I don't know much about GNOME, but it seems, that it needs glibc, so we won't have it until the 6.0 release, but anyway, now that Qt will be free available (-> c.o.l.a.:"The KDE Free Qt Foundation") maybe the GNOME project isn't that important anymore?
Bodo, please read that post you reference again. Qt is not free and will not be so until Troll Tech goes out of business or something.
All that is guaranteed is that if Troll goes under, Qt can survive by becoming free software. That doesn't solve the real problem that Qt is *not* free software and as such we (Red Hat) will not ship it or anything that relies on it.
[Warning, rant ahead] Hmm.. Perhaps I am out of line here, but I find this rather annoying. I believe this is the SuSE mailing list, so I would tend to assume that Bodo's comments referred to what is important to SuSE Linux in particular or perhaps the world in general, rather than what is important to Red Hat Linux. Additionally, Bodo states "Qt will be free avilable" which it IS! Qt is free for the purposes of the KDE projet and all other non-commercial efforts. It may not be "free software" by the GPL definition of such, but perhaps this merely serves to underline the problems with the term "Free Software". However it is freely available, and free from cost for the KDE project. I remain unconvinced that the Troll boogeymen will jump out and attack the Linux world as soon as they are entrenched in power. The source code is available. Diffs from the field are accepted, frequent views are made availble, you can modify the source. The functional differences between free software and Qt are, as I see it 1) Troll could take the source and make it proprietary. Answer: No, they can't, this is what the foundation is about. 2) If people want to add features to Qt that Troll doesn't, they're out of luck. Answer: This is true. However, I have heard exactly 0 examples of such things, even in a hypothetical context. Troll knows what they're doing and they have the best graphic toolkit around. 3) Commercial companies will have to pay Troll to develop Qt apps for KDE. Answer: This is true. Firstly though, it is a small barrier to companies who expect to make any decent amount of money off their products. Additionally, this is a tradeoff from commercial companies having to worry about GPL taints from GTK. You may discount such as silly, but it's a real concern for companies trying to sell traditional-model apps into this unix world. In short, it is Red Hat's policy to ship only "Free Software" with their distribution. Well perhaps I'm missing something, but I see on your website that Red Hat ships with Metro-X, BRU2000-PE, and RealPlayer/Encoder/Server. Perhaps you are referring to the freely downloadable version of Red hat? As far as I can see, Red Hat is taking the stand that Free Software is the Right Thing To Do. And while I have trouble integrating the reselling of various no-source products bundled with Red Hat into that philosophy, I will accept that their internal product is intended to stay pure. However, I have a different view. I do not see Free Software as intrinsically necessary. I see it as a powerful tool for enabling technologies, work, and progress. I myself have spent a relatively minute, but existant, amount of time attempting to submit assistance to a few "Free Software" projects such as the VIM editor. However, I'm for things that work. I bought OSS because it worked. I plan on purchasing XiGraphics AccelX because it works much faster than the Xfree servers. KDE and Qt work, and work well. There exists no danger of it becoming closed. I recommend Red Hat to many people side by side with SuSE. Some denigrate SuSE for shipping with commercial apps. Some find it useful for the same reasons. Do we not have enough space for more than one idiology in the Linux community? -josh -- To get out of this list, please send email to majordomo@suse.com with this text in its body: unsubscribe suse-linux-e