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by yawaramin 1870 days ago
It's not just about choice. This article is likely a response to Ubuntu betting on Flutter for desktop apps: https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2021/03/ubuntu-building-apps-wit...

A bet like that is putting a large part of Linux desktop app development in the hands of Google, which as a history of killing or deprecating their projects. Sure it can be forked if there's 'enough momentum', but that would suddenly dump a huge burden on the Linux ecosystem that it doesn't need. Why not stick with established players like Qt, who actually have a proven sustainable business model (dual OSS+commercial) for decades now, or a classic like FreePascal+Lazarus, which is also established for decades?
2 comments
saurik 1870 days ago
I guess they could alternatively bet on Gnome; they certainly don't have a history of arbitrarily deprecating large swaths of API and functionality while spending most of their time chasing the dream of replicating whatever "new shiny" Microsoft has come up with. /s ;P

As for Qt, they have continuously pushed their OSS branch down on their priorities over time, with the latest (that I know of) round of changes from last year being that if you want to download official Qt binaries--ones that are at all supported by them--you have to have a Qt account; offline installers and LTS access are now commercial-only.

This is way worse than Flutter; and, as much as I hate hate hate Google in general and am a very big complainer about their shut downs of everything, Flutter feels more like Android or Chrome--both of which I feel will be safe for quite a while, at least as supported products if not ones that are mostly open source--than like all the other long list of things Google has killed (which certainly has included developer tooling).

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yawaramin 1865 days ago
> I guess they could alternatively bet on Gnome

Yeah, except Gnome looks pretty crappy on every other OS (and only marginally less crappy on Linux). Meanwhile, Lazarus Component Library looks native on every desktop.

> if you want to download official Qt binaries--ones that are at all supported by them--you have to have a Qt account; offline installers and LTS access are now commercial-only.

I was just now able to download the installer for open source usage without a Qt account from https://www.qt.io/download-open-source , so that seems very questionable. By the way, of course Qt is not going to provide production level support for free for open source software, why should they be expected to?

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teh_klev 1870 days ago
> A bet like that is putting a large part of Linux desktop app development in the hands of Google

Sure, but other Linux distributions are available. I'm not trying to respond in a facetious way, but since I started using Linux in around 1993-94 (Slackware), that was how you voted, with your feet, when something really annoyed you.

> Why not stick with established players like Qt, who actually have a proven sustainable business model...etc

Well, if you're a developer then keep using Qt, you're free to do so. Isn't this how it's supposed to work?

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