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[Geert Janssens]

On donderdag 18 mei 2017 16:18:01 CEST Adonay Felipe Nogueira wrote:
> NOTE: I won't be adding the individual people in my next reply. If you
> want to continue following the discussion, please subscribe to
> gnucash-devel.
> 
> Indeed, we'll discuss it in gnucash-devel from now on.
> 
> As I suggested earlier, although my reply doesn't appear, perhaps we can
> keep GTK+ instead of migrating GnuCash entirely to QML.
> 
We can't keep Gtk+ for the simple reason it prevents us from porting to new 
platforms such as Android, IOS and (as mentioned on this thread) SailfishOS.

These platforms are becoming increasingly important. So we need a gui toolkit 
that's supported by all of them unless we want to reinvent the wheel with each 
port. Spoiler alert: we don't have the manpower for that.

Even with a single toolkit that fits all platforms we'll still have our hands 
full in making sure the UI works satisfactorily on all form factors.

For all I've seen so far Qt/QML is the most promising option IMO together with 
wxWidgets. In fact I don't know any other viable candidates.

> This is a suggestion based on my personal opinion that the
> multi-licensing Qt might be troublesome, specially considering the fact
> that this practice of Qt can lead to fostering non-free software
> instead.

Personally I don't worry about this. Qt has been around for a very long time, 
has been bought by several companies and each time has managed to stay open 
source. That a company uses a multi-licensing scheme to make money off of its 
investment can equally be seen as a fair thing to do. Corporations are not 
into charity after all.

Note I hesitated to write this as I don't want to turn this into a lengthy 
discussion. However I believe as a core gnucash developer I should at least 
present my personal view on this so others can draw their own conclusions 
about it if they wish to.

> I know that GnuCash will be using the free/libre Qt, but the
> next developers and the end users who receive a copy of Qt or
> GnuCash-entirely-in-Qt might feel tempted to get the "commercial"
> (/sic/) edition of Qt.

Well I can reassure you on that bit: there will never be a "GnuCash entirely 
in Qt". At best a GUI entirely in Qt/QML. The core library (our "engine" and 
related sources) is in pure C++.

> 
> This problem of Qt can be countered in GnuCash's side by keeping the
> current GNU GPL 2+ license, and fortunatelly, thanks to this, future
> developers will have to comply with the license.

That's how I see it as well. The choice for that license should be sufficient 
assurance to keep gnucash free.

Regards,

Geert