Qtopia coming for Neo1973

Lorn Potter lpotter at trolltech.com
Tue Sep 25 20:36:41 CEST 2007



Dani Anon wrote:
> On 9/25/07, Steven Le Roux <steven at le-roux.info> wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, 25 Sep 2007 10:32:46 +0200, "Dani Anon" <mrtitor at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On 9/25/07, Lorn Potter <lpotter at trolltech.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Carlo E. Prelz wrote:
>>>>>       Subject: Re: Qtopia coming for Neo1973
>>>>>       Date: mar 25 set 07 08:18:31 +0200
>>>>>
>>>>> Quoting Dani Anon (mrtitor at gmail.com):
>>>>>
>>>>>> - But QT is not free (as in beer) for commercial usage
>>>>> This is not the only reason why Qtopia is sub-optimal.
>>>> It's not a reason at all. Neo is a "free" phone! If I wanted commercial
>>>> applications, I could easily use any other phone out there. The reason
>>>> why we are all here, is because the Neo is 'free software'. Would the
>>>> Neo interest you as much if it wasn't as 'free'?
>>> Tell that to all the people using Wine under Linux.
>> I Don't think there are so much...  I fully agree with him to say Neo/OpenMoko goal is to become a *FREE* user friendly phone. Even if Qtopia could give bigger range, or bigger "celebrity", it will not change the OpenMoko/OpenEmbedded mission, to provide a free framework/os
> 
> People keep saying that but really, are you sure that openmoko goals
> exclude proprietary software?
> http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Commercial_models

Of course they don't, because they are developing using the LGPL, which 
encourages commercial closed source.

> 
> Linux is a perfectly free operative system but support for proprietary
> software isn't discouraged. 

Not by the operating system, or the LGPL, but by the culture surrounding 
it. How many commercial closed source applications are available for 
Linux? How many have you bought? Have you paid attention to what people 
say when someone releases closed source for Linux? How often have nvidia 
and ATI been harassed about their closed source? How many software have 
been released open source as a result of community pressure?

> Think of Oracle, Opera, vmware to name a
> few. In fact, one could argue that an open platform that makes
> proprietary development expensive is less free than a closed platform
> that makes proprietary development (as well as free development) free,
> so I think you are very wrong about this.

Perhaps, but we aren't talking about closed platforms.
To most commercial entities, software licensing is not as much as 
development costs.



> FIC is a company after all and I'm pretty sure that to them, the
> non-free nature of qtopia for proprietary usage would be a concern but
> that is good. 

FIC wants to sell hardware.



-- 
Lorn 'ljp' Potter
Software Engineer, Systems Group, MES, Trolltech




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