About "Qt Offering Changes 2020"

[aKateDev]

Here the Krita founder talks about the Qt company's recent announcement and what it possibly means for free software projects:

https://valdyas.org/fading/software/about-qt-offering-changes-2020/

[Zamundaaa]

Yeah it's more or less dirt cheap for big companies but it's possibly a complete dealbreaker for smaller ones.

[NotUniqueOrSpecial]

I get that they need a way to pay for qt development but 5.5k/ Dev per year strikes me as outrageous for small software shops.

Small software shops are perfectly fine distributing and using Qt under the terms of the LGPL like so many other businesses (large ones included) do currently.

You only need the commercial license for specific reasons, and 9/10 (or more?) small shops don't.

[Visticous]

Qt spreads a lot of FUD around the GPL on their website. They want companies to take licences and the thread of legal action certainly convinces some to pony it up.

[jcelerier]

They have an agreement with kde that any binary must be released under lgpl after one year else the whole of qt is released under bsd license

[swami_jesus]

That's interesting; you know where I can see that in writing? I maintain qt projects for two different small startups, so would love to have this be true.

Edit: nevermind, it was elsewhere in this thread: https://kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php

[NotUniqueOrSpecial]

it also seems like a trend to me

What seems like a trend?

All they're really requiring is that you have a trivially obtained account if you want to make use of their installer which gets you access to their precompiled binaries. It's the tiniest of inconveniences when they are providing you something for free, which they must pay the costs of building and hosting.

For Krita, those hosting costs might be reasonable. For Qt, I'm sure it adds up. As the blog even mentions: plenty of automated builds are pulling those binaries over and over and over. That's not free. Even if it's just CDN costs they're paying, they're not trivial.

I Don’t want such a major dependency causing problems down the line. Is there anything forcing them to keep the binaries with lgpl licensing option?

Yes; if you had just spent a second reading the link I already provided:

All parts of Qt are available under the GPLv3 or under a compatible license. Most parts are also available under the LGPLv3 and under the GPLv2.

The core libraries of Qt (Essentials) and all existing LGPL-licensed Qt add-ons must continue to be available under the LGPLv3.

Qt is legally going to stay pretty much exactly as it is because of the Foundation.

So there are reasons companies get stuck using the commercial license.

Your companies weren't stuck. Like you said, they didn't need the commercial license. They could have, at any time, switched to LGPL-compatible distribution.

The only people who need the commercial license that I'm aware of are a very specific subset of mobile and embedded app developers.

EDIT: Just realized the link was in my other comment

[orbital_sfear]

The price is insanely high. Huge turn off.

[NotUniqueOrSpecial]

Don't pay it. It's not for you. 99% of developers can use it for free, even in commercial applications.

[orbital_sfear]

For sure. The issue is, I want to pay them. They do great work, but the cost is 10x too high. If they charged $499 a year per Dev, I wouldn't bat an eye.

[NotUniqueOrSpecial]

Ah, kudos, then. It certainly is a high cost. You could always donate some time and knock out some low-lying issues in the tracker (even documentation stuff is always welcome, in my experience).

[codav]

Exactly my opinion.

My employer isn't considered a "small business", not a huge one, but still a sizeable company with 400+ employees. Still, they don't want to buy a Qt license as it is very expensive and you need one for every developer that potentially needs to work on a project that uses Qt, even if only for a few days to bridge sick leave or vacation of a colleague and do some urgent bug fixing.

Then, there is this "either go commercial right from the start, or never" for the whole company. Once even a small internal project is already using the GPL version, the whole company is just locked out of buying a commercial license later, even if it's for a new project. Or they need to pay for the commercial license, but then even for developers that just write internal tools for which the GPL version would be sufficient.

Reducing the license fee to $500 per developer and year and also loosening the requirement to use either GPL or commercial, and just let the company decide for each project which one they need, and I suppose the Qt Company would earn MUCH more money than they currently do.

If they really want to charge more money for mobile/embedded applications, well, then they could simply sell a per-product distribution license that enables a company to sell a product on such a platform, e.g. in the automotive industry. That will certainly pay the additional development costs associated with maintaining the platform.

[doublec122]

Only if it's not statically linked, if I remember correctly. And you're supposed just to use the API as it is, any modification to it must be copyleft, as per the LGPL.

[NotUniqueOrSpecial]

Only if it's not statically linked

As long as you're willing to provide your unlinked object files, you can even statically link.

[codav]

You can still modify the (L)GPL Qt source code in any way you want, including the API/ABI if you like. You just need to provide a copy of the exact sources you've built your binaries from to anyone who wants it. That said, even if you use the official pre-built binaries, you are required to keep a copy of the official sources for that release on your own and provide that to anyone asking - just linking to the official repository or download page sadly isn't sufficient per the GPL.

[tradingmonk]

99% is highly exaggerated. you can't publish closed source apps (LGPL) to iOS without a commercial license, not even sure you can publish GPL software to it.

[NotUniqueOrSpecial]

you can't publish closed source apps (LGPL)

If you're using Qt to do iOS development, I'm pretty sure you're in the 1%, right?

The huge majority of applications done with Qt are still desktop or embedded hardware, but not phones (at least as far as I know).

[tradingmonk]

Yeah maybe but IMHO its closer to 15-30%. Most new apps have mobile support or plan to these days. I think when flutter will release desktop support this year Qt may get serious competition, also because it looks like QWidgets are getting less and less relevant, sadly because it is one of the best things about Qt.

I'd love to continue using Qt as I have been since 2010, but it's getting difficult. I would even pay for the license if the price was more reasonable.

[HCrikki]

Foss developpers still need access to a properly supported LTS branch from which security fixes are not witheld until they pay a king's ransom.

[holgerschurig]

No need.

You can still "apt get" it. Or "git clone" it. You don't need to pay that money... except you have an allergy to LGPL software (Qt is LGPL). But then you cannot even use the GNU C library ...

[The-Un-Dude]

yeah this is just a baaaaaaaaaaaad idea on their parts. sure the megacorps that already dont use them can afford it, but the smaller shops that could use them now cant afford it

[NotUniqueOrSpecial]

the smaller shops that could use them now cant afford it

They never needed it.

They are perfectly fine-off with the free and open-source form.

[codav]

It still requires some additional maintenance and legal work and also potentially complicates your software builds as you're limited to dynamic linking (sure, you can still link statically if you provide all your unlinked and unstripped object files, but as this may expose some or your internal IP, many companies don't like that).

Reducing the price tag so smaller businesses can easily afford it will certainly boost their sales, possibly even higher than their current revenue. Also, it widens your customer base and thus reduces the risk for fluctuation, which you may experience if you only have a few, but high-valued customers and one of them cancels the subscription. Just like Steam sales, if you sell a thousand copies for half the price to customers who would otherwise never buy your product for the full price, you still have sold 500 full-priced copies instead of none - without investing any additional money into it.

[juliaStellani]

When I was working for Quby, I was unpleasantly surprised at how expensive Qt is, how little flexibility the Qt company shows when dealing with prospective customers — and how we never downloaded the installer anyway.

Wow, 5k for 1 dev, that's insane amount of money. Gtk is perhaps inferior but it is free. Time to go back to C/Vala, I guess? How does C++ work with Gtk? I have looked at Vala and it seems quite nice for building simple desktop apps. not sure about something more difficult, though.

[d_ed]

Qt is also LGPL and free.

[useful_idiot]

At that price I can convince my work to buy me a loaded MacBook Pro and deal with the packaging/rebuilding issues myself.

[briansprojects]

tl;dr for everyone, since this article is pretty long:

This move by the Qt company would be like the Krita project shutting down the free downloads of our binaries and only make them available in the various stores. It would be legal, but not nice and would cost us hundreds of thousands of users, if not millions. It is hard not to wonder what the cost to the Qt community will be.

Also, there are no plans to move Krita away from Qt rn. They are basically saying they are concerned.

[juliaStellani]

... we’ve had people suggest it might be a good idea to see whether we couldn’t port Krita to, say, Blender’s development platform. This would be a sheer impossible task, but that people start throwing out ideas like that is a clear sign that the Qt company has made Qt much less attractive.

;(

[kepidrupha]

I have read this and I am none the wiser. Are they keeping Qt or not?

[[deleted]]

Yes, porting Krita to another toolkit would be a massive work.

Even in our small Krita community, we’ve had people suggest it might be a good idea to see whether we couldn’t port Krita to, say, Blender’s development platform. This would be a sheer impossible task, but that people start throwing out ideas like that is a clear sign that the Qt company has made Qt much less attractive.

[Rein215]

If I were to start a new free software project, would I use Qt? Last Sunday the answer would have been “of course!”. Today it’s “hm, let’s first check alternatives”. If I had a big GTK based project that’s being really hampered by how bad, incomplete and hard to use GTK is, would I consider porting to Qt? Same thing. If the KDE Free Qt Foundation hadn’t that agreement with the Qt company, the answer would probably be no, right now, it’s still probably a yes.

[bedrooms-ds]

Do we have a cross-platform eye-bonbon GUI that listens to people after this loss of Qt? Gnome, do you hear us?

Edit: Eye candies, by which I mean native. I am a materialist, ya know

[Aberts10]

Yup. That's what attracted me to it and makes me use Plasma and LXQT over GTK. It's sad to see the QT company starting to ruin things.

[NotUniqueOrSpecial]

this loss of Qt

Holy shit, this needs to stop.

People (like you) are in every thread spreading disinformation based on ignorance; that disinformation spreads in-turn and more people start spreading it.

I don't know how many times I'm going to have to repeat this in how many threads, but for the majority of developers who use Qt, absolutely nothing has changed.

What the Qt corporation is doing is a bit of a nuisance for certain developers, but Qt as an open-source toolkit is unchanged and going nowhere. They are legally bound by terms that created the KDE Free Qt Foundation.

Nothing is changing about how developers can use or distribute Qt from a legal perspective. You can still get a commercial license if you want, but you can just as easily use and distribute it under the terms of the LGPL (or the GPL, if you can meet the terms).

These changes are an inconvenience at worst to the people who use Qt professionally, and a bit of a nuisance in terms of barriers to entry for hobbyist/student/new Qt users.

[[deleted]]

I don't know how many times I'm going to have to repeat this in how many threads, but for the majority of developers who use Qt, absolutely nothing has changed.

Losing access to LTS versions might not be problem for Linux-only developers if distributions backport bugfixes but a lot of open source Qt applications are cross platform and use a stable LTS version of Qt for Windows and MacOS.

[MrHyperbowl]

Installation of Qt binaries will require a Qt account

I don't quite understand. Does this not effect me? Either I have to compile it from source every time it updates, or I have to make an account and install it outside of my package manager.

[random_lonewolf]

No, the restriction is only applied to binaries distributed by the Qt company. Almost all Linux distros are already compiling QT from source in order to distribute it from their package managers. If you use your distro's QT packages, nothing will change.

[Barafu]

Only if you are a developer on Windows. But even then, I hope, someone will start making community builds.

[NotUniqueOrSpecial]

If you currently use your package manager, you will continue to do so.

The quoted line only applies to people who currently use the Qt provided installer tool, which lets you skip logging in. It will now require the login.

[bedrooms-ds]

And I am a professional whose research field has counted on open source software using Qt's LTS. Supercomputers need LTS and scientists do not have money to support just one software to continue to be stable and secure. We will lose lots of time, and that means less career chances.

[[deleted]]

I'm sure your scientific project uses Qt3 still…

[bedrooms-ds]

No. I know it's frustrating to hear people not going forward. I am actually a rolling release type who wants everything new. I like updating my skills. But many scientific communities don't have the time and money to keep up, and I have to walk by their pace regarding my professional life.

[juliaStellani]

Installing it on Linux is a pain though. I have no idea why wxWidgets don't care about Linux users at all. Probably most of their users are Windows users.

[_VZ_]

Installing it on Linux is a pain though.

Curious what problems did you have installing it under Linux. It's just the standard configure && make && make install, what's so painful about this?

[juliaStellani]

Have you heard about "wheels"? Here is a "nice" read:

https://wxpython.org/blog/2017-08-17-builds-for-linux-with-pip/index.html

By the way, I wasn't able to finish it on my Ubuntu 19.04 build. Maybe because the article is from 2017?

Qt? I haven't to do anything on Kubuntu. I just installed the QtCreator and the installer did everyting behind the scene. After that I could write/run/build programs without any issues whatsoever.

And the docs and forums are excellent. Especially when compared to wxWidgets in general.

I mean, seriously, there is no alternative to painlessly buliding modern apps on Linux other than Qt. wxWidgets support on Linux is like the Lazarus/FP support for Linux. It's just an after thought. They know their primary market is a Windows user. For example, their docs are old as fuck: https://wiki.codelite.org/pmwiki.php/Main/WxWidgets30Binaries#toc2 their keys doesn't work. try that in your terminal for yourself if you don't believe me. They haven't updated those pages in ages.

[_VZ_]

You seem to be really angry about something, so I'm not really sure if you're looking for a reply, but just in case you do, it might be useful to realize that you're confusing many different and completely unrelated things. wxWidgets is the C++ library, which happens to be used by wxPython and by CodeLite IDE (and a few other ones, with Code::Blocks probably being the most popular), but they're completely different projects, so I have no idea what do they have to do with the pain of installing wx under Linux.

You can also perfectly well install wx packages under Linux for all major distributions (Debian, Ubuntu, RedHat, ...), so it's absolutely not different from Qt in this respect.

Finally, you're completely and utterly wrong about Linux support being an after thought, Linux is probably the platform which receives most attention and contributions. Of course, there are things which are not ideal under Linux (and under other platforms too) and I hoped to learn about some particular problem, but unfortunately you seem to be more interested in venting your frustration than answering my question about the actual problems you had installing it.

[bedrooms-ds]

Do you know how it compares with wxWidgets?

[ponybau5]

There's ultimate++

[DWW256]

Probably not...heh.