Trolltech became one of the first Open Source companies in the world when they in the late 90s licensed their
Qt GUI library under a Dual License model. Starting from version 4.5,
Qt will be licensed as LGPL software!
This will by far be the *BOMB* news of 2009, with a LOT of margin...!Unless Microsoft goes chapter 11 or something, there is hardly any IT news that can possibly outperform this news in the entire 2009...!
I have worked with Eirik-Chambe Eng in the board of Gaiaware which I was the founder of. I also know Knut Yrvin - Qts Community Manager - very well. Plus lots of other people working for Qt. And I must say
congratulations all Trolls at Nokia!
Some readers might ask "why this is such a big piece of news". To put things in perspectives,
Gnome and GTK was STARTED because Trolltech wouldn't license Qt under an LGPL license! And I started
SmartWin++ largely because Qt was not possible to use for "free"...
Another thing to realize is that Apple took OUT Qt when they started developing Safari since it "wasn't permissive enough". And this will probably mean that Google Chrome will start using Qt as their Cross Platform strategy. So now you probably realize the importance of this news...
This makes it possible to build proprietary (Closed Source) Software for KDE - the *WORLD LARGEST* Desktop Manager for Linux - for FREE! Without paying license fees to Trolltech...
This is definitively a HUGE leap for Linux as a desktop Operation System. In fact late 2008 in December I said that I thought that
"unfortunately 2009 will probably not be the year of Linux on the Desktop". When Qt goes LGPL, I think I will revise that prediction...
For the first time developers all across the world has the possibility of creating closed source applications, in the worlds best GUI kit for Desktops, which will work cross platform on all platforms -
FOR FREE...!
And remember that this is the stuff that Google Talk, several Adobe products and even Nasa builds their desktop systems in. This is HUGE NEWS...!
This is *bombnews*...!
Congratulations Eirik-Chambe Eng, Knut Yrvin and all my other Trolls over at Nokia, this was the right thing to do. By far...!
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