One week ago, I have submitted an article for posting. Since then, I have no news. I don't know if my article is waiting in a long queue for moderation approval. But that seems improbable given the sheer number of articles that get posted these days.
I can suppose that it has been rejected but I have no mail to confirm this. And if it has been rejected, I would like to know why. I have invested my time to write a reasonably good article. I find it certainly more interesting than the latest Advogato users are lame.
For a site about open-source, I would expect the processing to be more ... open.
Qt FUD
There is a lot of FUD going on about Qt these days. Four years ago, people would complain that Qt was not free. Now, they complain that it is too free and it forces you to write free program. How evil!
I would like to remind a few points:
- RMS recommands GPL for library the implement something that is available already in a non-free form. Clearly, Qt stands there. So it should have RMS's blessing now.
- Qt is GPL. There is no license issue around it anymore.
- Many free software bigots like to brag about how free software gives you more freedom and more choice. In this specific case, the GPL version of Qt does not let you choose the license for your application, which could be seen as a restriction of freedom as a user. However, if you pay, you can have all the freedom you want.
- Some people would like you to believe that Qt is not suitable for commercial appliation because either it is too expensive, or it requires to develop a GPL application.
Well, some business model can work very well with a GPL application. So in that case, Qt is free (if you use the unix version) and the argument does not apply.
For the other point, if your business can not afford a version of Qt or a version of PyQt (a lot cheaper, see the PyQt website), then your business has a serious problem.
If your business makes real money, then giving back to Trolltech to help make Qt better is a good idea. I don't see why we should support people that make money off the hard work of others without giving back. When you use Qt in a non free environement, you are forced to give back. And Trolltech gives you back too, every version of Qt has new wonders.
For the record, I have built with friends a small business based on Qt and it was successful (see www.yalbi.com). It is perfectely possible to use Qt in a commercial environment. In fact, if it wasn't, I wonder how Trolltech would have survived all these years. Trolltech does not have any VC money, it is self-funded. So it is profitable thank to all the business that use it.
I have even used Qt to do windows-only program. It is a lot better than MFC, .NET or VB and in the end, it is a lot less expensive. What you pay for the license, you spare it on your development time, feature richness, maintenability and royalties (many windows libraries have royalties scheme).