Re: would it be time to replace scons with meson build system?

[Greg Troxel]

Christian Gagneraud <address@hidden> writes:

> On Thu, 6 Feb 2020 at 03:27, Greg Troxel <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Qbs is from the QT world, and seems to need javascript (which isn't as
>> bad as C++, probably).  It seems that QT itself is no longer using it.
>> The wikipedia list of "notable projects" using it is very short.
>> Perhaps not fair, but I had never heard of it.
>
> Qbs is maintained by its community, of which are some of the original Qt devs.
> I agree that it is not as popular as other build systems.
> I'm not sure that you should choose your build system solely based on
> popularity tho.

I don't think things are good because they are popular.  I meant that if
something is not popular, then the theory "we can have high confidence
that this thing will be maintained for a long time, without us having to
do it", is shaky.

>> There's also the issue
>> that QT is a world that is either just barely or not quite really Free
>> Software; I've recently heard that some usages will require non-free
>> licenses, and of course there was the issue long ago with not-quite-free
>
> That is just FUD!
>
> Qt was licenced GPL+Commercial on day 1 (or 2), it then moved to
> GPL+LGPL (thanks Nokia) and is now GPL+LGPL+Commercial.
> That is typical of OSS supported by a commercial company.
> If Qt was to move to a non-OSS license, it would be forked by the
> community, this has been said clearly a few times.
> Then Qt is controlled by "The Qt Project", among members are KDE and
> "The Qt Company" (and others).
>
> So this is plainly FUD.

So three points:

1) Qt's licensing has led to people asking for GPL exemptions in
GPL-licensed Free Software.

  https://github.com/qgis/QGIS/blob/master/Exception_to_GPL_for_Qt.txt

2) The fact that there is a commercial license means that contributors
have to grant permission for their code, which ought to be GPL/LPGL to
be distributed under a non-Free license.  This is inconsistent with my
view of how Free Software ought to work.

3) QT LTS will be restricted to commercial licensees, and the offline
installer will be commercial only

  https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Qt-Going-More-Commercial
  https://www.qt.io/blog/qt-offering-changes-2020

To me, this puts them on the edge of Free, and one can debate which side
of the edge.  But it's not something I would want a Free Software
project to depend on.

>> licenses.  Qbs is not in pkgsrc, which is a not-100%-reliable clue that
>> it is not important in the large Free Software ecosystem.  So I really
>> don't see how this can be seriously considered.
>
> I don't think this is a big issue, I'm sure this could be solved quite easily.
> pkgsrc provides Qt5, so adding Qbs shouldn't be a big task.

Certainly it could be added; I didn't mean it would be hard.  I meant
that so far, nobody else has felt the need to add it, and that this is a
clue.