I really want to use Qt for a project but between the absurd commercial cost and them playing games with licensing i'm going with either wxWidgets or Lazarus.
Qt and Open Source
31–40 of 138 posts
Re: Qt and Open Source
#32Earlier quoted context omitted.
Here is a good background article: https://www.embeddeduse.com/2019/12/21/safe-guarding-the-lgp... And here the email to which Qt Comany reacts: https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-community/2020q2/006098.h... LGPL has long been a thorn in the side of Qt Company management. Nokia had bought Qt for $150 million, developed and popularized the platform, and then released everything under LGPL. Digia/The Company then boug…
> the management seems to have had a good opportunity to get rid of its annoying obligations to the open source community. Apparently you don't even read the links you provide. Qt company can't get rid of the leagal obligations it has to release the software. What it can do is to stop extra cooperation.
Oh, a side blow ;-)
Don't worry, I also studied law.
What The Company can or can't from this contract is not granted unless you have supreme court judgments for the points in question. Otherwise the current patent system, which is primarily based on bluff and blackmail, would not work. As long as there are companies that would rather settle than defend themselves in court, The Company will find a way to stay in the game.
Re: Qt and Open Source
#33It's interesting, I had no idea this is still an issue. For the record, this is the reason a couple of folks started Gnome and GTK over 20 years ago.
No, at that time Qt was not free software. Now Qt is free software and you can fork it and do whatever you want.
The issue seems to be that there are many people that use Qt for free including companies but they won't pay with money or contributions, so if a work will happen except KDE there will be few contributors. Qt includes a version of Webkit that is used in some application, so you need someone to keep on top of webkit security issues and backport the fixes.
Re: Qt and Open Source
#34While the core product is LGPLv3+Commercial, most of their extensions are GPLv3+Commercial which makes them not suitable for a lot of apps. Hence I find it's a bit confusing to say "to be committed to open source" where in practice the only way to use their extension is either to release your apps code (given you distribute the app) or pay for commercial license. IMHO "to be committed to free software" would represen…
> most of their extensions are GPLv3 [...] in practice the only way to use their extension is either to release your apps code
Which is exactly what improves and helps grow the open-source world?
GPL makes a product's code, and by infection/extension, other people's code, to be all released under a GPL license. GPL guarantees that users of open-source code won't act as leeches and will themselves contribute more open-source code. Isn't the act of choosing that license, in itself, "a huge commitment" to open-source?
Then they say: OK, seems you want to keep your code private, in order to preserve your IP and leverage over other competitors, and protect your lucrative interests... well that's fine too! You don't want our open-source license forcing you to contribute your code? Fine, we'll waive that requirement. Just pay up.
Re: Qt and Open Source
#35While the core product is LGPLv3+Commercial, most of their extensions are GPLv3+Commercial which makes them not suitable for a lot of apps. Hence I find it's a bit confusing to say "to be committed to open source" where in practice the only way to use their extension is either to release your apps code (given you distribute the app) or pay for commercial license. IMHO "to be committed to free software" would represen…
> While the core product is LGPLv3+Commercial, most of their extensions are GPLv3+Commercial which makes them not suitable for a lot of apps.
this is FUD - the immense majority of Qt is under LGPL. You can build literally entire OSes out of the LGPL parts.
The only strictly GPL parts are (from this page https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtmodules.html) : - Qt Charts - Qt Data Visualization - Qt Network Authorization - Qt Virtual Keyboard - Qt for WebAssembly - Qt Quick WebGL
All the widgets, qt quick, etc... stuff is available under LGPL.
Re: Qt and Open Source
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
How so? Promoting Open Source is the very point of the GPL.
You won't get any support of the "big money" unless the library is at least LGPL so it can be used in closed source applications. GPL is primarily for the idealists, not for business.
Using the product while making a closed source application and contributing nothing (money or patches) back can hardly be construed as promoting open source. The "big money" that won't play ball is why they instead have the commercial licensing options.
Re: Qt and Open Source
#37A lot of developers are experimenting with languages and libraries outside their normal work requirements given the current uncertainties of the future. If you are considering learning QT and come across this bad PR you will most likely avoid the technology altogether. I was looking for a popular GUI framework to build front ends for my rust apps all the controversy around QT made me double my efforts to find a nativ…
What are you experimenting with? If there is any cross-platform GUI framework that comes close to Qt, I'd love to know.
JavaFX for example. Its documentation is not up to the mark, but otherwise it is almost fully offers all gui functionality provided by QT.
Re: Qt and Open Source
#38Does anyone have context for what these discussions are? That's a pretty terse message for those of us not in the loop... Edit: This article gives a bit more context. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Qt-Open-...
Here is a good background article: https://www.embeddeduse.com/2019/12/21/safe-guarding-the-lgp... And here the email to which Qt Comany reacts: https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-community/2020q2/006098.h... LGPL has long been a thorn in the side of Qt Company management. Nokia had bought Qt for $150 million, developed and popularized the platform, and then released everything under LGPL. Digia/The Company then boug…
Nokia’s acquisition was a boost but nowhere near “developed and popularized the platform” - I would bet good money that the amount of licensed customers didn’t change that significantly, under Nokia, outside of the mobile world they tried (and failed) to push it into. In fact, the most significant advancements happened before and after the Nokia period, if i remember correctly. Nokia concentrated on porting it to its doomed OSes and building a cloud infrastructure nobody really wanted to use.
The real value of Qt is not $4m, Trolltech made a decent living out of it. The world has changed a bit since then, but I’m sure there is still plenty of space for Qt in the market.
Re: Qt and Open Source
#39While the core product is LGPLv3+Commercial, most of their extensions are GPLv3+Commercial which makes them not suitable for a lot of apps. Hence I find it's a bit confusing to say "to be committed to open source" where in practice the only way to use their extension is either to release your apps code (given you distribute the app) or pay for commercial license. IMHO "to be committed to free software" would represen…
> While the core product is LGPLv3+Commercial, most of their extensions are GPLv3+Commercial which makes them not suitable for a lot of apps. this is FUD - the immense majority of Qt is under LGPL. You can build literally entire OSes out of the LGPL parts. The only strictly GPL parts are (from this page https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtmodules.html ) : - Qt Charts - Qt Data Visualization - Qt Network Authorization - Qt Virtu…
Yeah, can't find another cross-platform UI library with Qt's selection of (permissive license-compatible) widgets. Other UI libraries tend to look like crap (at least on macOS), too.
Re: Qt and Open Source
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just to add a little: there's some concern, including among commercial users (including yours truly), that this is a Very Bad Idea (TM). Thing is, non-commercial and free software projects (KDE is one of the biggest ones, but not just KDE) have a significant contribution, quality-wise, to Qt. Most commercial users are on LTS releases. They rarely report bugs in current versions. With some exceptions (e.g. Wayland), t…
> IMHO, if they lose this ... If The Qt Company discontinued the FOSS version of Qt, the Qt framework would become available under the BSD license, and there would no longer be a contributor licence agreement allowing a company to sell the work of another company. > in addition to all the third-party contributions, which are a small, but not insignificant portion of the Qt code. In the last years more than 50% were o…
> In the last years more than 50% were open source contributions. At Nokia times they were only 10 to 20%.
Oh, okay, that's grown! I was still thinking of Nokia-era figures :).