Inclusion of Qt in Ubuntu 11.10 is a win for developers

“In an announcement published today on his personal blog,
Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth revealed that Nokia’s Qt
toolkit will be included as a standard component in future versions
of Ubuntu. The move will pave the way for applications built with
Qt to become a part of the popular Linux distribution.

“Qt’s numerous technical advantages, excellent cross-platform
compatibility, and strong positioning in the mobile space are
making it an attractive choice for third-party developers and
commercial ISVs. Supporting Qt out-of-the-box on Ubuntu could help
bring more software to the platform and will help to accelerate
third-party application development. The move could be viewed as
controversial, however—as a GNOME-based distribution, Ubuntu
has historically been aligned with the competing Gtk+ toolkit.

“Historical background

“Applications for the Linux desktop have historically been
developed with either Gtk+ or Qt, the two dominant open source
widget toolkits. Qt was originally created by Trolltech, a
commercial software vendor that offered the toolkit under a
dual-licensing model. Linux distributors and major commercial
vendors in the Linux ecosystem largely standardized around Gtk+
during the early days of the Linux desktop because its permissive
licensing made it a less expensive choice for proprietary software
vendors.”

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