[diath]

Until there's a viable solution for desktop native GUI, this trend will continue.

[jojobas]

Native UI has been there for decades before. Yes, cross-platform requires extra effort.

Hell even Wine is more efficient an approach for cross-platform distribution.

[LunaSea]

> Yes, cross-platform requires extra effort.

Aaand you lost most companies.

> Hell even Wine is more efficient an approach for cross-platform distribution.

I'm sure that customers will be willing to install and run Wine.

[steve_rambo]

Wine requires no more installation than Electron. There are lots of "pirated" releases for macOS/Linux with a bundled copy of Wine (sometimes with third party patches or some libraries swapped out).

[postalrat]

extra effort = no less than 50x the effort

[jojobas]

Bullshit. If that's what it takes you please seek another line of work.

[postalrat]

I can built a basic app with html, javascript, etc that supports many platforms in an evening. How long do you think it would take to support windows, macos, ios, android, xbox, linux, etc, etc? Much more than 50x the time even if you already are familiar with development on all the plaforms.

[jojobas]

Qt covers 5 of the 6 platforms you named, and many more "etc".

Yes it takes a bit more than a boot camp graduate to code that, and might take a bit more time still.

[lukan]

See?

Your solution requires more dev time and skill - which makes it way more expensive. Basic economics.

The main requirement most devs and users have for an app - that it runs and works reliable. Not that it is the most efficient solution.

[postalrat]

5 of the 6 isn't a fair comparison

[niutech]

Flutter or React Native are also easy to develop with and cross-platform, no need to learn C/C++.

[coldacid]

Qt?

[EasyMark]

too many gotchas with LGPL to become a universal solutions. I wish that gtk was more stable across all platforms. I have a few on macos and some are less than ... stable... compared to on linux.

[skeletal88]

What gotchas are there? The stuff required for doing guis is lgpl, without any kind of other licenses

[rubymamis]

I don’t think it’s as bad as you make it to be. Qt is a great option imo.

[jenadine]

Electron's web engine is also LGPL. (And GTK too)

[Liquid_Fire]

Isn't GTK also LGPL anyway?

[scotty79]

Has anyone been sentenced for falling into those lgpl gotchas?

[figomore]

I like WX.

[niutech]

There are many: QML, NodeGui, Flutter, React Native and plenty more lightweight Electron alternatives: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38687662

Or to mention native libs: GTK, wxWidgets, Xamarin.