http://arstechnica.com/

A new set of LGPL-licensed Python bindings for Qt has been announced. The project, which is backed by Nokia, will make it easier for commercial software developers to adopt Python and Qt for rapid application development.
OpenBossa and Nokia have launched a new project called PySide to build high-quality Python bindings for the Qt toolkit. PySide will be made available under the permissive Lesser General Public License (LGPL), which means that it can be used to build either open source or proprietary applications without having to pay licensing fees.

Qt is a popular open source software development toolkit that was created by Trolltech. Nokia acquired Trolltech last year and has subsequently relicensed Qt under the LGPL with the intention of making it the de facto standard for native cross-platform development. Qt, which is the underlying toolkit used by the KDE desktop environment, is supported on all three major desktop operating systems and is also available for several mobile platforms including Windows Mobile and Symbian.

Qt programming is predominantly done with the C++ programming language, but bindings for a number of other programming languages have been implemented by third-party developers. A small company called Riverbank Computing maintains the PyQt project, which provides unofficial Python bindings for Qt. Riverbank distributed PyQt under a dual licensing model. The code is available under the GPL and can also be obtained with a commercial license. Software developers who build open source software can use the GPL-licensed version for free, but developers who want to build proprietary applications with PyQt have to pay for a commercial license. This is similar to the licensing model that Trolltech previously used for Qt.

Although I’m an enthusiastic fan of both the Python programming language and the Qt toolkit, I’ve not been particularly happy with Riverbank’s PyQt. It has a number of technical deficiencies, the licensing model isn’t as flexible as I would like, and it poses some deployment challenges that detract from Qt’s inherent portability advantages. I outlined some of these issues in a tutorial that I wrote earlier this year about PyQt deployment on Windows and Mac OS X.

According to an FAQ published at the PySide website, Nokia initially entered into discussions with Riverbank Computing with the intention of collaborating on the PyQt project. These discussions were fruitless and an agreement between Nokia and Riverbank could not be reached. Nokia determined that the only way to achieve its goals for making the combination of Python and Qt accessible under permissive licensing to the broadest possible audience of developers was to start from scratch and displace Riverbank’s bindings. The PySide project aims to do precisely that.

Read more at:http://arstechnica.com/open-source/news/