a stock Qt you don't. If you use a distro package you don't
either. Only if you use qt-copy you do that and its rightfull from KDE
developers to expect that from you.

> > So if your application doesn't work with qt-copy, it might as well just
> > have a dependency on a specific Qt bug thats not been fixed yet.
> nah. that was no reallife example. 

How about you show me a real life Qt application that doesn't work with
qt-copy but does work fine with the same version of stock Qt from TT and
doesn't rely on undocumented or buggy Qt behaviour?

Andreas

-- 
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Message 35 in thread

On Tuesday 11 March 2008, Arvid Ephraim Picciani wrote:
> Andreas,
>
> > Are you sure about that? I don't know how the rpm-based distro's build
> > their binary packages from sources, but I pretty much doubt they do an
> > svn co to get something compileable.
>
> nah. they grab the pacthes from the kde repo. at least thats how my distro
> does it.

If that bothers you, you are more than welcome to

a) Use a different distro.
b) Compile Qt from source.
c) Roll your own package based on your distro's config but excluding the 
patches.
d) Complain to your distro about their practices.
e) Option d) and a), b), or c).

--Jeff

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Message 36 in thread

André,
On Tuesday 11 March 2008 14:23:08 you wrote:
> There is no such assumption, so there's nothing to change..
I will believe you, if you can answer these questions that people asked me, 
and that i asked myself:

Why does the comunity screem for a more liberal license and nothing happens, 
then KDE people poke you and whoops, we have gpl3?

Why does kde have an extra support line and bugs by big projects get flagged 
for the next and the next and the next release. or even just get an rtfm 
back. (dunno, i love TT support, but aprantly alot of other projects are 
ignored)

Why does kde get money from you? Hell no, i dont want money. I just want you 
to admit it.

Why does nokia always name kde and open source community in one sentence.

Why does the planet have an extra kde category? Maybe becouse you are all KDE 
developers? Why are the non-Qt applications you folks make not there? Are 
they filtered by the admin? Are Trolltech developers told to stfu when they 
have application ideas that could opose kde?

Why did Aron do the keynotes at devdays? I got this answer so far from some 
Troll:  "Trolltech wants to show thier deep bounds to the Open Source 
community"
right, point proven, KDE==community. Well we where invited for free entrance 
too (thanks a lot, sorry for now offending you.) , but by a specific Troll. 
and others where not exactly happy with that. Besides i was asked by two 
people where my KDE shirt is. After i explained i'm not from kde, i got 
a "sory, they said you're an open source developer". wtf?

Why does Trolltech sales ignore requests from open source developers?
Yes. IGNORE. not even reject. hmmm let me guess: they don't even know that 
there are open source developers working on actuall software.  "comercial, 
open source? confusing! i thought kde is free!"

Why did phonon make it into qt4 athought there where euqal projects out there? 
(And after that kde oposes gstreamer. hehe, funny.)

Why did we have to fight so long to get the page for the license exception 
back online? Like... 3 months?  20 emails?  Right, kde is GPL, so why care 
about exceptions?

Why do you have a license deal with KDE? It does gain you nothing.  (or i 
didnt get the point. excuse my ignorance). What does the rest of the 
community gain from that? (It only covers Qt/X11). Where do we propose 
additons to that? Right, we can't, becouse we are not KDE.

Why is desktop integration into KDE strong, and weak into gnome?
And yes, there where open source projects attemping to do so, but quickly 
aborted becouse of massive ranting. Not exactly your fault, but a result of 
ignoring the community and letting kde spread their hate.

Why are feature requests from open source people just flaged as wontfix?
damn i should have made a list.  Ignore that point if you dont believe me.

Why did kdab offer me to join KDE, while i wear a Qxt shirt, two times. Even 
at a trolltech booth at linuxtag. Hell yes its their problem you say, but 
again a result of what is going on.  KDE==open source community

-- 
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Message 37 in thread

Arvid Ephraim Picciani wrote:

> Why does Trolltech sales ignore requests from open source developers?

Speaking for the Qwt project, they don't. 

I get the same high level of support for my open source activities as for my
commercial work.

Uwe



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Message 38 in thread

On Tuesday 11 March 2008 16:28:27 Gordon Schumacher wrote:
>  (For my Slax-based
> appliance system, I'm running blackbox, after all...)
yay blackbox. 



On Tuesday 11 March 2008 16:18:44 Uwe Rathmann wrote:
> Arvid Ephraim Picciani wrote:
> > Why does Trolltech sales ignore requests from open source developers?
> Speaking for the Qwt project, they don't.
> I get the same high level of support for my open source activities as for
> my commercial work.
sales@. not qt-bugs@.
qt-bugs@ is awesome. i read some mails from a guy who had issues with bugs@, 
but seems the supporter had a bad day or something




On Tuesday 11 March 2008 16:26:56 André Pönitz  wrote:
> I am speaking only for myself below, if you want "official" answer
> consider chosing an official route...
yeah. i asked you.
> > Why does the comunity screem for a more liberal license and nothing
> > happens, then KDE people poke you and whoops, we have gpl3?

> GPL 3  was officially released last summer _after_ Qt 4.3 was
> released, so Qt 4.4 is the first release that could possibly be
> GPL v3, and indeed it is.
yeah. released.

> Qt was (also) GPL 2 for years before that, so I don't understand
> what kind of 'liberal' license you want.
different things. personally i want CPL, but that will be never possible. 
THere where other people who screamed for gpl3 for ages though.
>
> Please elaborate why that looks like a "poke from the KDE people".
kde needs gpl3 for some 3rdparty libs. so they get it.  unfortunatly i have no 
official email traffic. its good hidden how kde does influence TT, but some 
discussions about it happened at devdays. it's obvious how fast Qt became 
gplv3 after that.  

> > Why does kde have an extra support line and bugs by big projects get
> > flagged for the next and the next and the next release. or even just get
> > an rtfm back. (dunno, i love TT support, but aprantly alot of other
> > projects are ignored)
>
> That's a question to ask TT support. I personally have been a TT
> customer for years and was mostly happy with the way my issues were
> handled.
yeah. ignore that point. i love them too

> > Why does kde get money from you? Hell no, i dont want money. I just want
> > you to admit it.
>
> Certainly not my decision so I don't know the reasoning. But I
> would expect any showcase of Qt of a size similar to KDE would
> get the same kind of support as KDE does. For me this just
> makes a lot of business sense.

opera, psi, qwt, qxt, cutebox, qdevelop, etc etc etc
kde is just big becouse it's  colaboration of different apps. 
and as i stated in my very first email i'd like to form a similar alliance 
with qt-only apps. if you would only LET ME.

> > Why does nokia always name kde and open source community in one sentence.
> Ask Nokia.
No. i ask you.  

> > Why does the planet have an extra kde category? Maybe becouse you are all
> > KDE developers?
> I never wrote a single line for a _KDE_  program. I have written a few tens
> of thousands lines of Qt code, though. What you say simply does not make
> sense to me.
where are your blog entrys?
> > Why are the non-Qt applications you folks make not there?
> Which non-Qt application do you mean?
all the zillions of half finished apps in demos/ examples/. where are your 
blog entrys? whats with icefox ideas about a better desktop? whats with 
blackbox goes qt? whats with all those things that happen silently?

> > Are  they filtered by the admin? Are Trolltech developers told to stfu
> > when they have application ideas that could opose kde?
> Surely not.
Weird. looks like it.

> > Why did Aron do the keynotes at devdays?
> I don't even know who Aron is, and I did not attend DevDays last year.
> Considering the context I'd expect someone deep into KDE development
> - which _I_ don't know any of. Really, no joke.
HUH? its your co worker. he is the kde head. he is payd by your company? how 
the heck can you not know him?! Do i have wrong information?

> > I got this answer so far from some
> > Troll:  "Trolltech wants to show thier deep bounds to the Open Source
> > community"right, point proven, KDE==community.
>
> But you accept KDE being part of the OS community, and you also
> accept that KDE is probably the biggest OS "project" using Qt?
right. as i said, i see why Trolltech is offering kde all that. I just happen 
to be on the suffering end.

> > Well we where invited for free entrance
> > too (thanks a lot, sorry for now offending you.) , but by a specific
> > Troll. and others where not exactly happy with that. Besides i was asked
> > by two people where my KDE shirt is. After i explained i'm not from kde,
> > i got a "sory, they said you're an open source developer". wtf?
> Two trolls? Who?
no.

> > Why does Trolltech sales ignore requests from open source developers?
> > Yes. IGNORE. not even reject. hmmm let me guess: they don't even know
> > that there are open source developers working on actuall software. 
> > "comercial, open source? confusing! i thought kde is free!"
> Ask sales@tt.
Heh. also people who just work in your company but you dont know them?
>
> > Why did phonon make it into qt4 athought there where euqal projects out
> > there?
> Because customers asked for it. Several times, over years.
hehe which customers asked for lgpl? fun. actually i talked to your customers 
and they requested a multi media library. And they are pissed you gave them 
phonon.

> Believe me, most people here simply do not care about "religious wars".
> Issues to consider when integrating external code are quality, licenses,
> ease of maintainance/interaction with "upstream" maintainers. I would
> assume it was a concious decision based on such reasone to use phonon,
> not gstreamer. [And to be honest, I have no clue what the technical
> differences between the two would be exactly]
Share your wisdom. What where the points for deciding that way. That was my 
initial question.

> > Why did we have to fight so long to get the page for the license
> > exception back online? Like... 3 months?  20 emails?  Right, kde is GPL,
> > so why care about exceptions?
> I am missing context here. "We"? What exception? In which of the four
> (five?) licenses Qt can come with?
you dont even know about your license exceptions?

> > Why do you have a license deal with KDE? It does gain you nothing.  (or i
> > didnt get the point. excuse my ignorance).
> The BSD-clause?
yes
> That's "life insurance" as far as I can tell. This way it does make no
> business sense for anybody to acquire Trolltech and make Qt closed source.
> That KDE "benefits" is from what I can tell due to the expectation that a
> project of this size will last a few years and can't be "bribed" easily.
> Again, this is my thinking on the issue.
didnt anwer any of my questions.

> > What does the rest of the
> > community gain from that? (It only covers Qt/X11). Where do we propose
> > additons to that? Right, we can't, becouse we are not KDE.
not answered

> > Why is desktop integration into KDE strong, and weak into gnome?
> > And yes, there where open source projects attemping to do so, but quickly
> > aborted becouse of massive ranting. Not exactly your fault, but a result
> > of ignoring the community and letting kde spread their hate.
not answered
> > Why are feature requests from open source people just flaged as wontfix?
> > damn i should have made a list.  Ignore that point if you dont believe
> > me.
> Oh, I my customer days I had a few bug reports marked as "wontfix" or even
> "rejected" too, only  to see that they were acted upon after a while
> nevertheless.
>
> > Why did kdab offer me to join KDE, while i wear a Qxt shirt, two times.
> > Even at a trolltech booth at linuxtag. Hell yes its their problem you
> > say, but again a result of what is going on.
>
> Right, "Ask KDAB".
>
> > KDE==open source community
>
> And that's wrong...

prove it please? you didnt answer my questions.



On Tuesday 11 March 2008 16:28:19 Thiago Macieira wrote:
> On Tuesday 11 March 2008 15:45:20 Arvid Ephraim Picciani wrote:
> > Why does the comunity screem for a more liberal license and nothing
> > happens, then KDE people poke you and whoops, we have gpl3?
>
> KDE people screamed for it for 6 months before it happened. And since I was
> involved in the GPL3 process, I can tell you this: the decision was made
> because it benefited Trolltech, not because KDE people asked.
ok. didnt know kde was asking for the same length of time. all i saw was 
discussions about it and boom the next day it was done.


> And when I say "tasks", I mean *after* TT support has reviewed the emails
> and form submissions, understood and confirmed the issue. That means the
> incoming rate for them is much higher.
ignore that point. i love tt support.

> > Why does kde get money from you? Hell no, i dont want money. I just want
> > you to admit it.
> I'm not saying that only KDE is good. But KDE is definitely big and
> visible.
yeah. 

> > Why does nokia always name kde and open source community in one sentence.
> Because Nokia has always been associated with GNOME/GTK before.
perfectly valid. i see.
> > Why does the planet have an extra kde category?
> So that we can mark blogs that should be published on Planet KDE.
aha. and you just happen to route them from your blog to the tt blog and then 
to the kde blog? haha
> > Maybe becouse you are all KDE developers?
> Not all, but one third, I'd say. We also have open source developers who do
> not come from the KDE world, so saying that opensource = KDE for us is
> nonsense.
where? who? why are they hiding? why do they not post to this list? why did i 
never met any (except brad)
> > Why are the non-Qt applications you folks make not there?
> Are there any aggregations websites that would like to syndicate Trolltech
> Labs?
hum, yeah. tt-labs. it IS an aggregations website. 
> Please, let us know. Really, it would be great to have a bigger audience.
yeah. i'll do.
> > Are they filtered by the admin? Are Trolltech developers told to stfu
> > when they have application ideas that could opose kde?
> No comments.
heh sorry.
> > Why did Aron do the keynotes at devdays?
> You do know that he's in the Trolltech payroll, right?
yeah. you answered why above.
> But I've also told you more than once: you will not be known unless you
> make yourself known. You wish some recognition, then by all means contact
> our Open Source Community Manager, Knut Yrvin. He's the person you want to
> talk to, the one you want to know you.
well yeah. that might fix some issues qxt has.  shame on me for not doing that 
yet.
> > Why did phonon make it into qt4 athought there where euqal projects out
> > there? (And after that kde oposes gstreamer. hehe, funny.)
> What other projects are there that provide a Qt 4 API for multimedia?
QxtMedia, the stuff from the video wall thingy, err... sorry, i vanished all 
my bookmarks and code bases after i got the depressing news. (actually i was 
quiet exited back then, i didnt know how kde would hurt me)
> As for KDE opposing gstreamer, let me clarify this for you: KDE did not
> want to use gstreamer API in the KDE applications, so we introduced an
> abstraction layer. For three big reasons: first, gstreamer API is very,
> very alien to a Qt/KDE developer's point of view. Second, because gstreamer
> developers cannot promise a source- and/or binary-compatibility for the
> lifetime of KDE 4. Third, gstreamer isn't that good in cross-platform.
>
> The only solution was to abstract it.
hm. got your point.
> And then there's this multimedia library, cross-platform, based on Qt 4 and
> offering a Qt 4-like API up for grabs. Hell, yeah, we included it! And
> participated in the development, so that it matches our goals as well.
and just accidantly happens to be kde.
> > Why do you have a license deal with KDE? It does gain you nothing.  (or i
> > didnt get the point. excuse my ignorance). What does the rest of the
> > community gain from that? (It only covers Qt/X11). Where do we propose
> > additons to that? Right, we can't, becouse we are not KDE.
> Read history, please. The agreement came into existence when Trolltech was
> a company of 10 people. And like I said before: the only reason for it to
> exist is because it makes business sense.
yes it does. but not for us! there are more people out there who wortk with 
qt.  thats my inititual problem.
> > Why is desktop integration into KDE strong, and weak into gnome?
> Funny, KDE developers complained that we talked too much about GNOME
> integration during the Qt 4.2 release...
hehe. sorry for putting you in the crossfire there, but you are a cross 
platform toolkit and do not exist purely to serve KDE. thats exactly my 
problem. KDE must not  guide the way Qt will do on linux. Qt should work on 
all DEs equality. and i encourage Trolltech developers to contribute to 
fredesktop.org rather then kde specific fixes.
> There's another reason why it integrates better: because KDE integrates
> into Qt, not the other way around. For instance, the KDE widget style
> (Oxygen in KDE 4, Plastik in KDE 3) are offered as Qt plugins. So any
> Qt-based application can use them, for free, without even knowing that
> they're doing so.
so you admit leaving integration up to kde rather then focusing on your root 
ideas: beeing cross platform.  that sucks. and i am really sad about it.
> The best thing that  GNOME has to offer in that area is the Gtk-Qt style
> engine. I hear it's actually quite good.
YOU are building a toolkit. not gnome. not kde.
> Besides, it's kind of obvious that we want Qt-based applications to look
> better integrated, regardless of whether they are pure Qt or if they link
> to KDE libraries too.
oh yes. and thats why people buy your library. so please go back to your 
roots.
> Finally, it's *also* kind of obvious that our developers know KDE code a
> lot better than they do GNOME.
sad. becouse thats my point.  you're biased and we have to suffer from that.
> > And yes, there where open source projects attemping to do so, but quickly
> > aborted becouse of massive ranting. Not exactly your fault, but a result
> > of ignoring the community and letting kde spread their hate.
> I take that as a personal insult.
wasn't meant to. sorry. but you have to admit that your guys at kde are not 
quiet happy about cooperating with gnome.
> > Why are feature requests from open source people just flaged as wontfix?
> > damn i should have made a list.  Ignore that point if you dont believe
> > me.
> See my point above about tasks.
thank you for that answers. actually made sense to me.




-- 
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Message 39 in thread

On Tuesday 11 March 2008 16:59:34 Arvid Ephraim Picciani wrote:
> On Tuesday 11 March 2008 16:26:56 André Pönitz  wrote:
> > I am speaking only for myself below, if you want "official" answer
> > consider chosing an official route...
>
> yeah. i asked you.

And that's not the "official route". If it were, I would not add "speaking
only for myself" every now and then.

Apart from that I am astonished to find (parts of) a private response
to a set of _privately_ asked questions showing up on a public mailing list.

Not that I have problems to see what I have written there in the public,
it's just way off what I consider consider common courtesy.

Andre'

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Message 40 in thread

On Tuesday 11 March 2008 18:01:07 André Pönitz wrote:
> On Tuesday 11 March 2008 16:59:34 Arvid Ephraim Picciani wrote:
> > On Tuesday 11 March 2008 16:26:56 André Pönitz  wrote:
> > > I am speaking only for myself below, if you want "official" answer
> > > consider chosing an official route...
> >
> > yeah. i asked you.
>
> And that's not the "official route". If it were, I would not add "speaking
> only for myself" every now and then.
i wanted your opinion.

> Apart from that I am astonished to find (parts of) a private response
> to a set of _privately_ asked questions showing up on a public mailing
> list.
>
> Not that I have problems to see what I have written there in the public,
> it's just way off what I consider consider common courtesy.
oh. I'm very sorry about that. didn't notice it was intentional. :(

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Message 41 in thread

On Tuesday 11 March 2008 16:59:34 Arvid Ephraim Picciani wrote:
> On Tuesday 11 March 2008 16:28:19 Thiago Macieira wrote:
> > On Tuesday 11 March 2008 15:45:20 Arvid Ephraim Picciani wrote:
> > > Why does the comunity screem for a more liberal license and nothing
> > > happens, then KDE people poke you and whoops, we have gpl3?
> >
> > KDE people screamed for it for 6 months before it happened. And since I
> > was involved in the GPL3 process, I can tell you this: the decision was
> > made because it benefited Trolltech, not because KDE people asked.
>
> ok. didnt know kde was asking for the same length of time. all i saw was
> discussions about it and boom the next day it was done.

So please stop making accusations and false claims without all the facts.

The process to get Qt under the GPLv3 was quite long. The decision came about 
internally because, like I said, because it makes business sense to *us*. I 
cannot and will not elaborate on what those reasons are.

Before that, to get it under the GPLv2 was also a very long process.

> > > Why does the planet have an extra kde category?
> >
> > So that we can mark blogs that should be published on Planet KDE.
>
> aha. and you just happen to route them from your blog to the tt blog and
> then to the kde blog? haha

I have two blogs: one in labs.trolltech.com and one in www.kdedevelopers.org. 
I haven't used the latter in many months, probably a year.

I think the only two aggregations that Labs did were for Lorn Potter and Zack 
Rusin. (I think we still do for Lorn) Otherwise, those blogs originate in our 
server.

> > > Maybe becouse you are all KDE developers?
> >
> > Not all, but one third, I'd say. We also have open source developers who
> > do not come from the KDE world, so saying that opensource = KDE for us is
> > nonsense.
>
> where? who? why are they hiding? why do they not post to this list? why did
> i never met any (except brad)

Your exception proves my point. There are more, like Andreas Hanssen, who were 
into Open Source before joining Trolltech and were not KDE developers.

Besides, I'd say that only 10%-15% of the developers do post to this list. 
This list is entirely voluntary for us, so they post here if they want to. It 
appears that they don't want that.

> > > Why are the non-Qt applications you folks make not there?
> >
> > Are there any aggregations websites that would like to syndicate
> > Trolltech Labs?
>
> hum, yeah. tt-labs. it IS an aggregations website.

No, it's not.

> > > Why did phonon make it into qt4 athought there where euqal projects out
> > > there? (And after that kde oposes gstreamer. hehe, funny.)
> >
> > What other projects are there that provide a Qt 4 API for multimedia?
>
> QxtMedia, the stuff from the video wall thingy, err... sorry, i vanished
> all my bookmarks and code bases after i got the depressing news. (actually
> i was quiet exited back then, i didnt know how kde would hurt me)

I wasn't involved in the team that chose Phonon for our API. But I can tell 
you about me: I had never heard about QxtMedia until just now. I don't know 
its capabilities so I cannot say how it compares to Phonon's capabilities.

> > And then there's this multimedia library, cross-platform, based on Qt 4
> > and offering a Qt 4-like API up for grabs. Hell, yeah, we included it!
> > And participated in the development, so that it matches our goals as
> > well.
>
> and just accidantly happens to be kde.

Right, and if it were from somebody else, someone else would have accused us 
of "buying the small guy's code instead of taking one that has a community to 
be backed and thus cannot be 'appropriated' by Trolltech".

This is the *first* time we have integrated a library coming from somewhere 
else. (In fact, it's the first and second, because we're also integrating 
QtXmlPatterns, born Patternist by Frans Englich, but for different reasons) 
So until you start to see a pattern, don't accuse us of preferring KDE.

A population of one isn't a pattern. (like yearly prises given traditionally 
since last year)

> > > Why do you have a license deal with KDE? It does gain you nothing.  (or
> > > i didnt get the point. excuse my ignorance). What does the rest of the
> > > community gain from that? (It only covers Qt/X11). Where do we propose
> > > additons to that? Right, we can't, becouse we are not KDE.
> >
> > Read history, please. The agreement came into existence when Trolltech
> > was a company of 10 people. And like I said before: the only reason for
> > it to exist is because it makes business sense.
>
> yes it does. but not for us! there are more people out there who wortk with
> qt.  thats my inititual problem.

How come it does not?!

"First there was Linux and then there was Mac
 Now we put Windows on the OpenSource track"
(Finn Arild Aasheim in "Qt 4 dance")

There *was* no other open source version of Qt when the agreement was created. 
The Mac and Windows and QtopiaCore/Embedded Linux and Windows CE versions all 
came about after the agreement. That's why it doesn't cover them.

As we saw ad nauseam in the Nokia thread here, if Qt stops being open source, 
the X11 version reverts to the BSD license. Don't tell me that wouldn't 
benefit you. Even if the other versions disappear, you still have the X11 
base and *all* of the cross-platform functionality, so it would be still 
possible to recreate the other platforms.

What's more, here's how KDE may help you more: KDE *does* want to extend the 
FreeQt Agreement to other platforms. Are you going to tell me that it's a bad 
thing just because KDE wants that?

> > > Why is desktop integration into KDE strong, and weak into gnome?
> >
> > Funny, KDE developers complained that we talked too much about GNOME
> > integration during the Qt 4.2 release...
>
> hehe. sorry for putting you in the crossfire there, but you are a cross
> platform toolkit and do not exist purely to serve KDE. thats exactly my
> problem. KDE must not  guide the way Qt will do on linux. Qt should work on
> all DEs equality. and i encourage Trolltech developers to contribute to
> fredesktop.org rather then kde specific fixes.

And I agree. Unfortunately, we don't have much time.

On my plate, I have proxy support that I want to push to freedesktop.org. When 
I have the time.

In any case, remember that freedesktop.org is about standards and 
specifications, not really about code (even D-Bus is called a reference 
implementation and we have considered internally ditching it for our own 
code). So it's really hard to write cross-desktop support for Linux.

To top all of that, integration on Linux for Qt is in a weird position: it's 
part of the desktop for half of the applications. So it's a downstream 
(towards the applications) integration or a sideways integration.

That's completely different on Mac and Windows, where the two companies behind 
them have a full stack and API to do that. So the integration is only in one 
direction (upstream - towards the OS).

So, yeah, freedesktop.org is the way, but not an easy way.

> > There's another reason why it integrates better: because KDE integrates
> > into Qt, not the other way around. For instance, the KDE widget style
> > (Oxygen in KDE 4, Plastik in KDE 3) are offered as Qt plugins. So any
> > Qt-based application can use them, for free, without even knowing that
> > they're doing so.
>
> so you admit leaving integration up to kde rather then focusing on your
> root ideas: beeing cross platform.  that sucks. and i am really sad about
> it.

No, I don't admit it.

We have the Plastique and Cleanlooks styles on Qt 4. That's Qt trying to 
integrate to the desktop.

The fact that KDE developers do the integration does not negate the fact that 
we do too.

Funny fact: why we don't use GTK itself to integrate to GNOME? Because GTK 
might decide to load the Gtk-Qt style, which links to Qt3, into a Qt4 
application. Instant crash with very, very weird backtraces.

> > The best thing that  GNOME has to offer in that area is the Gtk-Qt style
> > engine. I hear it's actually quite good.
>
> YOU are building a toolkit. not gnome. not kde.

I think you're asking for Trolltech to maintain the Gtk-Qt style and port it 
to Qt 4, possibly extending to other areas. In other words, position Qt 
between glib and GTK.

That wouldn't be a bad idea, but we need resources to do that. And, obviously, 
a pretty good business reason.

> > Finally, it's *also* kind of obvious that our developers know KDE code a
> > lot better than they do GNOME.
>
> sad. becouse thats my point.  you're biased and we have to suffer from
> that.

You suffer from the fact that we don't know the GNOME code? We don't have to 
understand their code in order to interoperate with them. And again, that's 
sideways integration that's very difficult for us.

We do have people who understand (or try to) X.org code, for instance. And we 
cooperate when we can at the freedesktop.org level: D-Bus, Harfbuzz are two 
things that come to mind.

>
> > > And yes, there where open source projects attemping to do so, but
> > > quickly aborted becouse of massive ranting. Not exactly your fault, but
> > > a result of ignoring the community and letting kde spread their hate.
> >
> > I take that as a personal insult.
>
> wasn't meant to. sorry. but you have to admit that your guys at kde are not
> quiet happy about cooperating with gnome.

No, I don't, because it's not true. No one has any problems cooperating with 
GNOME. That doesn't make it any *easier* though.

Harfbuzz is the perfect example of that: Trolltech developers cooperating with 
GTK/GNOME developers towards a common goal.

Why it doesn't happen more often? Because, like I said before, the common 
platform on Linux for desktop at the level we are is too low, so we have to 
keep reinventing the wheel.

I remember Matthias Ettrich saying in one of my first meetings in Trolltech, 
about the Qt 4.2 roadmap on desktop integration, that Microsoft had done such 
a good job of providing common functionality that they have 4 or 5 toolkits 
built upon it.

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Message 42 in thread


Thiago Macieira wrote:

> I think the only two aggregations that Labs did were for Lorn Potter and Zack 
> Rusin. (I think we still do for Lorn) Otherwise, those blogs originate in our 
> server.

Nope, I am on labs blogs as well.
:)



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Message 43 in thread

On 11.03.08 16:59:34, Arvid Ephraim Picciani wrote:
> On Tuesday 11 March 2008 16:26:56 André Pönitz  wrote:
> > Please elaborate why that looks like a "poke from the KDE people".
> kde needs gpl3 for some 3rdparty libs. so they get it.  unfortunatly i have no 
> official email traffic. its good hidden how kde does influence TT, but some 
> discussions about it happened at devdays. it's obvious how fast Qt became 
> gplv3 after that.  

ROFL. sorry, but thats complete nonsense. The issue about 3rd party libs
going GPL3 (IIRC the first one that kdelibs already uses is samba) was
raised shortly after GPL3 was released. Thats almost half a year
_before_ TT decided to finally go GPL3. 

And there were some public mails about this (I think kde-core-devel,
possibly kde-licensing and kde-release). Specifically it was said that
TT is looking into that, but needs time to let the lawyers look at the
GPL3 text.

> > > Why does kde get money from you? Hell no, i dont want money. I just want
> > > you to admit it.
> >
> > Certainly not my decision so I don't know the reasoning. But I
> > would expect any showcase of Qt of a size similar to KDE would
> > get the same kind of support as KDE does. For me this just
> > makes a lot of business sense.
> 
> opera, psi, qwt, qxt, cutebox, qdevelop, etc etc etc
> kde is just big becouse it's  colaboration of different apps. 

Right, thats why you call it a DesktopEnvironment :)

> and as i stated in my very first email i'd like to form a similar alliance 
> with qt-only apps. if you would only LET ME.

Hmm, but from a certain viewpoint KDE already is a qt-only-DE, it builds
a DE using Qt as base technology (it doesn't use any other toolkit as
widely as Qt). But for some things there simply are no qt-only apps, for
example I haven't yet come across a pure Qt WM, or a qt-only terminal
app, or a qt-only mail client. Or a qt-only panel/desktop. And if you
write these with Qt, you're basically doing the same things as KDE
developers did in the early days. At some point you'll find yourself in
a position where certain classes you've developed for the panel, would
also be useful for other apps, so you put them into a library - et voila
you've got your own kdelibs.

Anyway, I don't want to stop anybody from doing anything :) Just go
ahead and stop responding here ;)

> > > Why does the planet have an extra kde category? Maybe becouse you are all
> > > KDE developers?
> > I never wrote a single line for a _KDE_  program. I have written a few tens
> > of thousands lines of Qt code, though. What you say simply does not make
> > sense to me.
> where are your blog entrys?

As I'm not that familiar with all the Qt-only community sites, would you
mind sharing the link to that "planet" with me?

> > > Why are the non-Qt applications you folks make not there?
> > Which non-Qt application do you mean?
> all the zillions of half finished apps in demos/ examples/.

Uhm, those are technology demos. If you extend them to be fully fledged
apps they're not easy to understand anymore. In particular if they start
to be useful only together...

> whats with icefox ideas about a better desktop? 

Link?

> whats with blackbox goes qt?

A WM can't be done purely in Qt, its always going to need to talk to X11
I think. Besides, kwin isn't really heavy (except maybe the kdelibs
dependency, which can probably be removed if need be).

> > > Are  they filtered by the admin? Are Trolltech developers told to stfu
> > > when they have application ideas that could opose kde?
> > Surely not.
> Weird. looks like it.

How do you know? Ever worked at TT?

> > > Why did Aron do the keynotes at devdays?
> > I don't even know who Aron is, and I did not attend DevDays last year.
> > Considering the context I'd expect someone deep into KDE development
> > - which _I_ don't know any of. Really, no joke.
> HUH? its your co worker. he is the kde head. he is payd by your company? how 
> the heck can you not know him?! Do i have wrong information?

Kind of:
a) He is not the KDE head. He's a quite important KDE developer though,
responsible for the parts that actually build a desktop (plasma in KDE4,
kicker/kdesktop in KDE3)
b) Yes, he is sponsored by TT, however I don't think he codes a lot for
TT. My personal impression (which may be totally wrong) is that he's
got a more "representative" function, that kind of thing where you go to
conference and do some talks.
c) His name is Aaron Seigo (but thats probably just a typo on your side
:)

> > > Why does Trolltech sales ignore requests from open source developers?
> > > Yes. IGNORE. not even reject. hmmm let me guess: they don't even know
> > > that there are open source developers working on actuall software. 
> > > "comercial, open source? confusing! i thought kde is free!"
> > Ask sales@tt.
> Heh. also people who just work in your company but you dont know them?

You don't really expect everybody working at TT to know each other, do
you? And even those people working in higher positions aren't always
known to everybody, especially if they are not in the same department,
or aren't coders like Andre (sorry don't know how to get the accent atm)
probably is.

> > > Why did phonon make it into qt4 athought there where euqal projects out
> > > there?
> > Because customers asked for it. Several times, over years.
> hehe which customers asked for lgpl? fun.

Uhm, you paying TT for Qt, doesn't automatically mean you've got a say
on everything that is related to Qt. You'd probably have to invest a lot
of money to get TT to change the license to lgpl as obviously thats
something they don't want to (for whatever reasons).

> > Believe me, most people here simply do not care about "religious wars".
> > Issues to consider when integrating external code are quality, licenses,
> > ease of maintainance/interaction with "upstream" maintainers. I would
> > assume it was a concious decision based on such reasone to use phonon,
> > not gstreamer. [And to be honest, I have no clue what the technical
> > differences between the two would be exactly]
> Share your wisdom. What where the points for deciding that way. That was my 
> initial question.

Just guessing here, but making glib a hard dependency of Qt maybe didn't
fit well with TT plans? Thats just something obvious I could see as
problem from the outside, without ever having had a look at either of
the two sources (or how the maintainence is)

> > > Why did we have to fight so long to get the page for the license
> > > exception back online? Like... 3 months?  20 emails?  Right, kde is GPL,
> > > so why care about exceptions?
> > I am missing context here. "We"? What exception? In which of the four
> > (five?) licenses Qt can come with?
> you dont even know about your license exceptions?

You expect each TT employee to fully know all details of all the
licenses? You're insane.

> > > Why is desktop integration into KDE strong, and weak into gnome?
> > > And yes, there where open source projects attemping to do so, but quickly
> > > aborted becouse of massive ranting. Not exactly your fault, but a result
> > > of ignoring the community and letting kde spread their hate.
> not answered

What exactly do you mean with "integration"?
 
> > So that we can mark blogs that should be published on Planet KDE.
> aha. and you just happen to route them from your blog to the tt blog and then 
> to the kde blog? haha

No, planetkde fetches the rss feed from the labs and probably checks the
category. But I guess that answers my above question, you seem to refer
to the TT labs blogs, right?

> > > Maybe becouse you are all KDE developers?
> > Not all, but one third, I'd say. We also have open source developers who do
> > not come from the KDE world, so saying that opensource = KDE for us is
> > nonsense.
> where? who? why are they hiding? why do they not post to this list? why did i 
> never met any (except brad)

Maybe because those people don't get paid to do support via this list?
This is a community list, most of the people posting here are users of
Qt, this is not a list for TT employees to hang out on. Some do, others
don't.

> > And then there's this multimedia library, cross-platform, based on Qt 4 and
> > offering a Qt 4-like API up for grabs. Hell, yeah, we included it! And
> > participated in the development, so that it matches our goals as well.
> and just accidantly happens to be kde.

Its not _KDE_. If you look at it there's only 1 tiny piece in it that is
KDE, thats the kcm. It only was developed in the KDE svn and it got part
of kdelibs because at the time it was started there was no sign of TT
putting it into Qt (or at least it wasn't sure that would happen). KDE
just needs a multimedia API, the last one wasn't quite good. The code is
qt-only, in fact the code in KDE svn is mostly the same as the code
shipped with Qt4.4.

> > > Why do you have a license deal with KDE? It does gain you nothing.  (or i
> > > didnt get the point. excuse my ignorance). What does the rest of the
> > > community gain from that? (It only covers Qt/X11). Where do we propose
> > > additons to that? Right, we can't, becouse we are not KDE.
> > Read history, please. The agreement came into existence when Trolltech was
> > a company of 10 people. And like I said before: the only reason for it to
> > exist is because it makes business sense.
> yes it does. but not for us! there are more people out there who wortk with 
> qt.  thats my inititual problem.

Right, you (as paying customer) should contact sales or support to
ensure that this contract gets extended to Win32 and MacOS if you're
interested in those platforms

> > > Why is desktop integration into KDE strong, and weak into gnome?
> > Funny, KDE developers complained that we talked too much about GNOME
> > integration during the Qt 4.2 release...
> hehe. sorry for putting you in the crossfire there, but you are a cross 
> platform toolkit and do not exist purely to serve KDE. thats exactly my 
> problem. KDE must not  guide the way Qt will do on linux. Qt should work on 
> all DEs equality. and i encourage Trolltech developers to contribute to 
> fredesktop.org rather then kde specific fixes.

Last I checked a plain Qt app works the same way, no matter wether its
run in KDE or Gnome. I never saw a qt-only App that uses kio for
file-stuff, or used dcop to talk to other apps (or bonobo or corba or
whatever gnome uses). Sure, Qt apps don't adjust to the look and feel
of Gnome, but thats because gnome uses an incompatible GUI Toolkit.

> > There's another reason why it integrates better: because KDE integrates
> > into Qt, not the other way around. For instance, the KDE widget style
> > (Oxygen in KDE 4, Plastik in KDE 3) are offered as Qt plugins. So any
> > Qt-based application can use them, for free, without even knowing that
> > they're doing so.
> so you admit leaving integration up to kde rather then focusing on your root 
> ideas: beeing cross platform.  that sucks. and i am really sad about it.

Huh? Gnome people could as well provide a Qt style plugin to draw Qt
apps in a GTK style.

> > The best thing that  GNOME has to offer in that area is the Gtk-Qt style
> > engine. I hear it's actually quite good.
> YOU are building a toolkit. not gnome. not kde.

What exactly do you expect TT to do, they provide the _hooks_ for
changing the style, not the styles themselves (except a few defaults).

Thats the point of a toolkit, provide hooks that others can extend. Qt
shouldn't force me onto a specific gui style just to stay "cross
platform", it should integrate into the platform it runs on, which needs
some cooperation from that platform.

> > > And yes, there where open source projects attemping to do so, but quickly
> > > aborted becouse of massive ranting. Not exactly your fault, but a result
> > > of ignoring the community and letting kde spread their hate.
> > I take that as a personal insult.
> wasn't meant to. sorry. but you have to admit that your guys at kde are not 
> quiet happy about cooperating with gnome.

Thats complete nonsense, except for a few individuals that unfortunately
are almost always the loudest ones. There are (on _both_ sides) people
that absolutely hate the other GUI toolkit - for whatever reasons. But
there are also quite a lot of people that actually try to get stuff done
for both DE's to better integrate into each other.

Andreas

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Message 44 in thread

On Tuesday 11 March 2008 21:35:18 Andreas Pakulat wrote:
> Hmm, but from a certain viewpoint KDE already is a qt-only-DE,
...
> I haven't yet come across a pure Qt WM, or a qt-only terminal
> app, or a qt-only mail client. Or a qt-only panel/desktop. 
....
> Anyway, I don't want to stop anybody from doing anything :) Just go
> ahead and stop responding here ;)
...
> As I'm not that familiar with all the Qt-only community sites, would you
> mind sharing the link to that "planet" with me?
....
> Uhm, those are technology demos. If you extend them to be fully fledged
> apps they're not easy to understand anymore. In particular if they start
> to be useful only together...
....
> Link?
...
> What exactly do you mean with "integration"
....
> Sure, Qt apps don't adjust to the look and feel
> of Gnome, but thats because gnome uses an incompatible GUI Toolkit.
..
thank you.
the only thing i'd like to add, is that andreas is a kde developer. (kdegames)
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Message 45 in thread

On 11.03.08 22:03:20, Arvid Ephraim Picciani wrote:
> On Tuesday 11 March 2008 21:35:18 Andreas Pakulat wrote:
> > Hmm, but from a certain viewpoint KDE already is a qt-only-DE,
> ...
> > I haven't yet come across a pure Qt WM, or a qt-only terminal
> > app, or a qt-only mail client. Or a qt-only panel/desktop. 
> ....
> > Anyway, I don't want to stop anybody from doing anything :) Just go
> > ahead and stop responding here ;)
> ...
> > As I'm not that familiar with all the Qt-only community sites, would you
> > mind sharing the link to that "planet" with me?
> ....
> > Uhm, those are technology demos. If you extend them to be fully fledged
> > apps they're not easy to understand anymore. In particular if they start
> > to be useful only together...
> ....
> > Link?
> ...
> > What exactly do you mean with "integration"
> ....
> > Sure, Qt apps don't adjust to the look and feel
> > of Gnome, but thats because gnome uses an incompatible GUI Toolkit.
> ..
> thank you.
> the only thing i'd like to add, is that andreas is a kde developer. (kdegames)

No offense meant, but you should try to do your homework better. Just
because the last blog I've written is about kdegames doesn't mean I am
addicted to that. In fact for kdegames I'm just a user that tries to fix
the annoyances he comes a cross. My real addition is KDevelop :)

Just in case you wonder why I didn't mention this earlier: I usually
don't brag about that any time I write something here or somewhere else.
I'm much longer a Qt developer than a KDE dev (only about 1.5 years,
while I've been doing Qt development for about 4 years now at least).

Andreas

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