Torque Toolbox: no source code? (Torque 3D beta 2)

#1 I believe when it was started the Qt gui toolkit was not open sourced, but it is now.... so it may be possible to release code.

But maybe not... because its LGPL/GPL.

Gosh i wish all open source was BSD or MIT licensed... it would make things easy.

#2 I didn't check (I'm still a torque n00b), but I thought the World/GUI Editor menus also used Qt (rather than .gui TorqueScript), but maybe not. GG is obviously shipping (QtCore4.dll, QtGui4.dll, QtNetwork4.dll, QtXml4.dll)

Whatever the details, I think adding source code access to Torque Toolbox would be good :-)

#3 Hopefully Qt 4.5 GPL stuff will allow it...

My day job (AMD simnow) is going through the same thing btw. Wanting to upgrade to Qt 4.5 just because of the GPL license change, so that our customers can use our SDK to develop GUI stuff for the simulated hardware modules.

#4 So interesting thing, we picked up commercial licenses (not cheap) to Qt just over a year ago... Toolbox is technically developed under that. The QT LGPL is very promising and it looks like the way we are using Qt (under the commercial) is completely valid for LGPL (though would still need to unload the commercial and load the LGPL on dev machines). On top of that the version used for the Toolbox isn't the LGPL 4.5, so it would take some time to upgrade and ensure nothing breaks (and fix it if it doe etc).

Releasing the Toolbox source code is a very low priority... I plan on us adding enough configuration options to hopefully not need the source code, in the end even if we released source code we would still want you to -not- need it. In the end it probably won't happen, though for future development using Qt (which will become much more utilized for a GUI Toolkit rather than forcing Torque to it's knees in the GUI side) we will probably move to the LGPL and then have the option to release it.

#5 "Releasing the Toolbox source code is a very low priority..." What a pity!

I believe it will benefit most of us if you can include the toolbox source code, which will make us more efficient to customize our projects based on Torque engine.

#6 I also have a oppinion on this, though older thread.

The toolbox is part of the engine purchase (distribution), third party plugins or not (you "GG" made a choice to use that "QT"), and we did buy it expecting we get the FULL source of the engine purchased, that of course (in my book) include all distributed tools and such.

You never know if we would need to customize it for our needs, maybe not next week, but maybe next year (alot of maybe's for 1000$).

Again, remember, you (GG) made the choice to use a commercial library for a tool that we bought from you, in a full source engine purchase.

So, the toolbox is infact only "limited" useful, as in, we only get what GG put in it.

#7

Quote:The toolbox is part of the engine purchase (distribution), third party plugins or not (you "GG" made a choice to use that "QT"), and we did buy it expecting we get the FULL source of the engine purchased, that of course (in my book) include all distributed tools and such.

That's rarely the case with source code licenses though. Except for the really high end products, you'll usually not get the source code for separate tools and utilities outside of the core technology that you are licensing.

That being said, the difference between the commercial version of Qt and the LGPL version is minimal. So it really shouldn't be a big deal to switch it over.

#8 If you don't get it though its clearly pointed out on the product page.
For torque techs its a normal part of the advertisement against competitors that you get all the sources, so I doubt that anyone would assume that the Toolbox would be an exception as it is likely the "least complex part" of the tech.

And I think as well, that using the LGPL QT should be a pretty little problem.
It can't be that bad or restrictive if whole OS frontends on the Linux side are possible with the LGPL one ;)