[Gambas-user] free <-> commercial software

[Rob]

On Saturday 23 July 2005 10:37, Daniel Campos wrote:
> 1) If you use gb.qt <-> pay a commercial license from TrollTech (
> http://www.trolltech.com )

I think that before you pay for a Trolltech license you should ask 
Trolltech specifically about Gambas.  gb.qt was developed using the 
GPL version of Qt, and according to their FAQ:

http://doc.trolltech.com/3.3/faq.html#4-3

"our commercial license agreements only apply to software that was 
developed with Qt under the agreement. They do not apply to code that 
was developed with the Qt Open Source Edition prior to the 
agreement."

It's unknown whether you could legally buy a Qt commercial license and 
then release Gambas programs using gb.qt, which was developed with 
the Qt Open Source Edition.  For example, I'm unaware of any 
proprietary KDE programs, which would require linking against the KDE 
libraries which are GPL; proprietary developers tend to either use Qt 
with a commercial license, or Gtk.  The people who would take issue 
with it are Trolltech, so someone should really ask them whether this 
is okay.

I also think this topic has been confused because of the distinction 
between "commercial" and "proprietary".  I have developed a couple 
dozen Gambas applications commercially.  They are all licensed under 
the GPL.  Sure, my clients could pass the source code along to their 
competitors.  Why would they do that?

But I think the GPL can work for shrink wrapped software in a store as 
well (at least where Windows software is concerned) because many 
Windows users have a fear of downloaded software and will only 
install something off of a CD that came in a shrink wrapped box.  I 
have seen OpenOffice and Firefox for sale this way (by third parties, 
like http://www.oooff.com/ though I don't think theirs was what I saw 
in stores), and I think when the Windows port is stable and not 
Cygwin dependent someday (or even with Cygwin, as long as Cygwin is 
totally invisible to the user and there's no X stuff) this would work 
quite well.

I grew up with a free copy of BASIC coming with every computer, 
meaning almost everyone got to learn how to program using an easy 
language if they wanted to, and it's my hope that Gambas can bring 
back some of that.

Rob