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Qt and Open Source

qt.io

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61–70 of 138 posts

Re: Qt and Open Source

#61

Post by Rochus »

throw_m239339 wrote: post #50
Rochus wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Qt has a commercial license. So what is the issue with big money again? They don't want to pay up?

Just look at other essetial, widely used frameworks like OpenCV, Skia, Chromium, LibreOffice, just to name a few. In each such open source project a couple of companies are involved who can affort to dedicate a couple of developers to work on the open source frameworks they're using but which are not their income. This is a "coopetition" among companies and everyone benefits from it. In the case of Qt it's restricted because The Company sells licences of work which was done by others (companies and private people) for free.

Re: Qt and Open Source

#62

Post by slavik81 »

Rochus wrote: post #59
slavik81 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you say that? They're still not making much of a profit, but their revenue has doubled since 2015. https://mb.cision.com/Public/14183/3035372/be360a13ae94ae9d....

Revenue of what?

The Qt Company (QTCOM). They're publicly traded, so they have to publish yearly financial statements.

Their employee count has also doubled, which is why they're not making any profits despite the revenue growth.

Edit: Ah, you're pointing out that only 25% of their revenue is commercial licenses, while most of their revenue is consulting. I don't know if that's really such a big deal.

Re: Qt and Open Source

#63

Post by Arnt »

Rochus wrote: post #59
slavik81 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you say that? They're still not making much of a profit, but their revenue has doubled since 2015. https://mb.cision.com/Public/14183/3035372/be360a13ae94ae9d....

Revenue of what?

If you know enough about their business model to state that it doesn't work, then you know the answer to that question. So why do you ask, what are you trying to say?

Re: Qt and Open Source

#64

Post by Rochus »

Arnt wrote: post #63
Rochus wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Revenue of what?

If you know enough about their business model to state that it doesn't work, then you know the answer to that question. So why do you ask, what are you trying to say?

Just have a look with what they earn money. The other stuff is just holding on to an illusion.

Re: Qt and Open Source

#65

Post by cycloptic »

Rochus wrote: post #58
cycloptic wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe that is the real pain point. The Company could resolve it easily by paying contributors in exchange for signing the CLA. What is more likely is that they can't afford to do this.

That would be much too complicated. Just imagine such a model with OpenCV or some of the other big C++ frameworks. Selling framework licenses is just an outdated business model. It would make more sense to release the Qt framework under BSD and make money with add-on services (as other companies actually do successfully).

It doesn't seem that things being "much too complicated" is the issue when maintaining separate proprietary and open source forks is on the table. Although it's unclear if it actually is or not.

OpenCV (and many other open source frameworks) never had a CLA so this wouldn't be an issue for that. In my opinion there is nothing inherently wrong with dual-licensing but it's expensive and many companies do not have the resources to pull it off correctly. Re-releasing under the BSD license appears to be the backup plan if the Qt Company ever goes belly-up.

Re: Qt and Open Source

#66

Post by jfkebwjsbx »

yoz-y wrote: post #51
j1elo wrote: post #42

I'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…

Assuming the project is a library or a tool that people will need to somehow embed in their program I wouldn't go with GPL. It has some restrictions that are for various reasons hard to accept for a large amount of clients. People try arguing that "you could do this or that to accommodate" but the fact is that many for-profit corporations, even those working with open projects, will have a no-GPL policy. Also with th…

Even LGPL is banned in many companies. And some devs want static linking without releasing object files.

Re: Qt and Open Source

#67

Post by toyg »

Rochus wrote: post #55
toyg wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Nokia was not interested in license revenues but in popularizing the platform, especially their open source OS based on Qt. That's why they spent that much money to buy Qt ($150 mio) and then released it under LGPL. And there will always be people who find a hair in the gold pile. That's just the way the world is. Fortunately, most people appreciate what they're given.

They were only interested in the platform inasmuch as it could give them a way out of the hole they had dug for themselves with Symbian. They threw out half-assed implementations of this and that and then abandoned them at the speed of light, because the only real focus was migrating their historical Symbian devs to something that could resemble XXI century tech. I know because I was mulling some projects in the space at the time - I even went to a usergroup event that was supposed to be about Qt and got sold what was clearly a "Qt for Symbian" slide deck.

Trolltech was skimpier but was much more interested in the success of the platform per-se. In many ways the post-Nokia experiences are an attempt at re-discovering the space Trolltech lived into.

> their open source OS based on Qt.

There was never such a thing. They had a Symbian OS skinned with Qt, and a number of Linux incarnations that started with GTK and were later reskinned with Qt. It didn't help that they stroke a high-level agreement to basically adopt Intel's Linux efforts, which were targeting GTK. By the end of these travails, they ended up with something fairly decent but that was just a lame-duck. Nothing was ever "based on Qt" at a fundamental level.

Re: Qt and Open Source

#68

Post by detaro »

kovac wrote: post #12
dmytroi wrote: post #6

While 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…

Considering the quality and capabilities of Qt, I really think they should just sell commercial licences. Considering the fact that the engineers at Qt need to pay to eat and pay their bills just like me, I find it absurd to expect something like this for free. In that sense, I think the current situation is very gracious.

What about all the people not working at Qt Company that wrote most of the code? Qt company immensely benefits from the work done by others under the condition it remains also available under open source licenses.

Re: Qt and Open Source

#69

Post by Rochus »

slavik81 wrote: post #62
Rochus wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Revenue of what?

The Qt Company (QTCOM). They're publicly traded, so they have to publish yearly financial statements. Their employee count has also doubled, which is why they're not making any profits despite the revenue growth. Edit: Ah, you're pointing out that only 25% of their revenue is commercial licenses, while most of their revenue is consulting. I don't know if that's really such a big deal.

You're getting close ;-)

Re: Qt and Open Source

#70

Post by Rochus »

cycloptic wrote: post #65
Rochus wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be much too complicated. Just imagine such a model with OpenCV or some of the other big C++ frameworks. Selling framework licenses is just an outdated business model. It would make more sense to release the Qt framework under BSD and make money with add-on services (as other companies actually do successfully).

It doesn't seem that things being "much too complicated" is the issue when maintaining separate proprietary and open source forks is on the table. Although it's unclear if it actually is or not. OpenCV (and many other open source frameworks) never had a CLA so this wouldn't be an issue for that. In my opinion there is nothing inherently wrong with dual-licensing but it's expensive and many companies do not have the r…

> In my opinion there is nothing inherently wrong with dual-licensing

It significantly hampers cooperation. No company in its right mind would make a large investment for free in the development of software sold by another company. Without this unspeakable dual license, a balance is possible, i.e. the companies can invest and use without taking inadequat advantage of each other.

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