[reportlab-users] PyQt Visual Editor

[Markus Meyer]

Rajeev Joseph Sebastian schrieb:

>There is also an issue of licensing: PyQt is available only under 2 licenses: 
>GPL and a paid commercial license. But it is well worth it. PyQt is also 
>available for a majority of OS, and as you may know, Qt's strengths is its 
>graphics capabilities (as evidenced by the various customer success stories 
>on Trolltech's website [1]).
>  
>
I don't want to start a flamewar here, but I think it is problematic for 
open-source projects to depend on Qt if they want to reach a commercial 
(and that often means closed-source) audience. I don't see a problem for 
closed-source projects, because you just buy Qt like, say, Microsoft 
Visual Studio or Intel CC, and be done with it. For GPL'd open-source 
projects it isn't a problem either, since Qt itself can be licensed 
under the GPL, problem solved.

The said report generator, on the other hand, would be a good candidate 
for either BSD (in the spirit of ReportLab being BSD-like-licensed, like 
Python) or LGPL, since that would allow incorporating the report editor 
into closed-source apps. Unlike many apps, a report generator is ideal 
to be incorporated into bigger projects, so the license really matters. 
The Python community, unlike other open-source communities, has 
traditionally been very friendly when it comes to tolerating 
closed-source use of their libs. Even Skencil is LGPL (not GPL), which 
is very uncommon for general application-type open source projects.

Of course there's the standard argument that "commercial entities can 
still get a Qt license", but this hasn't worked well for other projects. 
E.g., many argue that KDE has long been superior to Gnome in every 
aspect, yet companies like Sun (Java Desktop), RedHat and Ximian (now 
Novell) favor Gnome. It's not that they couldn't afford a site-license 
for Qt (infact, they probably all have one already), but big companies 
don't like to depend on small companies for their flagship products.


Markus