QT license change

[PeterT]

Will this affect calibre? https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/0...usiness_model/

[kovidgoyal]

No, I dont use Qt binaries. The version of Qt shipped with calibre is compiled from source, by me.

[DiapDealer]

Even the Qt supplied by Linux repos is compiled from source. I'm curious who this change actually WILL affect? Which developers relying on Qt wouldn't have the resources to build their own (LTS or otherwise)? It can be a pain in the neck (and time consuming) on Windows, but once you're set up for it (for free I might add), you're good to go.

Besides Qt LTS is a joke anyway. The LTS versions are just as bug-ridden as the others, so who will this incentivize to pay for it (or give back more)?

[kovidgoyal]

I'd assume there are a fair number of commercial ISVs that dont bother with building from source and bundle the Qt dlls direct from upstream. Just a guess though.

[KevinH]

And from reading their announcement, they have not said if they will or will not make the source and all later bug fixes to the LTS releases available. They could in fact keep those behind their own corporate servers and let the qt github site just include the original release of the LTS branch for the public to use.

Their release statement seemed to create more questions than answers. From reading this, it sounds like we will need to basically be like ARCH and keep upgrading just to get a few bug fixes.

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 fact is right now, Qt LTS 5.12.6 (6 releases of fixes in place) is still very very broken on many levels and does not get the attention it needs while they (Qt) steamroll ahead with new versions that are just as broken just in new ways. Without some actual attempts to get critical fixes in place, why would anyone want to pay for access to a LTS release.

My guess is they will try to control access to Qt 5.15 LTS source release in some way. But, that is just a guess.

[kovidgoyal]

I'm guessing what that means is that there will no longer be bug fixes backported to the source of LTS releases, just binaries released under commercial licenses. Source code users will just have to use non LTS releases.