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That's exactly the reason why free software should never rely on the benevolence of a for-profit company - or at least not only on their benevolence, and not fo

That's exactly the reason why free software should never rely on the benevolence of a for-profit company - or at least not only on their benevolence, and not for too long - because that risks creating a single point-of-failure. That's exactly the reason why I have favoured GTK-based environments over KDE, even though I acknowledge that the API provided by Qt is probably the best I've happened to work with. GTK is owned by the community, and I know that as long as there's a passionate developer out there working on it the project is alive. When it comes to a product owned by Trolltech/Nokia/Qt Company...well, I can't be that sure. The history of computing is already full of examples of open source projects that either died or have undergone complex forks and transition periods because the company behind them decided to pull the plug, or go for a different business model, or they went from being community-owned to being business-owned. As open source software is more and more commoditised, and unlike its counterparts it's expected to just build and run anywhere, without all the business fluff and hysteria around, we can't afford to let that happen. However, purely community-owned open source software succumbs to the tragedy of commons on the long run - but that's a comment for another post.

CiPHPerCoder 7y ago
This doesn't hurt open source users at all, though. Only for-profit companies tend to actually need LTS releases. People don't.
- gmueckl 7y ago
  The lack of an offline installer (i.e. a standalone installer that can be archived) is a bigger issue in my opinion.
- Rochus 7y ago
  This looks like a rather general remark to me, not specifically related to Qt. I don't think your argument is valid for Qt. Or do you have any representative evidence? Do you actually use Qt in your own projects at all?
- jdboyd 7y ago
  Only mentioned in passing, but I think the lack of offline installer will hurt open source users.
  - ognarb 7y ago
    Open Source users get their Qt version from a Linux package manager.
akvadrako 7y ago
You might be right in general, but this isn't a good example. Even if the Qt company was a non-profit owned by the community they might have decided on the same course of action.
Rochus 7y ago
But why is this an issue? The source code is available under GPL and LGPL regardless what the company does. If they would decide to no longer open source their fixes or new releases the community has still the source of the last release and can continue to maintain and develop it. There are several large open source projects which are driven by a large community; so even if the Qt Company would no longer maintain Qt (today about 50% of the commits seem to come from the community already) then others would I'm sure. Currently I mostly see an issue in the fact that an open source developer contributing to the Qt repository run by the Qt Company signs (by action of checkin) a contributor agreement which lets the Qt company use the contributions of the developer commercially and file a law suite based on code provided by the open source developer. If there was a Qt fork independently managed by the Qt Company (e.g. on Github) people could contribute without this issue.
simion314 7y ago
This is FUD, KDE has full rights to fork Qt.
- Rochus 7y ago
  Not only KDE. Qt is available under LGPL and GPL, so everyone has that right.
  - simion314 7y ago
    KDE is prepared for such a case and has an agreement that is stronger then GPL https://kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php https://kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php
    - Rochus 7y ago
      I'm aware of the agreement. But even without this agreement anyone can make a fork and publish his/her own version of Qt under GPL and LGPL.
bluGill 7y ago
GTK environments (IE gnome) owe at least as much to corporations, perhaps more so. In theory GTK is community owned, but in practice it is big companies calling the shots.

CiPHPerCoder 7y ago

This doesn't hurt open source users at all, though. Only for-profit companies tend to actually need LTS releases. People don't.

gmueckl 7y ago
The lack of an offline installer (i.e. a standalone installer that can be archived) is a bigger issue in my opinion.
Rochus 7y ago
This looks like a rather general remark to me, not specifically related to Qt. I don't think your argument is valid for Qt. Or do you have any representative evidence? Do you actually use Qt in your own projects at all?
jdboyd 7y ago
Only mentioned in passing, but I think the lack of offline installer will hurt open source users.
- ognarb 7y ago
  Open Source users get their Qt version from a Linux package manager.

akvadrako 7y ago

You might be right in general, but this isn't a good example. Even if the Qt company was a non-profit owned by the community they might have decided on the same course of action.

Rochus 7y ago

But why is this an issue? The source code is available under GPL and LGPL regardless what the company does. If they would decide to no longer open source their fixes or new releases the community has still the source of the last release and can continue to maintain and develop it. There are several large open source projects which are driven by a large community; so even if the Qt Company would no longer maintain Qt (today about 50% of the commits seem to come from the community already) then others would I'm sure. Currently I mostly see an issue in the fact that an open source developer contributing to the Qt repository run by the Qt Company signs (by action of checkin) a contributor agreement which lets the Qt company use the contributions of the developer commercially and file a law suite based on code provided by the open source developer. If there was a Qt fork independently managed by the Qt Company (e.g. on Github) people could contribute without this issue.

simion314 7y ago

This is FUD, KDE has full rights to fork Qt.

Rochus 7y ago
Not only KDE. Qt is available under LGPL and GPL, so everyone has that right.
- simion314 7y ago
  KDE is prepared for such a case and has an agreement that is stronger then GPL https://kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php https://kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php
  - Rochus 7y ago
    I'm aware of the agreement. But even without this agreement anyone can make a fork and publish his/her own version of Qt under GPL and LGPL.

bluGill 7y ago

GTK environments (IE gnome) owe at least as much to corporations, perhaps more so. In theory GTK is community owned, but in practice it is big companies calling the shots.