Usually, I don’t especially care for Windows as a platform for free software. If software runs there without major changes, it’s nice, but if it doesn’t, I wouldn’t waste lots of work to get my stuff run on Windows.
However, if software technically runs on Windows, but you are forbidden to use it freely, I get crazy. This was the main reason not to use Qt: Although you freely could use it on Linux for your GPL programs, there was no way to get it run on Windows without getting a commercial license by TrollTech. (Some free software developers seem to have gotten licenses for free, but this doesn’t change the general fact that free software development for windows used to be impossible with Qt.)
Note that I wrote “was” above, as this has now changed. With Qt4, TrollTech’s next version of Qt, GPLed software is now allowed to freely use Qt4 for Windows too.
I think this is great news and I don’t see any reason not to use Qt4 for your free software projects. (Yeah, I still prefer GTK+—mainly because it doesn’t force C++ on me–, but nevermind.)
NP: Bob Dylan—This Was My Love (Take 1)