“It worked for Apple, but not for Oracle. Now Trolltech will try
to catch customers while they’re still in college with its Qt
University program. By giving away Qt to computer science
departments Trolltech hopes to create a new crop of Qt developers.
If the strategy works, GNOME may face an uphill battle versus
KDE….”
“Qt has three things going for it that are more important than
pure technology: a foot in the door of major universities, a
promising start in embedded systems, and good portability (you can
compile Qt applications to run on Windows and there are plans for
portability to other systems).”
“Addressing the first point, Trolltech is about to announce a
program called Qt University. Right now universities have to pay
license fees to teach Qt on Windows. The only way a computer
science department could give students free hands-on experience
with Qt was to use Linux, because there was no free edition of Qt
for Windows. Now, through the Qt University education program,
Trolltech is planning to give away free site licenses for the
Windows version of Qt to computer science departments.”
“Obviously, this is a win-win arrangement for Trolltech and the
universities that choose to participate. Universities will get
freebie toolkits for the Windows platform and Trolltech will get
thousands more developers that will doubtlessly know and love
Qt.”