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.
If wxWidgets and Lazarus are options, why isn't using Qt under LGPL an option?
Qt and Open Source
71–80 of 138 posts
Re: Qt and Open Source
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 spac…
> There was never such a thing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MeeGo which evolved to http://merproject.org/ and https://sailfishos.org/ after the Nokia era
Re: Qt and Open Source
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
I also thought it had to do with that, but given the parent's edit it seems to do with ideas floating around because of money issues given covid-19
Software development business is among the least affected by Corona. But Corona is a good opportunity for many managers to use it to justify previous misconduct.
A lot of tech companies have clients who are significantly affected by Corona
Re: Qt and Open Source
#74Earlier 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…
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.
But the rumors were that the Qt Company planned to do the minimum necessary to satisfy KDE Free Qt Foundation agreement, namely to release the source 12 months after release of the proprietary version. So, then Qt would not become available under the BSD license.
Re: Qt and Open Source
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
They earn money with Qt, an open source library.
Re: Qt and Open Source
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> In the case of Qt it's restricted because The Company sells licences of work done by others for free
No, using the LGPL code done by third party is still free of charge.
> This is a "coopetition" among companies and everyone benefits from it.
And we also have seen many times developers who released their code as MIT never seeing a dime from these big companies (such as Corejs developer).
LGPL is the way to go to ensure that big corps who make money out of an open source project do pay up. You don't want to release your source code? Then pay for a commercial license, end of story.
Re: Qt and Open Source
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 spac…
> There was never such a thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MeeGo which evolved to http://merproject.org/ and https://sailfishos.org/ after the Nokia era
I was a MeeGo user and hobby developer, you don't have to remind me. And you should know that, as I described, it was born with GTK on top (Maemo); when it was rebranded MeeGo it was because they merged it with Intel's Moblin, another GTK-targeting effort, so the innards were very much geared towards GTK to start with.
Re: Qt and Open Source
#78I'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…
One challenge specific to Qt is that their market is completely different than it was when KDE adopted Qt way back in the late 90s. I ran prerelease KDE briefly in that era and it was incredible for what it was. The other cross-platform options were things like Java Swing and Tk. They were ugly and had funky UI behavior.
Even then, the total addressable market was pretty small, but at least it was anyone who wanted to make a cross-platform app.
Now, most people who want to do that use Electron, React Native, or make a browser extension (or, of course, a Web site). The market is smaller: cross-platform makers who are absolutely committed to Qt or for whom it’s a uniquely good fit (like because they’re using C++).
Think of it like a pharma company with a drug that only treats a rare disease. The TAM is tiny. Unless someone discovers that it also treats some other disease, there’s not a lot they can do to expand the customer base. If they want to make more money or want more short-term revenue (usually at the expense of long-term revenue), charging existing customers more may actually be the best option for them.
Re: Qt and Open Source
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> In the case of Qt it's restricted because The Company sells licences of work done by others for free No, using the LGPL code done by third party is still free of charge. > This is a "coopetition" among companies and everyone benefits from it. And we also have seen many times developers who released their code as MIT never seeing a dime from these big companies (such as Corejs developer). LGPL is the way to go to en…
You just got my arguments all wrong. We're talking at cross purposes.
Re: Qt and Open Source
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Commits by employer, for reference: https://macieira.org/~thiago/qt-stats/current/qt5.employer.r...
Ok, a bit more than last year. One should also analyze what parts were commited. There is a significant difference in the commits by company to the core framework and the new 3D tools and other parts that The Company wants to make money with.
The stats for qtbase are pretty similar. I suppose I might as well link the full page for folks: https://macieira.org/~thiago/qt-stats/current/