[sword-devel] OT ->Fw: Trolltech Makes Qt/Windows Available Under New Non-Commercial License

[Chris Little]

At first I thought this looked really cool (and in one sense it is).
I've really wished TT would release Qt for Win32 since I learned the
earliest versions back in school.  It would be ideal as a cross-platform
windowing toolkit and I imagine BibleTime could be ported to Win32 with
this very easily.

Then I thought about the license.  One of the things people criticize
GPL for is being unfriendly to business.  That's blatantly wrong,
because GPL is quite compatible with business development.  But this new
Non-Commercial License is utterly unfriendly to business.  Businesses
aren't even allowed to use Qt/Win32 in-house without a license--yet
Microsoft picks on the poor GPL! :)  The non-commercial exploitation
clauses of the new Non-Commercial License make it very incompatible with
GPL.

So if the BibleTime guys wanted to release BibleTime for Win32 using the
new Qt, they would have to license SWORD from CrossWire under a license
other than GPL.

I really wish someone would port Qt for Linux (which is GPL) to Win32 so
that TrollTech can't keep playing these stupid licensing games.

--Chris