Trolltech will release Qt/Mac under the GPL (GNU General Public License) at next week’s Worldwide Developers Conference. Qt/Mac is the Mac port of Qt, a single-source, multiplatform C++ GUI (graphical user interface) toolkit that lets applications run natively on Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux/Unix, all from the same codebase.
The GPL release of Qt/Mac means that developers of free Mac software can use Qt free of charge. Any software produced with the GPL version of Qt/Mac (and any derivatives of it) must also be released with full source code available under the GPL. Developers who want create commercial (proprietary or closed source) software can do so using the existing Qt/Mac commercial licenses. (Since it was founded in 1994, Trolltech has offered developers both commercial and Free Software licensing options).
With the upcoming Qt/Mac GPL release, existing Free Software applications developed with Qt/X11 (Linux and various flavors of Unix) and Qt/Embedded (embedded Linux), can now be ported to Mac OS X platform with a simple recompile. The release of Qt/Mac under the GPL also means that Qt Script for Applications (QSA), Trolltech’s scripting toolkit for Qt-based applications, will be available under a dual license on Mac OS X.
WWDC 2003 will be held June 23-27 in San Francisco, Calif.