up with PyGUI!

[Jorge Godoy]

aleaxit at yahoo.com (Alex Martelli) writes:

> If you buy BlackAdder, it comes with PyQT and Qt licenses and is cheaper
> than the Qt license for C++ development.  A great bargain even if you
> never use the IDE itself (unless you also want to do C++ dev't).

I saw that...  It is the most interesting offer on the product that I've
seen.  The difference is a good one.  US$ 399.99...  PyQT alone costs
250.00 pounds sterling.  I don't know if I have to have a license of Qt
too or if it is included with PyQT, I'd have to read more carefully to
find it out or ask them that.

>> I like the widgets, and the visual, but I can't afford buying a whole
>> toolchain for using it.  So, I use the tools that are free, that allow
>
> I believe the "whole toolchain" (BlackAdder -- period) cost about $300
> (==Euro 250) for a one-user license (commercial, with full right to
> redistribute the apps you develop).  I'm not sure how much you charge
> for all of the apps you develop, but if 250 euros (fiscally deducible
> from your fees, of course!) make a significant dent in your income, then
> I agree that you can't afford Qt.

This is not my reality, but 250 euros are more money than a lot of
people earn monthly here.  Actually, it is the same amount a worker
should earn in 3 months if he is paid the minimum salary allowed by the
government (actually, there are people that receive as salary less than
1/3 of that minimum...).

So, even though *I* can buy, I still think it is an expensive product.
Another calculation one should do is the ROI of such an investment.  So
far, as I said in my previous message, the demand for it has not
convinced me to buy it.  Yet.  And yes, I point it out as an option in
some projects.

> No doubt, eventually, wxPython (which has been growing by leaps and
> bounds for quite a while now) will overtake Qt, and/or the cygwin guys
> will manage to release a native GPL Qt for Windows, and/or PyGUI will
> overtake both.  For the last couple years, though, it seems to me that
> anybody who claims he really wishes he could write (Python) non-GPL
> commercial code with Qt and hasn't considered buying BlackAdder must
> _definitely_ charge too little for the application he or she sells.

If PyGUI will have native widgets for Windows as it does for Mac, I hope
it becomes standard.  Its API seemed cleaner than wxPython's (and with
one less emulation layer than wax, as pointed out on this thread...). 

With regards to charging, one must take into account the economic
reality of the place where such a person lives.  If you see the above
you'll see that the cost is not the only problem, the value is (there's
a difference in being expensive and having a high price... at least in
Portuguese there's an important difference).

>> delivery (after all, he paid for that) or writing free software (free
>> software was their choice 75% of the time, this is another reason I
>> wouldn't invest on buying a license of Qt for commercial software...).
>
> Unfortunately, GPL Qt doesn't (yet) run on Windows, which (for my
> average customer) would be a blocking factor.

This is what led me to use wxPython on one project of mine...  Even it
being free software, I need to keep a Windows version of it for another
year or so.

> Somebody just posted to it.comp.macintosh about their astonishment
> regarding Mac prices: they carefully configured Dell and Mac machines
> that were roughly equivalent -- pretty big ones (2GB RAM, 20" LCD
> screens, 250 GB disk, and in the case of the Mac a 64-bit CPU) and they
> came out to very much the same price, 3000 Eur including VAT.  Except
> that on the Mac a superb professional development system is free for the
> downloading (XCode 1.5) while for Windows they'd need to splurge another
> thousand or so for Visual Studio Enterprise, not to mention the Mac's
> "iLife" suite (mostly not relevant to most professional users).  They
> were astonished because they'd chosen the cheapest Dell desktop that
> could be pushed that high (a 4600, I believe).

Dell is with low prices here, compared to what we see on the market.  I
was looking at one receipt two days ago, with another consultant, and we
saw that a 1600 with nice hardware cost near US$ 1300.00 here.  Buying
the same machine -- P4 2.80 GHz with HT, 80 GB SCSI disks capable of 80
MB/s at 160 MHz, 256 MiB of RAM, CD, Gigabit Ethernet adapter,
etc. etc. etc. -- anywhere else would be more expensive than that.

I remember iBooks starting at something like US$ 2100.00...  That's more
than half of the Dell :-)

> I'm at the other end of the spectrum, with an iBook 12" ultraportable
> which cost me, 9 months ago, roughly 1000, about 1/2 as much as the
> closest comparable machine in the Windows world (an IBM Thinkpad X40).

I wish we had those prices here...

> In this case, adding the $$$ for Visual Studio to the mix, vs the free
> XCode I have here, would make the price comparison just ridiculous.

Indeed.  But then, if you bought the other computer without Windows and
added a free operating system -- you said you use Linux... --, with its
development tools, then things would start being more comparable.

> People lusting for upgrades (because of course today's Mac are better
> than last year's) are typically trying to sell such machines for 700-800
> or thereabouts, if they're perfect except for their age of about a year.

*sigh*

> I wouldn't know where to find a good ultraportable 12" in the PC world
> for this kind of prices -- and if I did, Linux wouldn't perfectly
> support its "sleep" facilities, a key issue in ultraportable laptops.

I've read somewhere about enhancements to this function in the most
recent kernel.  I can't say anything about it, though, since I don't own
a notebook.

> Of course, the PC world has a MUCH wider range of offerings, including
> low-performance, low-quality ultracheap 250-or-so boxes -- that's what
> I typically throw in (with OpenBSD on them) when I propose some
> configuration to cheapskate customers.  But, as I needed a good
> laptop, with the amount of travel I do, that option just wasn't around
> for me.

Heh.  I do something on the same line you do: cheap boxes with a good
OpenSource OS where they fit.  And I also need a good box with a good
OpenSource OS to me. ;-) 


My machines here are 100% free and in the country where 60+% of the
software is illegal, I'm very proud of saying that there's nothing
without a proper license here :-)


Maybe I'm just talking about BlackAdder's/Qt's price because of this
culture here or because I'm used to use free (as in free speech and in
free beer ;-)) software...  But I really think that if it was cheaper it
would be more used.  I have bought several software for my PDAs, some
for my old mobile too...  

If I had to pay something like 5 dollars for each copy of the software
or something more expensive for a customized software (e.g. US$ 50.00,
if I sell the product for less than US$ 10,000.00 and more than US$
1,000.00, US$ 500.00 if US$ 10,000.00 < my software price < US$
100,000.00, etc.) it would be more interesting from a commercial point
of view and would also be easier to include such a cost at the product
price.

Of course, I'm looking at my side, they found that their business model
is different and I must either accept it or not use it.  For now, not
using it -- even liking more the appearance of the widgets -- has been
my choice.



I guess I deviated a lot from the original intention of the post, and
I'm sorry for that.  It wasn't my intention.  I just wanted to see the
toolkit on the OSs it supports :-)



Be seeing you,
-- 
Godoy.     <godoy at ieee.org>