GTK vs QTopia vs Android -

[Lorn Potter]

Dave Neary wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Lorn Potter wrote:
>> If you look at the development, both Nokia and Openmoko 'runs the show'
>> and has the last say on their respective platforms, not the community.
> 
> It is perfectly reasonable to me that Nokia and FIC get to decide the
> software that's installed on their hardware. But that doesn't take away
> from the fact that they have chosen free software as the basis for their
> system. Nokia haven't tried, for example, to take over GTK+ development
> and add lots of Maemo-relevant patches to the core GTK+ releases
> (although many of those patches probably should be mainlined). I'm sure
> that they could, if they chose to.
> 
> Instead they're working with the upstream community and maintaining
> patches downstream for their hardware, while trying their best to get as
> many as possible of those patches back upstream for community approval.
> 
> Isn't that a model of collaboration worth encouraging?

Free software is worth encouraging. Status quo closed source is not.

> 
> Compare to Qtopia, Trolltech decides the roadmap for the software, and
> the community is welcome to participate (after signing a copyright
> assignment) in so far as they agree with that roadmap.

Actually, the community (the free software community, our customers and 
the market in which it is sold) decides Qtopia's roadmap.

> 
>> Contributing code to Qtopia is really no different than contributing
>> code to FSF/GNU.
> 
> Equating the FSF, a non-profit which guarantees that software assigned
> to it will remain Free Software ad infinitum with Trolltech, a company
> who wants to make money off dual licencing by releasing my work under a
> commercial licence to those who don't like the GPL... that's pretty funny.

Trolltech GPL's most of the code it develops, which guarantees that 
software will remain free ad infinitum. So ya, equating the copyright 
assignment for both FSF and Trolltech is the same.



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