[Interest] Mixing Commercial and Open Source license for, different, projects

[Roland Hughes]

> On 3/17/21 6:00 AM, Konrad Rosenbaum wrote:
>> Out of curiosity: what alternatives are people settling on?
>
Forgot to mention. Comcast dumped Qt in favor of Webkit some time late 
last year. You probably were on the SPAM and phone call list. We all 
know just how technical the people pimps put on the phone are, but here 
is what they told me.

FUD + death-of-perpetual-license = abandon-Qt

Some division or company that Comcast owns a significant part of has a 
commercial Webkit product that is far afield from the OpenSource. Been 
selling it to companies for some time now. When all of this licensing 
started over a year ago upper management made the decision to not just 
abandon all Qt but to purge it. All of their VoT (Video Over Top) now 
uses Webkit. They were looking basically to thieve people who had worked 
at companies that had bought whatever this commercial product is. 
Someone who had only worked with OpenSource Webkit wasn't strong enough 
unless they had contributed __lots__ of code to Webkit itself.

They were going to get them. I was getting 5-6 phone calls per day for 
several weeks on this. Everyone had the same story. Back then they were 
up to $85/hr 100% remote. None of this "remote until" scam" far too many 
companies are shopping around.

Keep in mind, that's what people who were trying to talk me into letting 
them submit me were telling me. I didn't directly speak with the hiring 
manager. I do know that Comcast sent the req out to a cattle call and it 
seemed like everyone with a VOIP phone was trying to work the gig. They 
all seemed to have the same story. I did not get the name of the 
division/company nor did I get the name of the commercial WebKit 
product. I cannot tell you if it was Firebolt

https://firebolt.app/docs/articles/wpe/

oh! Here.

https://press.opera.com/2013/12/13/opera-launches-the-industrys-first-commercial-grade-chromium-blink-engine-designed-for-rdk-set-top-boxes/

So, yeah, Comcast was part of Opera dumping Qt WebKit per that article.

There is someone over in Washington state area doing a bunch of ROKU 
that had been shopping for Qt/QML people but is now dropping that 
development branch for their VoT work. Don't remember who. When they 
said QML I lost all interest and stopped actually listening. I'm 
guessing they've moved to RDK as well.

=====

The RDK is supported by more than 200 licensees including CE and SoC 
manufactures, software developers, system integrators, and MVPDs from 
around the world. It is administered by the RDK Management LLC, a joint 
venture between Comcast Cable, Time Warner Cable, and Liberty Global. 
The RDK software is available at no cost to RDK licensees in a shared 
source manner, and RDK community member companies are encouraged to 
contribute software changes and enhancements to the RDK stack.

=====

Some rather deep pockets behind that. I suspect it will take over at 
least some chunk of the automotive Infotainment market as well.

I haven't touched Electron in a very long time. I'm told it has 
dramatically improved from those early feeble days.

I'm told quite a few other companies are following Tesla and just moving 
their JavaScript sans the QML into a Chrome browser somewhat captive 
world. Tesla started their code base pre-RDK so they are doing something 
different.

Either sounds like a short put, but I haven't tried porting something 
like that.

-- 
Roland Hughes, President
Logikal Solutions
(630)-205-1593

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