is there really no good gui builder

[Phil Thompson]

On 9 Nov 2008 10:46:53 GMT, Duncan Booth <duncan.booth at invalid.invalid>
wrote:
> Mr.SpOOn wrote:
> 
>> On Sun, Nov 9, 2008 at 12:29 AM, Stef Mientki <stef.mientki at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>> Qt seems to be good, but I don't like their licence.
>>
>>
>> What's the problem with qt licence?
> 
> "You must purchase a Qt Commercial License from Qt Software or from one
> of its authorized resellers before you start developing commercial
> software. The Commercial license does not allow the incorporation of
> code developed with the Open Source Edition of Qt into a commercial
> product."
> 
> In effect this means that if you want to develop any commercial software
> with Qt you have to buy the license in advance (even if all you want is
> to knock together some proof-of-concept) and you are also
> permanently locked out from including any previously developed Qt code
> which the wider community may have produced.
> 
> With other GPL licensed software you have the option of approaching
> the original author and negotiating with them for their code to be
> relicensed for use within your proprietary product (or the author 
> could simply distribute their code under a less restrictive
> license to begin with), but the Qt license restricts you from using
> anything publicly available *except for Qt itself*.
> 
> It is a novel interpretation of the GPL. Qt Software have every right to
> impose this sort of condition, but it makes me want to avoid them.

PyQt has the same restrictions, and while the above is strictly correct, in
reality common sense would break out.

Obviously you can't predict the future and it's perfectly reasonable for
somebody with a successful open source project to want to make some money
from it at a later date. That's what happened with PyQt itself. Anybody in
that situation just has to have an adult conversation to come to a mutually
beneficial agreement.

On the other hand if you used the GPL versions for the 2 year development
of your application with the intention of buying the commercial versions at
the last minute, then that is taking the piss and is what the restrictions
are really about.

Phil