

Qt 4.5.0 released (Let the LGPL apps begin) - icefox
http://labs.trolltech.com/blogs/2009/03/03/qt-45-hits-the-virtual-shelves/

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EliAndrewC
Does anyone here know anything about whether PyQT is planning on also
switching to LGPL? On their license page, they say:

"Like Qt itself, PyQt is provided under a number of licenses depending on how
it is going to be used. In fact, we try and follow Trolltech's licensing model
as closely as we can."

So I'm assuming that they're planning on switching. Is anyone here on their
mailing lists and/or have any other inside information of that sort about
whether they're planning on switching?

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myutdtme
I would assume they aren't - QT is owned by Nokia so they can afford to give
QT away for free just for market share. Riverbank computing (makers of PyQT)
is a one man band with bills to pay (it is availabel under the GPL). But if
they don't then someone is going to start a community project to produce the
swig wrappers themselves.

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myutdtme
Having said that - perhaps Nokia might buy Riverbank to keep pyqt going, or
Riverbank might feel they can support themselves on consulting/support
contracts with a larger installed base of an LGPL pyqt?

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biohacker42
The last time I looked at Qt, they had gone mad with the pimpl (private
implementation) design pattern, and that made the classes much harder to
extend. Needlessly harder to extend in my opinion.

Can anyone tell me if this is still the case?

I suppose it's only an issue if you're really pushing the framework, it
shouldn't bother most people.

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poimnu
Not sure I'm expert enough to comment, but doesn't this make it easier to
extend a class - because what you can and can't use/rely on is clear?

~~~
biohacker42
It's a double edged sword. On the one hand, you know what APIs they've
committed to and won't change.

On the other hand, often you want to extend more then they would "allow". And
because you're wrapping their APIs, when those APIs change, you should only
have to change your code in the one place where you overloaded them.

There's a lot of bad things said about JFC/Swing, I won't repeat them here,
but it did allow you to extend almost everything.

And as a side note, GridBagLayout is powerful and elegant, despite what some
people say: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuLaxbFKAcc>

