Re: gEDA: SPICE GUI

[Michael Baxter <mab@cruzio.com>]

I'll add my comments interstitially, below, which may convey views that
are at variance to the views of some in gEDA.

On Wed, 11 Aug 2004, Bill Cox wrote:

> On Wed, 2004-08-11 at 03:05, MSWaters wrote:
> > Hi All,
> > 
> > According to the Qt Web site it is free for the development of free
> > software which is good. Even so I'm a little uneasy trusting my fate
> > into the hands of a commercial organisation since of necessity their
> > basic goal in life must be to make money. My basic goal here is write
> > software, I'd rather aline myself with an organisation with this same
> > goal.
> 
> You're right...  Qt is GPL'd, just like most of our code.  But, in
> addition, they let commercial companies use it for a fee.  That seems
> reasonable to me.  In comparison, wxWidgets is basically free for use
> either in commercial software or GPL'd software.
> 
> > The port of wxWidgets I'm using to develop gspiceui is based on GTK+.
> > How they do it for M$Windows or MAC I don't know.
> > 
> > Mike
> 
> I believe they've done direct implementations of wxWidgets to the basic
> primitives available on each platform.  This is good for speed, but
> probably causes some inconsistencies across platforms.
> 
> It seems to me that the most popular GUI choices are:
> 
> - GTK (1.0 or 2.0)
> - Qt
> - wxWidgets
> 
> There seem to be three main criteria for choosing:
> 
> - Usability
> - Licensing
> - Long-term outlook

I think the most important criteria is free as in freedom. I agree it 
should work, and have a future, but non-free is totally unacceptable.
 
> I've used GTK enough to know that I'm not a fan.  I much prefer the
> functionality MFC from Microsoft.  I haven't used Qt or wxWidgets, but
> it would be great to hear from someone who's used both.

Because GTK is free software, you have the opportunity to make it better.  
Microsoft has openly decried free software, and they are certainly against
your having free software, and the freedom to do what you want with it.
 
> Of these, wxWidgets seems to have the least restrictive license (you can
> sell binary code derived from their source), followed by GTK (GNU
> Library license), and Qt (straight GPL).

The least restrictive license is the GPL, because it ensures that everyone
always has access to source, while allowing you to sell software if you
wish to. You just cannot sell software and restrict access to the source 
code.
 
> I feel the Qt restriction is significant.  It's likely that some of the
> future open-source EDA efforts will be available both as GPL'd source
> and as commercial products.  Thus, it hurts the open-source EDA effort
> to standardize on a pure GPL GUI toolkit.

I disagree completely, unless I misparsed this statement somehow.

It does not hurt open source EDA to use the GPL, it protects us by
maintaining our freedom! Anyone is free to sell GPL'ed software! Examples
of that are the numerous Linux distributions. An example of a GPL'ed CAD
tool that is both sold and freely available in source form is Electric.
Open source CAD tools are protected by being available as source that no
one can ever take away, in contrast to numerous proprietary CAD tools.

If you're taking about open-source EDA efforts being available in
commercial products that are source-restricted, binary-only, proprietary
copies ... that is not either open source nor free software, and it's not
freedom. If you're talking about selling commercial products derived from 
open-sourced but non-GPL'ed origins so that a proprietary form can exist, 
your licensing wishes are against freedom.

Anyone has a right should they wish, to build and sell proprietary EDA 
tools -- but not by taking away others freedom to develop and use free EDA 
software.

> 
> As for long-term outlook, GTK is clearly here to stay, and Qt has a long
> history and is supported by a real company.  It sounds like wxWidgets
> almost died in the 90's but then came back to life.  It's going strong
> now, and gaining momentum.  IMO, picking a winner is key.  Otherwise, we
> could all be maintaining and porting an obscure GUI toolkit for years.
> 
> Bill

Best,
Michael