I think Qt is an amazing product. I would use it for all desktop development if I could. The commercial license is a bit expensive to justify. I think they could do a lot better if the costs were more inline with a Visual Studio license. Right now it is hard to justify it over Visual Studio when I can buy a perpetual license or a yearly subscription for a reasonable amount of money.
Qt and Open Source
91–100 of 138 posts
Re: Qt and Open Source
#92I think Qt is an amazing product. I would use it for all desktop development if I could. The commercial license is a bit expensive to justify. I think they could do a lot better if the costs were more inline with a Visual Studio license. Right now it is hard to justify it over Visual Studio when I can buy a perpetual license or a yearly subscription for a reasonable amount of money.
I think unreal engine’s pricing model is more suitable for me as an individual developer.
Re: Qt and Open Source
#93I think Qt needs to rethink their licensing model. Currently you either pay them a LOT of money for everything they offer, or you don't pay them anything and just use the LGPL version (when that's possible). It seems their current strategy is to milk the users that can't use the LGPL users as much as possible, Additionally they try to convince as many people as possible that the LGPL version won't work for them, by h…
> My company currently uses the LGPL version of Qt, and would gladly pay for the commercial one. In the Trolltech and Nokia days they actually did pay for it, but the prices are no longer affordable us. So we are stuck with the LGPL version for now.
Huh, price isn't even a THAT big problem. Software developed with LGPL version can't use the commercial one.
> 2.13. If I have started development of a project using the open source version (LGPL), can I later purchase a commercial version of Qt and move my code under that license?
> This is not permitted without written consent from The Qt Company. If you have already started the development with an open-source version of Qt, please contact The Qt Company to resolve the issue. If you are unsure of which license or version to use when you start development, we recommend you contact The Qt Company to advise you on the best choice based on your development needs.
IIRC they aren't really willing to give the permission to switch
Re: Qt and Open Source
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
I read the linked email and now I'm even more confused about TFA. Linked email from KDE: > But last week, the company suddenly informed both the KDE e.V. board and the KDE Free QT Foundation that the economic outlook caused by the Corona virus puts more pressure on them to increase short-term revenue. As a result, they are thinking about restricting ALL Qt releases to paid license holders for the first 12 months. The…
>> The Qt Company is proud to be committed to its customers, open source, and the Qt governance model. Bull. From January (eg ~2.5 months ago) they've stopped people being able to download the Open Source Windows, macOS, and Linux versions of Qt without first signing up for a "Qt Account". eg you're now required to be tracked / able to be spammed / (etc) for even the OSS version of Qt. That's not how companies "commi…
That's FUD.
It's in virtually every Linux distribution as binary and source. You don't need a "Qt Account".
Re: Qt and Open Source
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
What’s wrong with the LGPL? If you dynamically link them, then you don’t need to open source your product. It’s only a problem if you want to statically link.
Nothing is wrong with the LPGL version for us. Static linking would be nice sometimes, but really necessary. My point is that my company would be willing to pay for Qt (and it did pay in the past), but not that much. In the current situation they don't get any money from us at all.
You can link statically. Oh my god, we've been over this infinite number of times.
Re: Qt and Open Source
#96I 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.
Does anyone here use Copperspice? Saw it mentioned elsewhere as a possible alternative. Theyre a kind of fork of Qt5, ditched the moc, and seem to be ran as a regular Floss project. I have no experience with it, but I do with Qt, which I like very much, so if there are users of Copperspice here I'd be very interested in your experience.
Copperspice is just a purity zealot project specifically against the moc, it's not a healthy goal. The focus should be on the GUI.
Re: Qt and Open Source
#97Earlier quoted context omitted.
>> The Qt Company is proud to be committed to its customers, open source, and the Qt governance model. Bull. From January (eg ~2.5 months ago) they've stopped people being able to download the Open Source Windows, macOS, and Linux versions of Qt without first signing up for a "Qt Account". eg you're now required to be tracked / able to be spammed / (etc) for even the OSS version of Qt. That's not how companies "commi…
That's FUD. It's in virtually every Linux distribution as binary and source. You don't need a "Qt Account".
It's not FUD.
Grab the official Qt installer, and try downloading anything:
http://download.qt.io/official_releases/online_installers/
It will not work unless you sign in with a Qt Account.
Re: Qt and Open Source
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nothing is wrong with the LPGL version for us. Static linking would be nice sometimes, but really necessary. My point is that my company would be willing to pay for Qt (and it did pay in the past), but not that much. In the current situation they don't get any money from us at all.
You can link statically. Oh my god, we've been over this infinite number of times.
Yes you can, but if you do that you have to release the Object files and make it possible for the customers to link them to their own Qt version.
This is a much greater hassle than just linking dynamically, so we don't do it.
Re: Qt and Open Source
#99While 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…
The biggest problem of Qt is the FUD just like you're spreading.
No. All is LGPL except for some niche libraries.
Re: Qt and Open Source
#100I'd love to know more about opinions of fellow commenters, just a "what-if" question: If tomorrow you had some big project such as Qt in your hands, and had 100% freedom to choose how to proceed with it (in matters such as what license to apply, what sustainability model to seek, etc.) what would you do? I always feel that pure GPL is the best but only idealistic way to go, because working for free is not compatible…
GPL+Commercial requires copyright assignment, which is a pretty sure way to turn off potential contributors. I mean, if you don't want to contribute to BSD-style licensed projects because you don't want others to leech without giving anything back, how on earth could you simultaneously be ok with assigning your copyright to some (sleezy/evil/you name it) corporation?
And no, I don't really have an answer either. Successful open source business models are few and far between. Redhat is perhaps the one big example of a (very) successful open source company.
To some extent I think the worry about leeching is something which can be addressed with culture as well as licenses. Plenty of successful BSD/apache licensed projects around, including with largely corporate contributors, because they understand the long-term value from contributing to the common pool rather than forking and trying to sell "proprietary enhanced" versions.