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0 pointsalxlaz6y ago0 comments

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), they rarely test new features as they become available. They rarely put too much effort into bug reports for LTS releases, too. That's just how commercial development works. Unless it's a critical bug and you have no choice, your employer won't pay you (or you can't charge your customer) to help another company fix their code.

Qt has a large foothold in FOSS and non-commercial software, and that provides a great deal of real-world exposure to a codebase that's old enough, and complex enough, that real-world exposure is crucial. IMHO, if they lose this, Qt will stop being a useful choice for any kind of development, cross-platform or not, within a few years.

(Edit: to be clear, it's not just that the FOSS community basically provides free beta testing -- even if technically it sort of does. This is an artifact of the way FOSS, and many Linux distributions, too, work today -- e.g. most distros don't ship the LTS version, they ship the latest version, simply because it's easier to fit that into their release schedule. Whether good or bad, it means that a big chunk of Qt app users are on the latest stable version, not on LTS.)

That's all in addition to all the third-party contributions, which are a small, but not insignificant portion of the Qt code.

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7 comments · 2 top-level

Rochus6y ago· 3 in thread

> 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 open source contributions. At Nokia times they were only 10 to 20%.

microtonal6y ago

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.

Rochus6y ago

I'm sure you'll have a couple of shysters in tow trying to turn it this way. But at the end of the day (i.e. in court) only the effective will of the parties counts, no matter what (possibly wrong) wording was used in the contract. Unfortunately, KDE is not expected to go to court. The Company will take advantage of this.

alxlazOP6y ago

> 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 :).

dman6y ago· 2 in thread

I have written a fair amount of software in Qt. It has been clear to me from the actions of the Qt company (via the amount they charge for it, getting rid of indie plans which allowed you to use it Qt for ~350 bucks a year vs the $5508 a year that they have chosen the strategy of milking the captive users that Qt has rather than expanding Qt out and courting new users. For better or for worse at this point I see closed source Qt going the way of Delphi. Qts long term survival depends on a viable and vibrant OSS fork.

mgreenleaf6y ago

I don't have a lot of experience with it, but Copperspice looks promising, and doesn't need the MOC. Does anyone else have experience with any critical differences between Qt and Copperspice?

merb6y ago

i.e. you do not need a license to have commercial qt programs, as long as you correctly use LPGL as a license, which is really really simple. IANAL but their licensing pages and legal pages are extremly misleading.

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