[PySide] PySide Digest, Vol 14, Issue 18

Tim Doty thoromyr at mac.com
Wed Mar 20 20:30:30 CET 2013


For what its worth, the reason I switched from PyQt to PySide was not the license. At the time it looked like it was being supported (Nokia) and was finally stable. The push for me was that PyQt isn't really very friendly -- if someone wants to use your app they have to get PyQt installed -- and the site is geared toward developers, not end users.

I had no end of arguments from people insisting they couldn't use the app because they couldn't get SIP installed and besides which they didn't have a compiler. And as if that wasn't enough PyQt isn't particularly easy to get setup on OS X. It only works well on linux, or Windows if you create a self-contained installer.

Although in principle PyQt is cross platform, my experience is that it is cross platform only if your platform is linux or you create an installer for Windows. PySide has been easier in that regard, though it has had some snafus. I still prefer it because I want to remain platform agnostic. I used to be solely linux myself, but I've been using OS X more and more. And most people who would use anything I write are on some flavor of windows.

From that perspective having an easy way to bundle needed components is a must. Admittedly, if the applications are in-house or focused on linux this is less of an issue but for broad use it really is a must. End users need simple.

Tim Doty

On Mar 20, 2013, at 11:35 AM, todd rme <toddrme2178 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, Mar 20, 2013 at 5:11 PM, Sergio Pulgarín <serpulga at gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>> Hi, I might be late to the discussion here, but I would like to
>> share my thoughts anyways.
>> It is no secret that PySide and PyQt4 are highly compatible
>> with each other; with a few modifications you can port back
>> and forth easly, and even create cross-compatible sources.
>> So basically, at a end user level, there are no (or a few) arguments
>> to chose one or the other. The real advantage the PySide has over
>> PyQt4 are the licensing options. PySide has the LGPL option, while
>> PyQt4 only GPL, last time I checked. I think this alone, makes people
>> want to use/port to PySide.
> 
> That only helps if you are writing a closed-source application.
> Anyone who want to create an open-source end-user application is not
> going to care.  They are going to base it on things like features,
> support, how active the community is, what is being used by other
> projects, and what middle-level python modules they want to use
> support.  For these people, PyQt4 is currently the better choice on
> all fronts.  And these people are exactly the ones who are most likely
> to want to get involved in and contribute back to pyside if they use
> it.
> 
> If pyside is going to succeed, it will have to do so based on
> something other than license alone.  Community, support, and what is
> being used by other projects is a chicken-and-egg problem, pyside will
> not have these until it gains some momentum.  And it will be hard to
> get middle-level toolkits to work with pyside exclusively precisely
> because it is not much harder than supporting both pyqt4 and pyside at
> the same time, and without much user interest there is no reason to
> support pyside at all.
> 
> So if pyside is going to get ahead it I think it needs to have some
> sort of compelling features that are lacked by PyQt4.  I think that is
> the only way open-source projects are going to use it.
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