Ok… So I get emailed this press release by Nokia that their changing their licensing model from GPL to LGPL.. In my little world this is a huge deal. In my digital wanderings I stumbled on QT and started working with it. The technology impressed me but the dual license model was a real turn off. Basically, it you wanted to have any type of proprietary code, you were obligated to publish it as open source, unless you purchased a license from QT (formally trolltech). We’re not talking a 10 buck license but some serious shekels for a small fish. So basically, the choice was to be altruistic and give it away or a big fish to make money with it.
My decision to study wxwidgets was primarily based on the license model for QT. I’m going to need let the dust settle on this and see where this is heading. For now, I guess I’ll stay the course, although my suspicion is that I’ll being dusting off the QT.
I think that this is going to be very interesting for Freecad which uses QT and Opencascade. My understanding is that Freecad is very close to coming of age and I think this will tend to accelerate it’s development, especially in todays economy.
I think that I’d be pretty upset right now if I was a small to middle sized developer who was making money with QT. The competition has just swelled.
Nokia is not a stupid company, I wonder if this is part of a strategy to take on Apple the same way as they basic took out Motorola in the cell phone days. I need to do a little more research on this.