Trolltech to release Qt/Mac GPL

Trolltech announced today that they will release a GPL version of Qt/Mac on June 23rd at the Apple's World Wide Developer Conference (WWDC) 2003 in San Francisco taking their successful dual licensing strategy for Qt/X11 to the Mac. Also the upcoming Qt Script for Applications (QSA), Trolltech's scripting toolkit for Qt-based applications, will be available under a dual license on Mac OS X.
Sam Magnuson from Trolltech already got much of KDE building on Qt/Mac a while ago (screenshots showing Konqueror,
Kontact, Games and KOffice). The new license now offered allows to distribute binary builds of KDE for Qt/Mac soon.


You will restrict the rights of a minority of users that are up to no good and preserve the freedom for the rest. I prefer freedom over lock-in anytime.

By tuxo at Wed, 2003/06/18 - 5:00am

The GPL asserts absolutely no controls over the rights of end users. It is not a use, but a distribution license. It does affect your rights as a developer if you want to use their code. I think you may be using the word "rights" incorrectly here, to mean "business desires."

By Michael Greer at Wed, 2003/06/18 - 5:00am

No, nobody is beiong restricted - you are perfectly free to not use Qt at all.

By Stephen Douglas at Wed, 2003/06/18 - 5:00am

Well said. I can't understand people complaining about Trolltech desisions.
Trolltech is free to, to make the decisions they like or think are right, this includes excluding other licences other than GPL.

By Iuri Fiedoruk at Wed, 2003/06/18 - 5:00am

I can't understand people complaining about Trolltech desisions.

When Microsoft recently released a license that said in essence "you can't use the GPL", the community was outraged. But when Trolltech says "you must use the GPL" it's okay. I don't see the fundamental difference between the two.

By David Johnson at Wed, 2003/06/18 - 5:00am

Yep, agreed.
I think M$ should release anything they have in any license they wish, if this don't brake the law (or previous licenses), I don't see why so much complaining arround there.

And remember people defends GPL agains the "viral" speech from M$ but attacks m$ right to do the shared source....

I don't like BSD, I think it's bad (don't worry to reply about this, keep reading...), but that just me. I won't even say anything besides this from anyone who wants to use BSD, and I must always enphasis the "I" in the statement. Simply saying BSD is bad/GPL is bad isn't a nice thing, always remember it's just YOUR option and fights will diminish or vanish.

Peace people!


>But when Trolltech says "you must use the GPL" it's okay. I don't see the >fundamental difference between the two.
The difference is that forcing GPL serves many people, while not allowing GPL serves mainly one big company, in this case M$.

By tuxo at Thu, 2003/06/19 - 5:00am

See this posting by Matthias Ettrich of Trolltech, http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-licensing&m=104970829609721&w=2 :

"The non-GPL code in KDE that I'm aware of grants a superset of rights (typically X11 or BSD-style licenses), meaning linking to a GPL'ed library is not a problem at all."

By Anonymous at Wed, 2003/06/18 - 5:00am

Is QT Script comparable to VB Script/Visial Basic? Where are the tutorials? I think it's time to learn it. Can I use Kommander and utilize QT script behind the scenes to do useful stuff with databases the way I use VB/Access in the MS world?

By Charles at Tue, 2003/06/17 - 5:00am

Sincerly I don't know anything about QT Scripts, but even if right now you can't use them directly in Kommander (can anyone with QT Script experience try it?) I believe it will be quite easy to implement if the only requirement is to pass the scripts to some interpreter to execute. And it will give you a lot of power.


By Andras Mantia at Tue, 2003/06/17 - 5:00am

QT Script and Kommander are two different animals. It's possible to make Kommander use QT Script or, as an alternative, Rich Moore's Javascript bindings. Some consideration has been given to this along with enabling a default script repository to help users do scripted actions. There are some changes in the works for Kommander. they include more widget support, data widgets and script objects as well as sub dialog objects. Since Kommander is language neutral it will be very easy to use with PHP 4.3x in CGI mode. This means PHP authors could create quick mini apps much like PHP GTK but with KDE widgets and I think it a much nicer environment. Kommander also directly communicates via DCOP.

Perhaps the primary difference between the two is that you can actually make a dialog with Kommander that does something and has absolutely no code because of our text associations. QT Script will have the advantage of a newer implementation with QT Designer and in this area we could catch up with more developers to support it. Marc has had little time for it lately.

These applications are similar. It appears QT Script will be more widely supported and will have extensive capabilities as a scripted development environment. However Kommander will remain simpler with text associations and have advantages in language neutral development, built in DCOP and possibly other areas.

What I really hope is that a language specific program without the simple and quick abilities Kommander has does not end up overshadowing it. In my opinion Kommander has a lot of potential for all of KDE. I really hope we get some developers with time to work on it as we have with Quanta. It can extend any KDE app with DCOP pretty easily.

By Eric Laffoon at Wed, 2003/06/18 - 5:00am

QT Script is based on ECMAscript, so it's roughly the same as Javascript/JScript.


By Jim Dabell at Wed, 2003/06/18 - 5:00am

Good to see the GPLd Qt get more powerful! One question - is that just a Mac-style skin it's using in those screenshots, or is it actually using native widgets?

It kind of looks a bit, hmm, messy? Hard to describe. It looks like it is using a skin though....

By Mike Hearn at Tue, 2003/06/17 - 5:00am

To keep to the notion of 'code-once-compile-many' Qt doesn't use native widgets on the different platforms.

On the MS platform, the style is very simple to emulate, and so you wouldn't notice, but on the Mac it shows.

Qt on the Mac does not utilise Cocoa.

By AFAIK at Tue, 2003/06/17 - 5:00am

No, actually, Qt/Mac does use Carbon to draw widgets. It's as native as Carbon is, which being an official Apple API, is pretty damn native. Back before Qt/Mac was released, Apple helped TT with this. Qt/Mac of course doesn't use Cocoa.

Qt/Windows on WindowsXP also uses natively-drawn widgets.

Note that neither is "Native Widgets".. they are, however, "Natively-drawn".

By anon at Wed, 2003/06/18 - 5:00am

Yes, it's just a skin. That is the nature of Qt -- nothing ever maps to a native control -- ever. That makes it all the more difficult for Trolltech to port Qt since it always has to change the appearance of its widgets whenever developers of the operating system change the look of their controls.

By Mike Vance at Tue, 2003/06/24 - 5:00am

Once again, it isn't a skin. It usses the apperance manager. It's as native as Carbon or Cocoa.

By lit at Tue, 2003/06/24 - 5:00am

qt is a wonderful toolkit, hearing that it will become free for another platform is wonderful, but i continue hoping a gpl version also for windows. I don't know if trolltech is planning to do this, but it would be a great thing it would present kde and other qt application to the great public.
And imagine a kde windows desktop where will be hard to recognize if it is windows or linux, great interoperability and it would be easier to switch.
ok, ok, stop dreaming :-)

By mart at Tue, 2003/06/17 - 5:00am

I fully agree with you !

By fred at Thu, 2003/06/19 - 5:00am

Wouldn't it be nice if TT could LGPL the core part of QT (hopefully on all platforms)? Only the part the KDE libs link against. That would ease the adoption (w.r.t. to the LGPL GTK libs) and they would not loose their business case and could keep all the database / motif / whatever exotic QT-stuff separate GPL/commercial.

By AC at Wed, 2003/06/18 - 5:00am

Imagine Kylix for OS X! that's based on Qt.

By blaising mark at Wed, 2003/06/18 - 5:00am

Imagine CLX for QT3, or writing KDE apps in Kylix. Oh well keep dreaming...

By Simon at Wed, 2003/06/18 - 5:00am

I've spent the last 4 months porting a fair amount (> 15 kloc) of qt code to std c++ on the backend (removing *all* qt, and writing my own classes that map to qt's classes where needed) and rewriting the gui in native cocoa/objective-c.

And now I discover it was completely unnecessary!

Arg! :P

By Shamyl Zakariya at Wed, 2003/06/18 - 5:00am

Hey, my heart goes out to you. Kommander was supposed to be totally revolutionary and now the question remains whether it will get teh attention it still deserves. So... any chance you feel like working on Quanta or Kommander for the Mac? ;-)




Kommander will get the attention when it develops once it stops being bundled with a cvs copy of Quanta. :)

It probably already works on MacOSX too.


Probably it would have been unnecessary anyway. When you say you're porting to std c++, I suppose you aren't talking about the GUI, just converting QString to std::string and likewise. If that's the case, you could have used the non-GUI part of Qt/X11, which is very portable and should not been hard to compile under OS X at all. This is done for example in Doxygen: http://www.doxygen.org

By em at Wed, 2003/06/18 - 5:00am

Well, I obviously didn't read your comment completely before posting my reply. My bad. What I said still applies to the "backend", though.


yup.. doxygen does this, as does tinyqt (http://www.uwyn.com/projects/tinyq/-- which probably already builds fine on osx without any X dependencies)


Great, what I want to read next is: "Apple integrates QT into next MacOS X version", that would be wunderfull.
I hope Unix/Linux community will profit form the QT-port, too, not only Mac users.
With CUPS integration into MacOS X I thougt, now it's easy to shipp MacOS and Linux drivers with all printers, but only MacOS X drivers are shipped.

By Manfred Tremmel at Thu, 2003/06/19 - 5:00am

I know this is starting to get pretty off topic, but I was surprised to discover the other day that I could just copy those MacOS X drivers off my mac and on to my Linux box to get it to print to the same printer. This was for a Lexmark Optra L. Your mileage may vary.

By Aaron Bolding at Fri, 2003/06/20 - 5:00am

Sounds good! I don't understand, why the printer manufacturer don't use this for marketing. To create a little RPM for RedHat and SuSE on the CD and a "supporting Linux" to the wrapping shouldn't be a problem.

By Manfred Tremmel at Fri, 2003/06/20 - 5:00am


Though feelings are kind
To any sound mind,
The slow are as well
To build a hard shell.
We're not all so bound
To cover much ground:
The tortoise and hare...
Have nothibng to share.

By Abdul Murphy at Wed, 2006/05/03 - 5:00am


The Pitcher Plant has won the prey,
While they are half asleep -
From soothing nectar by a pool...
To draw them in so deep.
Though any creature on the ball
Can turn and fly away...
So being free again to live
And fight another day.

The Pitcher Plant and anything
With power, speed and charm...
May serve each other well - and both
Are free of any harm.
However: should another dare
To go in there with pride...
Then they are surely travelling on
The road to suicide.

By Headstone Frollo at Wed, 2006/05/03 - 5:00am

I have moved into a property in Surbiton.

The previous resident was Harriet Little, who had 'The Business' newspaper delivered to her.

Although I have phoned her several times, and then even wrote to 'The Business' newspaper people, and wrote to Harriet Little - it hasn't made the slightest bit of difference.

Harriet Little has moved to: Orchard Close, 1 Oxshott Way, Cobham, Surrey.

How do I get through to people?

Although it may be a Little waste (as I don't read that sort of rubbish) - maybe I should remember that nothing in Nature is wasted... and so the 'Disappearing Rain Forests' are no longer any concern of mine, or 'Food Mountains' for that matter.

By New resident at Mon, 2006/04/17 - 5:00am

Being thought of (in and outside religion) as a boring old goody-goody -
for not wanting to get into men's talk,
I thought I would let my hair down, and be a bit more worldly...
and, therefore, here is some interesting reading:

'GURU WITH ANY VIRGIN' by Bindya Dundett
'ASIAN AFFECTION' by Sexton Zewon
'SEXUAL APATHY' by Burnett Urben

By Abdul Murphy at Mon, 2006/05/01 - 5:00am

Dear Reader,

Being born slow and clumsy, to me, the Law of the Jungle, hasn't appeared to allow me to be closely intimate with womankind - even though male peer-pressure (conveniently hidden from women) is trying to force me to think about women - the way women don't want me to.

The consolation is that, although being slow and clumsy means that I need to learn physical and emotional Independence - yet still... being slow and clumsy does prevent me qualifying for the forces, when people should ever be called up.

Also, what made me live for the first time in ages was finding out, through experience, that:

Eating Only When Hungry Reduces Libido.

Being in more physical control helped me to emotionally see the Law of the Jungle in a deeper way, and bring Responsibility, Bravery and Unselfishness into the equasion:

If a woman cannot feel safe with any individual man - then she has every right to feel safe from him.

I do hope this will help anyone concerned.

Yours sincerely,

Headstone Frollo

By Headstone Frollo at Wed, 2006/05/10 - 5:00am

how do people travel to and from the rainforests?

[For School]

By briahna at Wed, 2006/08/23 - 5:00am

What goes...
Brown, yellow, black, pink,
brown, yellow, black, pink;
brown, yellow, black,
brown, yellow, black;
brown, yellow,
brown, yellow;
brown, brown, brown, brown, brown, brown...?
The world, in time.


Or is it held hostage by the lack of a Win32 GPL version?

By Fredrik at Thu, 2003/06/19 - 5:00am

Someone is trying to port Konqueror to Windows without qt, much like Safari is really Konqueror for Mac OS X without qt. I don't know how far along he is, maybe you want to look on the mailing list for the file browser at

By Frank at Wed, 2003/06/25 - 5:00am

anyone know of docs on how to build KDE against this version?


By Xslf at Tue, 2003/06/24 - 5:00am

Get KDE, get the patches, apply them, build?

By Anonymous at Tue, 2003/06/24 - 5:00am

Ah, but where do you get the right pathes from?

By anona at Wed, 2003/06/25 - 5:00am

Click twice on "got much of KDE builing" links and last but not least enter the patches/ directory. Expect problems you may have to solve yourself, but try.

By Anonymous at Wed, 2003/06/25 - 5:00am