Is Kexi 'Free'?

[Derek Croxton]

I think the issue has to do with the Qt toolkit that KDE uses.  Qt is 
dual-licensed, so KDE products have to be.  However, when Qt 4 comes 
out, it is supposed to be free for Windows as well, so I imagine Kexi 
would be free, too.

Chanchao wrote:
> I know this questions is probably better directed towards Kexi/KOffice,
> but I feel comfortable with the community here and the overall
> objectivity with which issues are debated..
> 
> Kexi is a new Database / RAD tool that's part of KOffice.  It's similar
> to MS Access in that it's part of an office suite and can be used as a
> database front-end.  Unlike MS Access however it's open source and
> connects to a lot more databases than just itself and MS SQL Server. 
> 
> Chances are that anything I make with Kexi may have to be deployed on MS
> Windows at least in some cases but more likely most cases.  Everywhere I
> look on the Kexi site though, it seems the Windows version costs real
> money. A demo is available, but it's severely restricted (number of
> tables, objects, etc) and then it shows it charges PER LICENSE..!  (100
> Euros / 119 US$, so not even cheap.. MS Access as a standalone doesn't
> cost THAT much more)
> 
> ( http://www.kexi.pl/wiki/index.php/Kexi_for_MS_Windows ) 
> 
> How can this be?  I always thought something is either open source or it
> isn't..  So what's going on here?   I've never seen this kind of
> limitation before in software; Open Office for example is of course
> entirely Free no matter what OS it runs on.
> 
> Kexi does explain things here:
> http://www.kexi.pl/wiki/index.php/The_cost_of_Kexi_for_MS_Windows
> 
> Apparently it's 'free' on WIndows if you compile it yourself, but, they
> say, "you would need non-free tools (MS Visual C++ and others) that are
> many times more expensive than a Kexi license".
> 
> Now is that weird or what..  The company I work for owns those tools and
> it's easy to just come in Saturday and compile the lot. So then it IS
> 'free' on Windows...   I find this all very strange, and that they do
> make everything available free not just for Linux but ALSO (in the
> future) Mac OSX. 
> 
> Cheers,
> Chanchao
> 
>