Re: [Gnumed-devel] Qt licensing issues for GNUmed

[ju0815nk]

> 3) The alternative is for GNUmed to acquire at least one license for Qt
> for Windows (Enterprise edition with the database bindings) - at a cost
> of about AUD$4000, plus at least one commercial license for PyQt - at a
> cost of about AUD$500. Now both of these could only be installed on a
> single machine, but they permit the free distribution of the Qt runtime

Well, a single machine means that the number of developers that could work 
on the Gnumed GUI would be cut down to one. It might actually be not very
different from the number of people that work on the GUI right now -but, as
far
as I remember we wanted gnumed to be *open* and growing. IMHO that includes
freedom
of accessibility to the coding tools, too. And then, we need *more* hands
working
on our project, not less. I might be wrong, but during the last 12 months
the mean 
contribution rate per member in the CVS has decreased considerably (with
exception
of Karsten who seems to work night and day on gnumed). 

Changing the GUI from wxPython to Qt/Tk/whatever right now will only make
everything worse as we
will have to change every bit of GUI-related code that is already in the
CVS. Changing
something that already worked means that we can't continue to develop the
parts that are still
missing -and which we will need for our first release. 

IMHO we should concentrate now on getting a first presentable version using
wxPython. As most of the GUI will access the backend through some
business-layer object, this middle-layer-API will form the base on which any 
other
client can be set up easily afterwards. We might as well add some abstraction
layer as in GnuE, but I guess that this will make it even more difficult to get 
a
"nice" GUI. 

So please don't get me wrong - I really don't care much which GUI we will
use in the end - as long it is open enough so that everyone can afford it. And
I don't want to spent time to change the code from one GUI to the next one -
time is too expensive to waste it if there is no fuctional benefit.

Regards, Hilmar

PS: Richard, I fully understand your concerns and wishes regarding a nice
GUI. But on the other hand,
business software is often ugly - and sells well, because reliability and
functionality is more important
than the look. Lorrys don't have to be beautiful, neither - which does not
mean that you can't make them beautiful. But first, the machine has to run.


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