While it's doubtful you'll see ads in KDE's core applications, it would be possible for distributions that wish to further monetize their work to fork these applications, placing ads in them.
    • Ninmi@sopuli.xyz
      4·
      3 years ago

      Makes me think that there could be a tags that moderators could slap on posts, like prefixing the title with a red Misleading or something.

  • AgreeableLandscape@lemmy.mlM
    8·
    3 years ago

    This is a Qt module. KDE has nothing to do with it and there is pretty much no way they would ever use it.

    I like to think that they wouldn’t dare. The vast majority of their users care a lot about open source and privacy. The instant KDE starts doing this, someone will fork their codebase and cut out the ads module. If they go proprietary, their community developers will move on to forks, like what happened with MySql and OpenOffice.

  • Nyaa@lemmy.ml
    6·
    3 years ago

    Just for anyone scrolling by, the article itself is clickbait. QT is not KDE and KDE uses the open source licensed variant of QT. They are also just giving the ability to easily put ads to applications in QT to give an easy way for developers to monetize their applications. I truly don’t think KDE would be putting ads in their applications as they know the backlash would likely be huge and they might lose some userbase which in the Linux world is very hard to come by.

  • kixik@lemmy.ml
    3·
    3 years ago

    If LXQt (what I use) and KDE ever opt into this, it’ll be the time for me to prefer GTK. I do like Qt better, but I guess such is life. I do not think that’ll happen any time soon though.

    The Qt source: https://www.qt.io/blog/monetizing-cross-platform-use-cases-faster-and-easier-with-qt-digital-advertising-platform

    Not sure about the mobile KDE and apps, being mobile KDE the selected default environment for pine64, but I hope phones using KDE and non KDE Qt apps keep away from adds as well…

    And not sure about independent Qt apps, like smplayer, cantata, and others. I really doubt this will come to GNU+Linux, but if so, then I guess there are choices, such as GTK apps, DE and toolkit…

    Although the reddit comment indicates it’s misleading, because of being the commercial version of Qt, and KDE being free SW, that’s a blur area, I don’t know if being FOSS prevents being able to show adds. Perhaps the license might force to give an opt out option to the users, but again, I can’t tell that’s enforced by the freedoms enforced when using GPL. Also, other free SW apps, as the ones mentioned before, might not be KDE projects, and even if KDE chooses not to take advantage of adds, it might be non KDE developers do. Although not likely, this deserves paying attention on how this moves…

    • CHEF-KOCH@lemmy.mlOP
      61·
      3 years ago

      Why, even FOSS needs support. See OBS Studio, Wikipedia etc. Without supports good projects go to waste.

      • Developers can decide to introduce it in their apps or not. I am sure not every QT developer will adopt this.
      • People will be able to opt-in, opt-out. I am pretty sure they provide us with an option.
      • Most people do not donate, so an additional income thing could help.
      • The other option would be crypto.

      We are not talking about MS who introduce ads in Explorer which need some ad-blocking, hosts or registry hacks. Linux is more transparent and there will be options to control this.

      Do I like it, nope. But it is better than alternatives to shutdown project because lack of funding or struggling to expand because only few people are willingly to donate.

      • ghost_laptop@lemmy.ml
        32·
        3 years ago

        Sure, I understand that people need money, I just think it’s a patch to a bigger issue that’s not solving anything, I don’t think we should be putting advertisement in the most unimaginable of places there are, it’s just sick.

        • CHEF-KOCH@lemmy.mlOP
          11·
          3 years ago

          I understand that you are upset, because annoying ads are always bad. However, I think if that is optional via opt-in it maybe, maybe can help smaller developers assuming the ads are well placed.

          I use Brave + ads enabled and I do not mind a small mini popup. Sometimes I see some news because of that which I reshare, so it actually helps me. What I want to say is, that when ads are well placed and not annoying or malwaretised I see not much issue to place them in an app as long it is not privacy invasive, I think that is the real challenge here. Because ads have a history of malwaretising. Brave fights this by filtering ads trough their proxy, there is a review for every new ad provider. I see here the issue with a normal unfiltered app, imagine your 8 years old kid gets a XXX ad or clicks on malware stuff.

          THAT is what I am worried about.

          • ghost_laptop@lemmy.ml
            02·
            3 years ago

            Yeah, that’s also an issue, and sure opt in ads are not that bad since it’s probably one or two clicks away and they’re gone, as long as it doesn’t get like the Android ecosystem where everything you download that’s not from F-droid is basically an ad hell where every part of the GUI is used to display something or pop up something when you’re using it.

            I think in an ideal world, the government should have to fund this, to some degree or other, because at the end of the day the world depends on open source software, and the solution is neither to make it closed source or something inherently wrong with open source, it’s just ravaging capitalism. If governments would stop using shitty Windows and pay some money to Linux+GNOME+KDE+etc they would save some money and also give funding.