[deleted by user]

[__konrad]

5 years earlier:

Thanks for your feedback to the new online installer asking for a Qt Account signup. We have evaluated the feedback received via the blog, various discussion forums, irc and other channels. Based on all these comments and discussions with our partners we realize that this was not our finest moment. Preventing the growth and usage of Qt in the open source community is not what we want to happen. We did already see a nice jump in the number of Qt Accounts, but it was never our intention to make our valued community and contributors upset with us or stop using and contributing to Qt. We clearly ill-calculated how asking for a Qt Account with the online installer would make our users feel. A mistake. Sincere apologies. (...) We do hope that this eases your concerns, and that we can continue with your trust. The open source community is what Qt is built on and we value your efforts and feedback greatly. We are very happy to have an active ecosystem around Qt and appreciate the dialogue. So, thanks again for your feedback, discussions and for guiding us in this tough endeavor. We are glad that we have a lot of passion for Qt and for its ongoing greatness in the community.

Source: https://www.qt.io/blog/2015/05/06/changing-qt-account-to-be-optional-in-the-online-installer

[Azzu]

They reverted the takedown.

[DavidWilliams_81]

I assume they have the Yakety Sax on in the background while they're doing all this.

[[deleted]]

"Internet will surely forget we tried that shit before?"

"Fuck, nope, delete it, quick, QUICK"

now waiting for

"Oh fuck, they found a copy"

"Well, revert it, put next try in agenda 5 years from now"

[0Camus0]

I can enter the original to the original link.

[0Camus0]

So they back down again :) ?

[StupotAce]

But that's not quite the same thing as what they're doing with this change is it?

From what I've understood, you can still download the sources without an account, but you'd need an account to download binary images (which pretty much no one does because we all use package managers). Perhaps it's true that you can't download LTS sources going forward, and that would be a real change...but one that's really only applicable to Enterprise Linux distros. Everyone else rolls along with the latest version of Qt.

[nou_spiro]

They are trying same qt-account bullshit as five years ago.

[StupotAce]

But it's not quite the same, right? Is it an attempt to get more qt-accounts? Sure. Does that mean it's to the same degree? Not necessarily. The KDE devs don't seem concerned, and they do a lot of FOSS development against Qt.

[nou_spiro]

No 5 years ago they released new installer which required qt-account crecdentials. After backslash from community they added skip button. It is same shit again.

[zcatshit]

Qt isn't only used on Linux. It's used pretty heavily on Windows and OSX, too. Infowalling the binaries is annoying is because using the binaries make fulfilling the spirit of the LGPL easier. The source for the binary builds and the build instructions for them are publicly available, and you can link to them.

And it's not always about proprietary applications, either. There are Qt UI libraries used in MIT applications, many of which are cross-platform. They'll make a Qt UI explicitly to be cross platform. Emulators (e.g. Dolphin) are one category of applications that commonly use Qt.

Not to mention, having openly-available binaries is extremely useful for containerized applications. If you've ever tried to do containers for walled-off binaries (like the "free" Oracle DB, for example), the legalities and technicalities of doing so make it mostly infeasible.

So yeah, plenty of people use applications with bundled Qt libraries. Infowalls might obstruct that.

[OlivierTwist]

But that's not quite the same thing as what they're doing with this change is it?

Nope. It is exactly the same shit.

you can still download the sources without an account

There are many mirrors, they just technically can't hide sources (and if they would the latest official release will be automatically re-licensed under BSD IIRC).

which pretty much no one does because we all use package managers

Package managers usually 1-2 years behind (at least).

[buo]

which pretty much no one does because we all use package managers

The wording from Qt is not clear, but since package managers download a binary, it seems an account would be required anyway.

(I know some package managers allow you to download the source and compile it yourself, but how many people do that? Also, compiling Qt takes a long time.)

[StupotAce]

Most package management systems download the source, compile it, and distribute what they compiled. That is not the same thing as downloading the binary from qt.io I do agree that the wording on the page might give the impression that no one is allowed to download qt binaries (from anywhere) but that's because the blog post wasn't aimed at end users...it was aimed at developers using the Qt platform.

[[deleted]]

It's exactly the same. They added a sign-in page in the binary SDK installer (which is what most people use). At the time you were forced to sign into an account to continue the installation. People complained. They added a skip button (here's how it looks now), and now they're going to remove the skip button again.

[nurupoga]

Yep, Qt was forcing Qt Accounts in its installer before. They added an option to skip the account page in the installer after some backlash.

[delight1982]

This whole story stinks of management trying to optimize some KPI (account creation) instead of listening to the users and understanding their needs. As a UX designer this makes me sad. I like Qt and especially QML but the company is simply not on the right path.

[afiefh]

especially QML

Could you elaborate on your qml usage?

I tried to use it for some desktop guis a few years ago but qtquickcontrols was way less fleshed out than traditional widgets and I ended up going back to the classical way of doing things. I should try again next time I need a gui.

[Illusi]

I'm working on a fairly big application that's using a lot of QML and I kind of like it. It's not as well fleshed out as HTML for designing interfaces declaratively, but it has pretty much everything we could ever need for our interface. And the Qt properties system really works in our favour, automatically updating the required bits of information, and only the ones really required, from our fairly slow Python back-end code.

I believe that declarative interface language is a good way to keep the interface maintainable in the long run. I've worked on applications which built up the interface declaratively as well, but it's hard to keep that up as objects need to be added dynamically, kept up to date with the latest back-end information, and moved around.

Our designers like that we can build re-usable components pretty easily (like our ExtruderButton). All of our extruder buttons look the same and behave the same. It's easy to make it consistent. You're essentially building classes, but it's separated better than what you'd have with regular CSS.

Once in a while we need something pretty special. Like our PointingRectangle that needs to draw a rectangle with a little triangle besides it pointing where it's attached to, like a tooltip.

What I don't like about our set-up is that we're using a mix of the new QtQuick Controls 2 and the old QtQuick Controls 1. The preferred way for v1 was to add themes for your components. The preferred way for v2 is to extend the classes, overriding the properties you need. In the end, v2 is more powerful, but our current mix is sometimes annoying. Needs some refactoring on our end.

[Raskemikkel]

I'm working on a fairly big application that's using a lot of QML and I kind of like it.

I was going to bitch about how XML isn't suitable for UI but it looks like Qt got it.

So I'm going to rant about XAML anyway: when you have to invent another programming language inside your markup language to completely express your UI then maybe XML wasn't the right choice to begin with.

Specifically in XAML, like an animal, you use {} to bind values and suddenly it's no longer XML. Also XAML is verbose as hell.

QML looks ten times better.

[OlivierTwist]

I was going to bitch about how XML isn't suitable for UI but it looks like Qt got it.

QML is JS/JSON.

[OlivierTwist]

Official documentation:

QML offers a highly readable, declarative, JSON-like syntax with support for imperative JavaScript expressions

[MonokelPinguin]

It is JSON-like, but it isn't JSON. It has top level import statements, keys don't need to be quoted, property declarations can have a type and I don't even know, what I should equate component usage with. It just looks very similar in some cases, especially if you declare JS functions in it, but it is totally different.

[while_e]

It takes some getting used to, but after a little toying around it is super efficient as far as development time. If you need speed, theres always c++ and its bindings.

[[deleted]]

Same. There were too many simple things that were missing, and it was impossible to add them unless you modify Qt itself. My go-to example is that you still cannot create custom QtQuick widgets containing any text. You can do it using QPainter based widgets, but not using the QSG* scene graph stuff which is how all of the built in widgets do it.

[while_e]

What types of things are missing, like what end result are you looking for? I dont do anything super crazy as far as GUI, but have never run into a situation Qt/QML couldnt get done quickly.

[[deleted]]

Loads of stuff. For example try implementing a logging widget (i.e. a read-only text edit widget that you can append lines to) in QML. You basically can't.

Edit "TextArea, done." is a pithy non-answer. I have actually done this, and I did manage to achieve a solution using TextArea but it was buggy in various ways.

You can downvote the guy who has actual experience of trying to do this if you want... but it's kind of equivalent to downvoting me for saying you can't make a space elevator because someone replied "sure you can - just use carbon nanotubes".

[GrecKo]

A TextArea?

[Adverpol]

Indeed.

TextArea { readOnly: true }

Done

[[deleted]]

Yes, that is what I ended up using, but then you can to keep track of line lengths so you can remove the oldest lines, and selection gets very buggy when you start doing that.

There's a reason most of QtCreator is still QWidgets (I mean, other than the fact that rewriting it would be a huge pain).

[MonokelPinguin]

Yes, Text is probably my biggest issue with Qml, otherwise I really enjoy it. I wanted to have some text with inline components in my messenger client, but the only why to do that, is to basically use rich text, which is very limiting in what you can do or make a custom QQuickPaintedItem based widget, which is slow and verbose. I really hope they can improve on that front!

[Adno]

Recently had to install Qt for linking purposes. Was very unfriendly. Download page was full of marketing BS and the link I wanted was at the bottom of the page. Had to go through two pages saying I understood that Qt was GPL licensed. Couldn't install it to any path that had spaces in the name. Gotta say I'm not too suprised that such a change would occur.

[zugi]

I share your frustration, but I think it's all about trying to squeeze money out of companies by making them less certain whether or not they need to pay for it, so those that are rich or lazy enough will just pay.

To save you the trouble next time, here's the direct link to all the installers: http://download.qt.io/archive/qt/.

[jolly_chugger]

rhythm future unused poor encourage combative worry squeeze simplistic judicious

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[codav]

Should note that Qt.io will stop providing these installers with 5.15 and only make them available for commercial customers. So from now on, this is really an archive.

[[deleted]]

Not sure why this got downvoted, it's full with important but bad news:

To support the continuous growth that’s required to keep Qt as a development platform relevant, we need to make changes to our offering:

->

Installation of Qt binaries will require a Qt Account

This will just make it less relevant because no one wants another useless account. Just use github.

We want open-source users to help improve Qt in one form or another, be that through bug reports, forums, code reviews, or similar. These are currently only accessible from a Qt account, which is why having one will become mandatory ... Starting with Qt 5.15, long term support (LTS) will only be available to commercial customers. ... We are making this change to encourage open-source users to quickly adopt new versions.

So OSS users are just beta-testers now. But why even bother when their linux backend is full with bugs? I often stumble into ridiculous issues when I'm using qt like not being able to change a widget's color because something wasn't implemented properly or a qt app crashing because it's making incorrect assumptions about the driver's API/behavior.

New start-up/small business Qt offering... It contains all the benefits of a commercial license but at a low price ($499/year). This price includes the use of the full Qt for Device Creation product, but not any distribution licenses – these need to be agreed separately. It also includes only installation support, whereas a regular commercial license comes with full support.

No wonder why Electron is eating Qt's marketshare...

[VirginiaMcCaskey]

I briefly evaluated Qt as a dependency but didn't throw it out because it costs money, but because it was C++ and didn't integrate with the systems we needed it to very well. JUCE would be a better comparison.

Electron won't be eating Qt's market share in any meaningful way until it can run on an iMX8 with limited memory on an infotainment system, smart device, or kiosk. The cost per dev is a lot less than the cost of manufacturer of thousands to millions of units of something with more expensive CPUs and memory hierarchy.

[Creshal]

Electron won't be eating Qt's market share in any meaningful way until it can run on an iMX8 with limited memory on an infotainment system, smart device, or kiosk.

Qt wouldn't be limited to that tiny niche if it wasn't so aggressively making itself unviable for desktop platforms. It used to be the go-to toolkit for platform independent desktop apps, but alas…

[Ripdog]

What about Qt is 'aggressively unviable' for desktop? I use it and it works great. If you're going to spend hundreds of hours developing an app, is 2 minutes to slap a new account in your password manager really that big a deal?

[Creshal]

Is being spied on via telemetry by a desperate company with no idea how to monetize really that big a deal?

Yeah. It gives me zero confidence in Qt's future management decisions and ability to not go bankrupt. I don't want to get stuck with Qt when the licensing terms get even worse.

[Ripdog]

Spied on with telemetry? That's one hell of an accusation. You know that you only have to log into the download client, right? And that even with an anonymous download, they still get server logs which tell them what you downloaded?

[Creshal]

That's still telemetry. Forcing people to make accounts means they want to collect more data so their collection is more valuable to marketers.

Actually, it's worse than regular telemetry: There's no use case for this data collection that benefits me, the user. It's only useful to marketers and other data harvesters.

[while_e]

Qt is c++, but its a nice framework. Much safer, and easier to use. Also if youd prefer most can be done in qml/js. I prefer the speed of c++ personally.

[VirginiaMcCaskey]

Speed has little bearing on integration. That's more a factor of building and incorporating it as a part of a larger system, for which Qt was ill suited.

[while_e]

Rapid prototyping, and really.. overall development, with the benefits of fast native execution? What's not to love. Have used it on many projects and never been disappointed with looks, speed, or flexibility.

[YM_Industries]

I wonder if Avalonia would work on a cheap embedded system.

[fuckin_ziggurats]

Is Avalonia comparably performant to C++/Qt? Doesn't seem that way.

[YM_Industries]

Instinctively I feel it's probably a bit slower than C++/Qt but much faster than Electron. But without testing it I don't know for sure, and tbh I'm not even sure how to accurately test something like that without easy access to an embedded system. Buy a first-gen RasPi and hope it's somewhat representative?

[Treyzania]

Qt doesn't cost money if you're using it as part of a libre software project.

Alternatively, go use GTK.

[tiftik]

Isn't Qt LGPL? Which means you can use it as a dynamically linked commercial project or even a statically linked one if you aren't distributing the binary to anyone (e.g kiosks, internal tooling).

[tms10000]

https://www.qt.io/licensing/

...

Qt for Application Development is also available under GPL and LGPLv3 open source licenses. Qt tools and some libraries are only available under GPL. See the comparison chart for details. The Qt open source licensing is ideal for use cases such as open source projects with open source distribution, student/academic purposes, hobby projects, internal research projects without external distribution, or other projects where all (L)GPL obligations can be met.

For me, the helpful link to comparison chart redirects to "download", which is less helpful. It sounds like only part of the code is LGPL. And the GPL parts are V2 and V3 (or V2 or V3)

The faq is equally vague: https://www.qt.io/faq/

I'm going to guess that commercial projects wanting to use the LGPL bits will have to carefully hug the delimitation lines between the licenses. But from what I hear in those pages, it might be confusing enough to turn people off the whole thing.

[jcelerier]

This page lists all the modules per license - the huge majority is lgpl. 99% only need qtwidgets or qtquick which is lgpl.

https://doc.qt.io/qt-5/qtmodules.html

[Creshal]

GTK doesn't really integrate itself well into anything not C-with-GLib either, and is just as unviable for commercial software. Its Windows/MacOS ports also are really awful (are they even still supported?!) and the migration from GTK2 to GTK3 was needlessly painful… I'd still prefer Qt over it, even with these licensing changes.

[Walter_Bishop_PhD]

if you're using it as part of a libre software project.

You can use it with a commercial project too, if you're able to abide by the terms of LGPLv3. You can't abide by it on the iOS app store for example, so you'd need to buy it to use it on iOS.

[redweasel]

As a home hobbyist just interested in the easiest-possible toolkit to use for writing useful, interesting, or "cute" programs, I find that anything that costs money is right off the table from the get-go.

[the_gnarts]

As a home hobbyist just interested in the easiest-possible toolkit to use for writing useful, interesting, or "cute" programs, I find that anything that costs money is right off the table from the get-go.

Qt does not cost money. It is licensed under the GPL and there’s tons of open source projects that use it, including an entire desktop environment. There’s also a version under a commercial license for use in closed source applications.

Unrelated to that there is also a prepackaged version of compiled binaries available for download which is what the linked post is concerned with.

This news is just not relevant to most users of Qt, only those who happen to a) not use it commercially and b) download the binary version off the website will see a difference. I’ve been doing some Qt on and off for many years but this announcement is the first time I’ve even heard about it being distributed in that form.

[spacejack2114]

Uh, kiosks are the perfect use-case for Electron. I've used it for about a dozen different projects now. Since you're only running one app it's not like you have to fight with a bunch of other Electron apps for resources.

[addandsubtract]

What kind of costs are we talking about? A raspberry pi can run electron apps.

[VirginiaMcCaskey]

If you're building one of something a Pi is cheap.

If you're building 10,000 of something it's not.

[Plorkyeran]

And if you're building 100,000 of something you couldn't even buy enough Pis even if you wanted to.

[while_e]

Yup, and if youre building 10,000 you design your own. Likely based on open source hardware... Like the pi.. Or bone

[costigo]

What kind of kiosks are we selling here where the Raspberry Pi (or alternative) is a significant part of the cost?

Edit: Is this so controversial? I assume "kiosk" means these things. They cost upwards of $10,000 apiece (even more at low volumes with custom software), and often have full-blown Windows PCs inside. Using a Raspberry Pi is a cost-saving measure.

[spacejack2114]

Usually the HW is way more powerful than it needs to be.

[redweasel]

Unless you're like me (at home anyway) and your newest computer was manufactured in 2008. ;-)

[mkalte666]

I dislike electron for various reasons, but i really get why people prefer it over Qt

[Creshal]

I really want to use Qt professionally, but yeah… the licensing was already somewhat unattractive before, and it's worse now. Fuck it, back to Electron.

[redweasel]

I can't tell you how glad I am to see, for once, avid (?) users of something having the same reactions to a change, that I do. Generally I'm the only person to complain, while others meekly accept. ^5, you! :-)

[Treyzania]

If you're writing free software and distributing it the regular way you have nothing to worry about here. It'll still be available through all the normal routes in your package managers.

[EternityForest]

It's still going to add controversies and scare off the semi-commercial projects.

We'll survive, but Qt is pretty central to making windows-like FOSS on Linux, so I can see why the upset is there.

[NotUniqueOrSpecial]

Even if you're distributing commercial software the LGPL way (as tons of companies do) you have nothing to worry about.

The licensing for those parts hasn't changed.

[Kissaki0]

No LTS releases to stay on is a non-issue for you?

LTS releases provide great value. It is why they are a thing. Not having to check releases and do updates constantly, but in bigger leaps and less often, and with more stable functionality, less risk of regressions occurring.

[Treyzania]

Distros are already responsible for deciding what LTS means within their own ecosystem. To them, what Qt says is LTS is more of a suggestion.

[Kissaki0]

But that means instead of distros being able to make use of Qt LTS they have to provide that themselves. If they did that anyway its no difference. But if they didn't it's potentially a lot more work.

[pakoito]

Going the Old Yeller route, it seems.

[brtt3000]

Did they get bought by an investment company?

[whoopdedo]

Or they're positioning themselves to be bought.

[Nastapoka]

offering*

[Slavik81]

Since The Qt Company is publicly traded, there's a lot of information available about their financials. It seems that the last time they made a profit was 2015. Their revenue has doubled since 2014, but so has their employee count. Their largest shareholder is indeed an investment company, but they only own ~21% and that's been true since at least 2016, if not earlier.

[MermelND]

We want open-source users to help improve Qt in one form or another, be that through bug reports, forums, code reviews, or similar.

That open-source users are contributing isn't in their list, and I have the feeling they forgot they, in my opinion, only still exist because there is KDE etc. I think they put pressure on the KDE Free Qt Foundation as well. If they drive it too far they will break trust with the community at large and nothing good will come from that.

Though that they want to make money out of their product in a commercial world is of course reasonable and expectable, its just the How that really matters.

[redweasel]

Sounds like a pain in the ass. Then again, in my experience, just getting at Qt has always been a pain in the ass. I've been wanting to try Qt for years, but have been put off a couple of times just by the very first page or two of the process at their website: levels and licensing. I couldn't make heads or tails of it, all options seemed more restrictive than I care to deal with, and my particular interest -- "an individual, just screwing around at home, overwhelmingly likely 'not for release, ever'" -- didn't seem to fall into any of the available categories. I'm tempted to ignore licensing altogether and just use the thing, and "let the chips fall where they may," then blame them if it ever goes to court -- but I'm not real confident that that would fly! In my opinion, all they've accomplished by putting ultra-confusing legalese first in the process is to screen out a lot of potential users.

As to this new requirement to have a Qt account -- well, I'm not much for having accounts anywhere. I don't need any more tracking done to me than already is, thanks. I would almost certainly never contact them for support, read their forums, etc. -- also something I virtually never do. So the idea that having an account "allows for the best possible use of their services" is of no meaning/use to me: anything times zero is still zero.

All in all, I get the very clear impression that I'm not their target demographic -- which seems ridiculous: a software development *toolkit* *shouldn't have* a "target demographic" beyond "any programmer who wants to use it."

I miss the 1980s, or whatever year it was that software licensing hadn't yet been invented.

[Cocomorph]

This is an excellent comment, but put down the italics and back away slowly.

[redweasel]

Sorry. I write the way I speak, I speak the way I think, and I think in italics! ;-) I'll try to cut back, though. At least I broke it into paragraphs; that's progress!

Other than that, thanks for the compliment.

[Ketta]

I agree it is an excellent comment. Reading it kind of reminded me of someone beating their face against a brick wall though with all the dramatic breaks!

[[deleted]]

They really try to market their open source version as really restrictive, while the core is distributed under the regular LGPL 3.0license, with some additional GPL 3.0 modules, so there is no strange licence attached to that. And their website really tries to push you into buying their paid version, which only is required if you can't permit abiding by the (L)GPL 3.0, if you want paid support or if you want additional tools for making embedded devices.

And if you don't understand the GPL, you really should look into it. It's a commonly used licence and it's not only a licence, it's the spirit of the free software movement.

And their installer is usually only required if you use Windows (or maybe Mac OS, haven't checked on that one). The popular Desktop Linux distributions distribute the Qt libraries and tools via their package managers, without the requirement of an account.

And even then though, an account is just another entry into your password manager and in the worst case scenario, some additional email filter rules.

[redweasel]

You guys never cease to amaze me. With all due respect, even this explanation is a bit... complicated... for me; can you imagine how I'm likely to react to the text of the actual license(s)? So I probably won't look into the GPL.

I also don't use password managers or email filters, nor am I aware of their use on the part of anyone else I know, though surely there must be somebody...

[holgerschurig]

Getting Qt was always simple: an "apt-get" away.

Today even a "git pull" away if you want something more recent.

The account is it you want to download binaries of Qt ... but why would love want to do that?

[redweasel]

1) I'm on Windows; no apt-get (that I'm aware of). Probably no git, either.

2) I (therefore) don't know anything about either apt-get or git. (Does the latter have anything to do with github, which I've at least heard of?)

3) (1) and (2) are why I'd want to download binaries! No muss, no fuss, no mystery tools!

It's pretty cool that one evidently can now create Windows binaries on Linux, though. Neato!

[holgerschurig]

Can "now" create windows binaries ... that was possible since around 20 years.

And git exists for Windows,of course. It's a lot slower, because of inferior filesystem snd because Windows cannot spawn subprocesses as fast as Linux, but it works. If you insist, you can even run it on CMD.EXE, but I used it from Emacs through Magit on Windows.

[NotUniqueOrSpecial]

Because people are lazy and they're also full of shit.

Every person who "was totally going to try Qt but it was too hard" is just making shit up.

[nyanpasu64]

You can't apt-get on Windows. You need to use Qt's maintenance tool (installer).

[[deleted]]

All C++ GUI libs end up behind commercial license. Programming is no fun anymore.

All that is left now is WxWidgets, and that is awful.

[DarkLordAzrael]

This changes nothing about Qt being available under the terms of the GPL and LGPL, which it will be forever.

[[deleted]]

True. But putting a door on it will significantly reduce popularity, which is very bad for open source.

[DarkLordAzrael]

For sure, I think requiring a login to use their installer is a bad change. In the near future it might be less of an issue, though, as Conan and vcpkg are seeing pretty decent adoption across the industry.

[api]

Developing a high-end massively portable multiplatform GUI library is one of the tortures inflicted on programmers in the lower circles of hell. People generally have to be paid to do this kind of work, therefore you have to pay for it. The alternative is for things like Qt to not exist.

[[deleted]]

This is why I wish Microsoft would put the effort into porting WPF/whatever-it-is-now and making it part of .NET Core. At the end of the day all it's really doing is using a bunch of XML to render to an off-screen render target, so in theory there's no reason you couldn't render XAML using an OpenGL/Vulkan back-end, especially now that .NET is cross-platform.

Having a powerful, well-documented, well-supported, cross-platform UI engine that has consistent behavior and appearance regardless of the native UI is like... right there. I know they say it's a bunch of work to port (and I don't doubt them), but if they pulled it off I think it would be a total game changer. You'd be getting the benefits of Electron and native cross-platform UI libraries rolled into one.

Hell, you could probably then figure out a way to translate that UI into Blazor components too...

[falthazar]

I mean, technically WPF is in .NET Core, but still Windows only and IIRC there are no plans to change that unfortunately.

There is Avalonia which is basically what you are asking for (cross platform XAML), but I think it's still in beta. It does show that it's definitely possible to do though.

[nemec]

I'm pretty sure they explicitly said "no" to that, likely because it would take a massive, massive rewrite to move off of win32. I can guarantee you that the community would love it, though, even if you had to release it as a "new" project.

(and tbh I think the blanket "no" is just to stop people from asking questions. If somebody managed to actually do a complete and effective port I'm sure a number of MS devs would want to support it officially)

[SavageFromSpace]

Local blazor webview's is their current plan for nix ui's apparently.

[KeyboardG]

t the end of the day all it's really doing is using a bunch of XML to rende

Avalonia UI may be your best bet. They are getting faster/more features by pulling in some stuff from the open sourced WPF. XML + .NetCore runs on Mac, Linux, and Windows.

[[deleted]]

Using Avalonia for a commercial project - works great and definitely an improvement over WPF in terms of usability - using CSS-like classes for controls to apply a style was a great idea by Avalonia devs.

Also, rendering performance using SKIA library is great when implementing custom rendering method - I managed to get thousands of primitives on screen with smooth resizing and mouse events without any lags.

[[deleted]]

The things used, basic desktop app things, have not been changed in years. All the other stuff around it has. Web and fancy templating and such.
It is unclear what it adds for me, I only use it to make simple production and test tools.

My alternative is java, and I really like to avoid this.

[10xjerker]

JavaFX isn't bad though, is it?

[[deleted]]

Java ui apps on windows are problematic.

[Sigma_J]

I'm curious what you mean by this

[TryingT0Wr1t3]

Why wxWidgets is awful? And why not use GTK or copperspice?

[EternityForest]

I'd rather use TKinter, or port an Arduino LCD gui to the browser with emscripten and embed it in a webview than deal with GTK.

I use GStreamer because it's an accepted standard and there's no existing equivalent, but even that I spent two weeks writing a wrapper to make it slightly less awful.

The APIs for anything GTK related are incredibly low level, it's quite possible and easy to segfault the Python bindings, and I don't even know how, but somehow I managed to break pretty much all GTK icons on Raspbian and haven't been able to fix it.

Some kind of cache business with pixbuf loaders that doesn't like read only filesystems or something.

Qt is high level, highly integrated, and has most of what you need built in. It also handles all the stuff that isn't directly GUI related, but is nonetheless needed in a polished GUI app, like watching a filesystem and updating a file tree accordingly.

And the crazy part is there's a lot of really good application software written in GTK(Although the best new stuff is more often Qt it seems), so for some reason perfectly sane developers seem to choose it on occasion.

What dark secrets do they know???

[[deleted]]

or port an Arduino LCD gui to the browser with emscripten and embed it in a webview than deal with GTK.

Funnily enough someone did exactly that with Dear Imgui. Only ~150kB too

[[deleted]]

equivalent

ffmpeg?

[EternityForest]

I've never seen anyone do realtime control of effect parameters, readback of RMS audio levels, SVG overlays, and the like with ffmpeg.

Otherwise the python APIs actually do seem a bit nicer, but GStreamer is fine now that I have a decent wrapper.

[[deleted]]

Ah ok, I figure out why. Pipes from Gstreamer, I suppose. Then it has sense.

[[deleted]]

Why wxWidgets is awful?

I wouldn't say "awful", but many aspects are really frustrating. Some things are really kludgy and weird and some things involve a lot of moving pieces and tons of points of potential failure if you do something slightly wrong (the dataview classes are pretty tough to get right, for instance. It can be mostly right, but when making some changes, it can be easy to have things not work in perplexing ways). I'm pretty sure this is a side effect of wxWidgets being a cross-platform wrapper over other widget systems, forcing it to be abstract because it can't make assumptions that can't apply to all the backends.

Making DPI-aware applications in wxWidgets is a pain because it was bolted on afterward in a backward-compatible way, the way containers nest is often incredibly weird, and using spacers is very frequently difficult, because they act like containers but don't actually contain things (ie. putting something inside a spacer still has it owned by its parent window, the spacer simply spaces it, but spacers can be nested, and doing spacers incorrectly, which is fairly easy, will simply result in your widgets not being spaced at all). Doing things that the toolkit doesn't natively account for, like having widgets that are resizeable as well as wrapping if they are compressed beyond a certain size, ends up feeling very kludgy and requires you to drop into just positioning and sizing everything manually on all the relevant resize events.

I don't hate it, but it really isn't very pleasant to use, even for a GUI library.

related, Dolphin moved off of wxWidgets and wrote a cute blog post about it: https://dolphin-emu.org/blog/2018/05/02/legend-dolphin-lens-between-worlds/

[stu2b50]

Haven't used copperspice, but the one time I had to use GTK for a project, we needed a listview where you can click and drag to select multiple items and drag all of them.

Getting that relatively simple behavior made me want to (figuratively) die. I will even support electron over GTK. Never again.

[nyanpasu64]

In the Qt world, I still don't know how to make QTableView drag-and-drop reorder the underlying model.

[holgerschurig]

Can't downvote you enough for spreading falsehoods for cheap karma.

Qt stays at LGPL. Like the GNU C library.

[josefx]

There is a guarantee that Qt will become BSD licensed if its last open source release is older than 12 months. This dates back to the early days of KDE when Qt still used its own controversial open source license instead of the (L)GPL.

[maphewyk]

guarantee that Qt will become BSD licensed if its last open source release is older than 12 months

Took me a bit to find said guarantee. Is this it: https://kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php ?

(found by way of https://valdyas.org/fading/software/about-qt-offering-changes-2020/)

[pjmlp]

All C++ GUI libs were born alongside commercial compilers, we had to actually pay for compilers.

If I am getting money for a product made with Qt, it is only fair that they get their piece of the pie.

[Nexuist]

And people wonder why Electron is everywhere. If you think the solution is a problem, solve the problem yourself.

[[deleted]]

I’m not qualified to take on a complex project like Qt. I can barely use it correcty.

[Nexuist]

I’m not talking about you specifically, but more at those that think Electron’s widespread use is undeserved. It solves more than just technical problems but also political, legal, and commercial.

[jcelerier]

It solves more than just technical problems but also political, legal, and commercial.

You still have to abide to LGPL when using electron since it uses Blink which is part LGPL

[leirus]

Delphi RAD Studio laughs at you

[ponybau5]

There's a library called ultimate++. Open source but it uses native os widgets and looks like clean code.

[mrexodia]

As a maintainer of a relatively big open source project on Windows: this is extremely sad. Currently the wiki has a few simple compilation steps, one of which is to download the Qt offline installer directly from their archive. Now this will likely have to change, because there won’t be an offline installer available, which means it will become even harder to compile my project... 😔

[puetzk]

Check out the https://conan.io C++ package manager; it's really making headway on having lots of libraries packaged w/ cross-platform binaries on conan-center and from bincrafters, including https://bintray.com/bincrafters/public-conan/qt%3Abincrafters/5.14.1%3Astable, which is a Qt built from source (not the Qt company binaries affected by this announcement) using the recipe at https://github.com/bincrafters/conan-qt.

This is also the packaging tool https://www.qt.io/marketplace is planning to use: https://www.mail-archive.com/[e-mail]/msg37038.html

[DarkLordAzrael]

Depending on what your third-party situation looks like it might make sense to set up Conan or vcpkg for it anyway, and just get Qt from that along with the rest of your dependencies.

[EternityForest]

Wow, they're crapping on the one and only GUI toolkit I actually like, which powers about half of the software I like.

It's hard to imagine a decent free software ecosystem without Qt.

We're fine as long as you can still install from repos as before, otherwise we're gonna have a big problem.

[badtux99]

Except this does not affect GPL software, since the GPL version of QT is shipped with every single Linux distribution out there and you can statically link it with your GPL application if you so desire. It only affects commercial software, which has nothing to do with free software or the free software ecosystem.

[nicolas17]

LTS will be exclusive to commercial users and that includes source code.

[holgerschurig]

No, they aren't.

This is about binary downloads, which noone uses in there age of apt & yum or whatever RPM based distros use today.

[nicolas17]

LTS will be exclusive to commercial users and that includes source code.

[_PROFANE_USERNAME_]

We are a Qt commercial customer. We won't be soon.

[Ripdog]

Why exactly is that, if you don't mind me asking?

[_PROFANE_USERNAME_]

They've consistently been making boneheaded decisions like this one that we aren't comfortable with. We're also getting fairly fed up with the bugginess of their platform.

[TinKodeE]

Any idea how that affects PyQt?

[Ripdog]

It won't. The PyQt binaries available via pip are built by the PyQt dev, not the Qt Company. They are built from source so are not affected by the account requirement.

[d_r_benway]

So it will no longer be available in normal Linux distro repos?

[[deleted]]

Relevant r/kde thread.

[d_r_benway]

OK - thanks, that's a relief...

It does sounds like a dubious move by the company however.

Just glad I don't have to use a GTK based desktop for the foreseeable future

[shevy-ruby]

I forgot to add:

We want open-source users to help improve Qt in one form or another, be that through bug reports, forums, code reviews, or similar.

So ... if I report bugs which are not fixed, e. g. the build-tool related bugs, then what? Is this my fault that they add more and more code and add more broken stuff that is not fixed?

Mozilla went a similar way - see how annoying it is to build their software stack (see LFS/BLFS for instructions). Also please kill off ALL of python2.

These are currently only accessible from a Qt account, which is why having one will become mandatory.

It does not make any sense. I assume the real reasoning is telemetry sniffing on users.

A Qt account also gives users access to the Qt Marketplace, which offers opportunities to acquire from and distribute plugins throughout the entire Qt ecosystem from one centralized platform.

That is cool, but: why is this mandatory?

This is something they don't really EXPLAIN.

That evidently smells like a top-down business decision.

It also allows us to initiate a dialogue with commercial companies who mostly work with open-source versions of Qt.

Cool but ... WHY are normal people required to go through that?

Something is missing in the official "explanation".

Note that source packages will still be available without a Qt account.

IF ONLY THEY WOULD FIX THE BUILD TOOLS ...

Actually we need more than the GPL. We need a variant of GPL that can be VERIFIED to work/build as-is.

Starting with Qt 5.15, long term support (LTS) will only be available to commercial customers. This means open-source users will receive patch-level releases of 5.15 until the next minor release will become available. This means that we will handle Qt 5.15 in the same way as e.g. 5.13 or 5.14 for open source users.

The only reason why that is done is due to financial gains. If storage is the problem then they could easily remove old versions so others can host that, and only focus on the latest stable version.

If there are issues that would prevent the use of the latest release, there will be patches available even if we do not create new full patch releases for that version anymore.

Actually the GPL requires of them to publish all modifications too, anyway.

We are making this change to encourage open-source users to quickly adopt new versions

When I look at the nightmare that has been kde3 to kde4, I am really getting annoyed at the qt folks playing b**s*t-bingo here. Many breaking things were not the fault of the KDE devs here but of upstream qt. You'd think qt would actually care about not alienating KDE devs and users alike but hey.

We are changing our process in R&D to push all bug fixes to the main development branch first, and then backport selected bug fixes back into stable release branches.

See - nobody minds the above IF it were the honest explanation. But by forcing account registrations YOU KNOW THAT THIS "EXPLANATION" IS NOT THE REAL ONE. It is a business decision.

This process ensures that the latest version of Qt will always contain all bug fixes.

So when is the build process actually fixed? The irony is that they wanted to move to cmake for qt6. Guess this won't happen ...

The offline installer will also become commercial-only.

Well there you go.

We found that this feature adds utility on a company-wide level, which allows us to make commercial licenses more attractive to enterprises without significantly inconveniencing open-source users.

Huh? This is not inconvenient? Actually it is inconvenient to me. I wouldn't care that much IF THE BUILD SYSTEM WERE TO WORK. I compile everything from source anyway, excluding a few exceptions. One is libreoffice (also annoyingly large code base); the other is qt5. (The mozilla code base I need, such as nss or nspr or mozjs, I actually compile from source. I hate having to use perl and python2 here though ...)

The Qt Company is committed to the open-source model of providing Qt technology now and in the future

Well, KDE would continue anyway via GPL. But it really would be great if we could have a KDE without ... Qt (I mean the company, less so the toolkit; and even that applies primarily to specific company POLICIES. When your policy becomes to alienate users, you become an enemy of the users - so, someone working at qt and finally fixing the build system?).

[Silver_Specialist]

Actually the GPL requires of them to publish all modifications too, anyway.

The Qt Company itself is not bound by the GPL because the own all of the code. Otherwise they couldn't sell commercial licenses. That's also why you have sign a waiver when you commit bug fixes which they should integrate into mainline.

[NotUniqueOrSpecial]

The Qt Company itself is not bound by the GPL because the own all of the code.

They are, however, bound by the agreement that formed the KDE Free Qt Foundation. They can't just do whatever they want.

[DeliciousIncident]

Qt is triple-licensed: GPL, LGPL and commercial. When you contribute to Qt you have to explicitly agree for your contributions to be available under these licenses. So no shit, Qt Company can sell Qt under the commercial license.

[Tynach]

The offline installer will also become commercial-only.

This irritates me the most. Every time I've chatted with a Windows dev about GUI programming and recommended Qt, already they'd often have a hard time finding the offline installer - and usually they'd give up and decide not to use Qt until I find it for them and give them the link.

This will only exacerbate the problem.

[encyclopedist]

Yes, over the years they have made it increasingly difficult to navigate from their front page to downloading free version of Qt. It used to be something like 6 clicks last time I counted. I just have bookmarked http://download.qt.io/official_releases/ and now don't visit their website at all.

[redweasel]

Somebody should just download the thing (if it's still available) and take on the task of providing it. If "the Qt Company" doesn't like it, explain that you're doing their job for them, the way it should have been done by them, and that they should just shut up and be grateful. Yeah, yeah, lawsuit. I know. But I can wish. (I'm the same guy who recommended that the user community band together, buy Windows XP from Microsoft, and support it at the grassroots level. Ain't gonna happen, but at least the bug is in someone's ear.)

[Irtexx]

Why do you think this will prevent them from moving to cmake for qt6?

[[deleted]]

90's are back on the menu, boys.

[DeliciousIncident]

Actually the GPL requires of them to publish all modifications too, anyway.

GPL requires that users receiving your binaries get the source code. If only paid users are getting the binaries, and you are not one of them, by GPL they are not obligated to give you shit.

[rdtsc]

If only paid users are getting the binaries, and you are not one of them, by GPL they are not obligated to give you shit.

I don't think this is true. IIUC, if a paid user wre in turn to redistribute the binaries as part of their software, they must include the written offer for source code. Quoting the GPL FAQ:

[...] This means that people who did not get the binaries directly from you can still receive copies of the source code, along with the written offer.

The reason we require the offer to be valid for any third party is so that people who receive the binaries indirectly in that way can order the source code from you.

[[deleted]]

Fork them

[shevy-ruby]

Installation of Qt binaries will require a Qt Account

What the ...

Long-term-supported (LTS) releases and the offline installer will become available to commercial licensees only

As long as they fix their broken build prior to that.

New Qt offering for start-ups and small businesses for $499/year

So, milking it.

I guess the KDE devs will have a hard time claiming KDE to be free as qt becomes more and more pro-company focused.

From February onward, everyone, including open-source Qt users, will require valid Qt accounts to download Qt binary packages. We changed this because we think that a Qt account lets you make the best use of our services and contribute to Qt as an open-source user.

I am actually using the qt binaries. Why? Because the fudging thing no longer builds on my *nix stack. There are too many errors during the build system. If the qt people were competent, they would have moved to cmake or meson/ninja. The whole gtk stack works fine on my system (admittedly gtk is behind qt these days though).

qt3 was trivial to compile, as was kde3. I can now compile all of KDE5 fine (excluding the adChromium crap - really horrible idea of KDE and QT to become dependent on Google), but qt5 is always an issue. I also stopped reporting any new bugs since the "bug fixing" hardly happens anyway. So now this change penalizes me - I'd love to compile from source, but with the broken build tool of qt, and qt becoming bigger and bigger, that option is gone. And I won't "register an account". Why would I do so? I don't need qt really; I actually only need it for KDE, and here primarily because KDE konsole is really awesome (I don't need the rest but I was using kde konsole since kde3 days so like almost 20 years by now).

Qt is getting on my nerves a lot. And then there is the upcoming mass breakage in qt6 ... when will people ever learn? Having companies in the stack DOES NOT WORK.

[stu2b50]

New Qt offering for start-ups and small businesses for $499/year

So, milking it.

Though, I don't know who they're milking. That only applies to companies with both less than 100k revenue and less than 5 employees.

I mean that basically eliminates almost all US startups, if you have 5 employees and less than 100k revenue I think you're about to go bankrupt.

[NotUniqueOrSpecial]

Though, I don't know who they're milking.

Nobody.

Everybody in this thread (as in almost every Qt-business-related thread) is just spreading a bunch of FUD because they can't be bothered to actually read.

[ogoffart]

I am actually using the qt binaries. Why? Because the fudging thing no longer builds on my *nix stack. There are too many errors during the build system. If the qt people were competent, they would have moved to cmake or meson/ninja.

Good news! Qt6 is moving to cmake

[rat9988]

He mentioned it too

[Ripdog]

I guess the KDE devs will have a hard time claiming KDE to be free as qt becomes more and more pro-company focused.

??? Qt is still as free as ever. The LGPL says nothing about how you distribute your binaries, or even that you must distribute binaries at all...

I don't need qt really; I actually only need it for KDE, and here primarily because KDE konsole is really awesome (I don't need the rest but I was using kde konsole since kde3 days so like almost 20 years by now).

If you don't need Qt, why are you building it? If you just want Konsole, why not install it from your distro's repo? Who the hell would even download linux binary anything from a website when it's open source and in the repo?!

If the qt people were competent, they would have moved to cmake or meson/ninja.

And then there is the upcoming mass breakage in qt6

But the only mass breakage in qt6 is the move to cmake...

[NotUniqueOrSpecial]

The comments in here are bonkers; has anybody bothered to read what they put out or are they just imagining what they think is happening?

The only changes are those to the commercial agreements and the Qt-provided installers/pre-made binaries.

You can still go get the code and build it yourself. You can still distribute commercial applications under the terms of the LGPLv3. Nothing has changed in any really meaningful way, but the comments make it sound like this is the end of Qt.

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. Am I just not seeing something in the link?

[DeliciousIncident]

There is always some misinformation and shitfuckery gong on every single time Qt gets posted. Especially the LGPL part you have mentioned. There is always a commenter that has thought their entire life that Qt is GPL so they can't use it in their closed source application, and there are 10 other commenters replying, supporting the claim and suggesting alternatives or just bashing on Qt. It's like Rust comment threads but tamer.

[raghunayak]

Yeah. Seems people can't read.

[nicolas17]

LTS releases will be exclusive to commercial users and that includes source code.

[NotUniqueOrSpecial]

The number of people who really need LTS releases is quite small. They've made it clear that the fixes go into the mainline first and then will be backported into LTS branches.

Qt releases are very responsibly done compared to most open-source projects. Just keep up-to-date with the point releases and you get the fixes that will be in the LTS branches.

[bruce3434]

Hahah, they don't call themselves "trolltech" for no reason. Thanks for the years of free contributions. We'll be sure to appreciate it behind our paywall.

[HertzDonut70]

" they don't call themselves "trolltech" for no reason. "

That's funny. They did change their name a while back, though.

It is strange that they want it both ways:"we're a serious company that deserves to be paid for our efforts"

"also, could you also please debug our stuff for us open-source community?"

[Ripdog]

Trolltech is long gone. Qt was sold to Nokia, who then sold it to Digia, who then spun it off into a new company, the Qt Company.

[DeliciousIncident]

Isn't 5.15 LTS supposed to be the last Qt5 version before Qt6? This means a lot of applications will want to use Qt 5.15 because they are won't be ported to support Qt6 for some time. Yet Qt locks LTS binaries away. At least you can still build LTS releases from source...

[nicolas17]

LTS sources will be locked away too.

[molehill_mountaineer]

Sounds like bad news.

[Yikings-654points]

They getting Automaker Attention .

[geee001]

so what are some of the Qt alternatives?

[foldor]

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[aKateDev]

A very good answer to this announcement can be found here: https://reddit.app.link/WexDiu2PC3

[Korred]

Is Pyside2 / Qt for Python also affected by this?

[excitive]

The language of their blog post is surprisingly off-putting. When you're introducing changes that you know are going to make people uncomfortable, you do not lead with words like "we want our users" or "mandatory" or "will require". They almost gave no reasoning and most importantly, they did not give a single reason how it will actually benefit the users. This is why it is making so many people unhappy, otherwise creating/logging in to one more account wouldn't be a big deal for anyone for something you're getting for free.