Gui Advice Needed: wxPython or PyQT ?

David Bolen db3l at fitlinxx.com
Thu May 8 11:08:26 EDT 2003


Alex Martelli <aleax at aleax.it> writes:

> I think the #1 issue (and maybe the only significant one) with Qt for most
> people is its complicated, and potentially costly or bothersome, licensing.

That's what it is for me at least.

> If you're in sharp situations -- a commercial software house choosing what
> to use for your programming (in which case a few thousand dollars may be no
> big deal given all the other expenses each of your programmer employees
> must incur for you, salary foremost:-), or at the other extreme a developed
> committed to doing GPL development for free OS's only -- it's not too bad --
> you purchase professional or enterprise licenses as needed, or on the other
> hand choose the GPL or QPL licenses, and off you go.

The pricing can definitely also be a hurdle for commercial shops,
certainly for smaller ones with existing tools in place.  For example,
we're primarily a Windows shop, and have existing MSDN licenses.
Purely on a technical level Qt is a serious alternative (perhaps even
a leader) to wxPython if we wanted to move to Python for our primary
product GUIs, and even the more attractive because of their embedded
system support as we also do some custom embedded hardware
development.

If it was just a few thousand dollars it would be an easier sell, but
for a 6-developer team it's about $12,000 USD fixed, plus almost
$4,000 USD per year for support.  And if I want to take advantage of
the portability moving to such a solution permits (for other
platforms), I still have to incur the fixed costs all over again.  And
no site licenses so I've got to keep other costs associated with new
developers.

Is that a fraction of other overhead costs?  Sure, but not an
insignificant one.  I can do a lot with that kind of money on a per
developer basis.  Heck our MSDN licenses are less than half that of Qt
(even less since we're in renewals) and that's without taking into
account any of the volume licensing programs.  But the problem is
really when contrasting it with something like wxPython, when it's not
just if Qt is better, but is it better to be worth that much
difference in cost.  Clearly, I don't expect it to be free, but as
libraries go, Qt is a pretty costly one.

So this has probably rambled somewhat off-topic for this group, but it
seems to me that by its pricing, Trolltech has really aimed their
commercial licenses at bigger shops - maybe that's a natural
consequence of being such good supporters of the GPL/open source
development community.  It's a shame because I really do like their
product, but not enough to take the bite out of the budget line.

>           (...)             I've also been moved to upgrade my Blackadder
> install to the recently released beta4 and am discovering quite a few
> (...)

Do you find BlackAdder still being actively developed and looking like
nearing a 1.0 release any time soon?  I found that as a very
attractive way to get redistributable Qt licenses (just for Python
apps) but have been concerned as to what appeared to be dwindling
activity on it.

-- David




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