[Interest] the path forward (or is it "how the things look"?)

[Rui Oliveira]

I'm going to vent my perspective as a non-professional programmer who 
just wants to do GUI on a cross platform hobby project and is relatively 
new to Qt.

So, to start. ReactJS/Electron. Yes, everybody is doing it because I 
guess the ratio of frontend devs to C++ programmers is 100:1.

Now, do they replace C++? No. For example, in my application, I kinda 
need some number crunching (FFT) in the backend, so I'm not going to do JS.

Honestly, if it wasn't for that, I'd probably be using C# and one of the 
newer cool libraries: Avalonia.UI, Platform.Uno, and the upcoming .NET 
MAUI. Man, it's incredible how the x-platform C# space has been growing 
compared to C++!!! And like, Avalonia.UI is based on SKIA, which is a 
C++ library!! But it's being used on C# instead... Makes you think. Why 
is the C++ GUI ecosystem like it is? DearImgui is probably the newest 
thing which is worth a damn, but I don't particularly enjoy how it looks.

I want to develop a desktop application. And I feel very frustrated: 
Widgets seem to be in life support, QML for the desktop is honestly 
severely underdeveloped. It reaches the hilarious point that QtQC1 had 
native styling but QtQC2 didn't until now!?! (and still they are... 
meh). Not to mention the native stuff in the Labs platform is just 
half-done (no native right click menu on Windows...). I don't want to 
start a project on a half-dead (be honest) platform, but I don't want to 
start a project on a half-baked technology either. And I bet most of you 
will have examples to why I'm wrong, but I'm saying things from what I 
can see.

Then, on the licensing shenanigans: I find it funny that for example "Qt 
Quick MultiEffect" is a GPL/commercial only tech. I feel this should 
have just been a QML engine fix? But that would be LGPL, and I guess 
that's not interesting anymore...

I've seen a couple times here and there people asking for help with 
stuff like Qt Gamepad, and I tell them to forget about it and just use 
SDL instead. Another tech that's not deprecated, but not going anywhere 
either.

Then, there's the aspect of mobile, which I honestly don't care, but I 
really feel that the mentioned C# libraries, JS, and Flutter will be far 
more popular than C++/QML will ever be. And following the Qt JIRA, 
sometimes I wonder how I would develop for Android with it. It really 
feel a bit... Messy...

Anyhow, about the licensing model. The Qt Co. must make money, we get 
it. And the "make it free-as-in-beer and then sell support isn't for 
everybody", I get it. But let me just bring something to the table: have 
you looked at how game engines are licensing recently? Putting fees over 
sales instead of developer seats. That solves the problem of "buying 
just before launch" and makes the general community happy. Even 
commercial software companies know that getting college students 
"addicted" to a certain tech is a good way to make them ask their 
employer to use it. Honestly, I think the whole "pay to develop" model 
is so dead now... Pay for support, and pay a cut on sales over X amount 
seems to be working very well for the game engine market. And honestly, 
as a hobbyist, I think that a model in the lines of "free for hobbyist 
and free for the first X dolars in revenue (cough Unity cough)" keeps 
both the community happy and gives a fair benefit/obligation balance to 
commercial customers. Maybe that would work with Qt, maybe not. I'm just 
saying.

Sorry for the ramble, and I'll probably remember more things to say, an 
maybe I didn't express myself with the best polish, but that's my 2 cents.

Anyhow, thanks for the project, and I really mean it. The Qt APIs are 
top notch, the docs the same (even though the QML-related docs is 
clearly subpar compared with the legacy C++ stuff).

Rui


Em 01/04/2021 17:56, Jason H escreveu:
> I've called Qt "top secret rockstar tech" multiple times and I plan on 
> calling it that for a bit more. I've had 5 companies buy licenses 
> since 2005.  Qt has delivered on getting my products to market in 
> record time, even if that was a process frought with far more native 
> code than it should have been. At the very least having a 
> cross-platform UI saved some effort, and provided consistency, rather 
> than having to target Android's stacks AND AVFoundation seperately.
> What I don't like is the erosion of the LGPL that Nokia set in place. 
> I think it's shortsighted, and contributes to the decline of Qt 
> overall. I feel that while Qt stock has done well, volume is thin, and 
> something as technical as having BSD or LGPL could be beneficial for 
> the volume. Qt is a project of declining hobbiest popularity, even 
> when there are big companies buying into it. Compare it with say, 
> ReactJS/Electron. Everyone knows about that, Qt not so much... Maybe 
> the big player interest will circle back around as it comes up on job 
> postings... I'd personally launch a head on WebGL offensive if I could 
> I think there's a lot of untapped potential there!
> Also, I think Qt should be on a US stock market, but I am biased. ;-) 
> There's some pink sheets version of Qt stock which is even thinner 
> volume.
> *Sent:* Thursday, April 01, 2021 at 9:25 AM
> *From:* "Nuno Santos" <nuno.santos at imaginando.pt>
> *To:* "Turtle Creek Software" <support at turtlesoft.com>
> *Cc:* interest at qt-project.org
> *Subject:* Re: [Interest] the path forward
> I don’t see Roland's emails anymore because I’ve blocked him. He is a 
> kind of hater and lover of Qt at the same time. He loves when someone 
> gives him a spark to set this email list on fire and then write long 
> emails full of bullshit that only someone that has nothing to do has 
> time to read.
> I use Qt for more than 10 years now. I’ve started my company alone in 
> 2014. Since then I’ve been building 7 products with Qt that I deploy 
> for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android.
> I’ve had issues, bugs, but most of them were not show stoppers. When a 
> show stopper bug appears I report it and it usually gets fixed. Some 
> faster, some slower, but every single one had a fix. The last one was 
> fixed in less than a month.
> My experience with Qt is very good. It has been keeping stability over 
> all this years and I’ve only mostly focused in building products.
> Has issues? Has! But Apple has issues, Microsoft has issues as every 
> single software company has issues, because software is constantly 
> evolving.
> If it wasn’t Qt, I would be here giving this testimonial. It really 
> helped me to do more with less.
> Big shout to the Qt Team, keep the awesome work!!!
> Best regards,
>
> _______________________________________________
> Interest mailing list
> Interest at qt-project.org
> https://lists.qt-project.org/listinfo/interest
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