Does anyone have context for what these discussions are? That's a pretty terse message for those of us not in the loop...<p>Edit: This article gives a bit more context. <a href="https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Qt-Open-Source-Statement" rel="nofollow">https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Qt-Open-...</a>
I 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).<p>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 having very confusing licensing terms on their website.<p>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.<p>We don't need a trillion supported platforms and tons of features. We have a Desktop App that runs on Windows (and in the future maybe Linux), and we use the old Widget stuff (currently no QML).
We would gladly pay for the features we need, but not the ridicolous amound they are charging now.
I'd love to know more about opinions of fellow commenters, just a "what-if" question:<p>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?<p>I always feel that pure GPL is the best but only idealistic way to go, because working for free is not compatible with paying your bills. Then LGPL, and maybe other licenses such as Apache, are nice but at the end of the day allow that private companies with private pockets benefit from the project without helping it at all (either with work or with cash), which I know is one side of the "freedom" that those open-source licenses bring, but it's one side that I <i>personally</i> don't really like (I'm more of a pragmatist than an idealist). For that reason I feel like dual GPL+Commercial might be the best of both worlds. It would allow basing a company around it, and paying other devs to feed their families, and at the same time users of the GPL variant would themselves be benefiting from <i>and</i> contributing to open-source.
I really like Qt for desktop development, use it everyday, but this post makes me feel uneasy.<p>What "discussions on various internet forums" do they mean? there's been plenty. And, which ones "do not reflect the views or plans of The Qt Company"?<p>Why such a rushed defensive blog post?
A 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 native alternative. I’m still experimenting but I know for sure that I won’t be using QT now.<p>Same thing happened with Oracle and Java, they lost a lot of potential new developers with their hardline approach to open source.
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.
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.
It'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.
While the core product is LGPLv3+Commercial, most of their extensions are GPLv3+Commercial which makes them not suitable for a lot of apps.<p>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 represent extensions situation a bit better.