Qt changes the licensing model for LTS releases

QT

On the Qt blog, the responsible vice president Petteri Holländer announces that the long-term support edition of Qt it is only included in business licenses. The same applies to the offline installer.

Qt Company has announced a change in its licensing model for the Qt framework, which could have a significant impact on communities and distributions who use Qt. As as of version 5.15, QTS LTS branches will be supported until the formation of the next significant version, that is, about half a year (updates for LTS versions are released for three years).

According to Petteri Holländer:

“The changes take effect with version 5.15 LTS. In addition, the installation of the binary files will require a Qt account in the future and this new change must be applied no later than February "

With the user account, QtGroup, which belongs to the Digia company, wants to ensure that users use the services offered through it.

In addition, according to Holländer, open source users in particular should with this change to improve the product QtEither through bug reports, code reviews, or forum posts. At the same time, the Qt account also opens the way to the Qt Marketplace, where plugins are exchanged, among other things.

This step is supposed to speed up the introduction of new versions of QT and it will greatly increase the number of companies using a commercial Qt license, the cost of which is $ 5508 per year per developer (while for startups and small businesses - $ 499 per year).

Changes for LTS version affect the open source community as when applying this change, they only get a patch level release until the next minor version appears.

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

We want open source users to help improve Qt in one way or another, be it through bug reports, forums, code reviews, or the like. Currently, they can only be accessed from a Qt account, so having one will be mandatory.

While on the other hand the developers of LTS distributions (ie with long periods of support) such as RHEL, Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, SUSE among others.

They will be forced to send outdated versions officially not supported, port bug and vulnerability fixes on your own or constantly update to new significant versions of Qt, which is unlikely as it can lead to unforeseen problems in Qt applications delivered in the distribution.

Perhaps the community will jointly organize support for their own Qt LTS versions, independently of Qt Company.

Partially adjusting the licensing policy mitigates the fact that Qt Company has promised to carry out all fixes through the public repository on which Qt is developed.

The patches will be added to the development branch and transferred to the branches with the latest versions stable, which will simplify their extraction to transfer to distributions.

In addition, the LTS versions to which Qt Company will carry the corrections will be limited.

Unfortunately, policy changes regarding Qt they are not limited to changing the license and from February, Anyone who wants to use QT must register an account in the service from Qt Account to download the Qt binary files.

This step is explained by the desire to simplify file distribution and ensure integration with Qt Marketplace.

Access to Jira's bug tracking system, review interface, and forums will also require a Qt account, while the development and project management model remains the same.


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  1.   Autopilot said

    As I read I was wondering what all this would translate into, since Debian and others ship with KDE not LTS to which patches are being applied. I don't quite understand how Qt is going to be polished through an account other than to monetize the development framework. I need to read again and see how the community reacts. It doesn't sound like good news. Between systemd and Qt there are more and more points to move to BSD. : /

    And what will sister projects like LXQt think ...

    1.    David naranjo said

      I see it from the perspective of contributing to the community, although the fact that now an independent developer almost necessarily has to pay for a license, does not go there.
      Well, now forcing distribution developers to contribute to the development of QT is something that had to be done for a long time. Well, at the end of the day they are using a job for which several people have to disburse funds to keep it afloat.
      And this part is not bad, because it is a contribution to maintain what you use and what also helps to finance your project. Since large distributions such as Debía, Ubuntu, Fedora, OpenSUSE, Linux Mint, among others. Receive funds either by donations or by including products that finance them.
      And if these distributions contribute with donations to these projects it is a point and apart, that they should deal with each other, because they will practically say “Ok, I am not going to pay a position for the development of your product, but we are going to send you donations to change it ”.
      Such is the case with WebOS, its new development frameworks for the automotive among others.
      So far so good, but as I said at the beginning affecting independent developers ...
      They should definitely change that focus and redirect it in a direction where everyone has a win-win.

  2.   Light creator said

    KDE will have to go to GTK !!! ? Which would be better, actually.

  3.   Rasa said

    «» While on the other hand the developers of LTS distributions (that is to say with long periods of support) such as RHEL, Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, SUSE among others.

    They will be forced to submit officially unsupported outdated versions, port bug and vulnerability fixes on their own, or constantly update to significant new versions of Qt, which is unlikely as it can lead to unforeseen issues in Qt applications delivered in the distribution. . »»

    There is a full stop there.