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I read the linked email and now I'm even more confused about TFA. Linked email from KDE: > But last week, the company suddenly informed both the KDE e.V. boar

by oefrha 7y ago

I read the linked email and now I'm even more confused about TFA. Linked email from KDE: > But last week, the company suddenly informed both the KDE e.V. board and the KDE Free QT Foundation that the economic outlook caused by the Corona virus puts more pressure on them to increase short-term revenue. As a result, they are thinking about restricting ALL Qt releases to paid license holders for the first 12 months. They are aware that this would mean the end of contributions via Open Governance in practice. TFA (the entirety): > There have been discussions on various internet forums about the future of Qt open source in the last two days. The contents do not reflect the views or plans of The Qt Company. > The Qt Company is proud to be committed to its customers, open source, and the Qt governance model. So, are they claiming that they never planned to "restrict ALL Qt releases to paid license holders for the first 12 months", or are they saying this plan still counts as "committed to open source"?

AsyncAwait 7y ago
They're not saying anything definitive. It's just a move to try and avoid bad PR.
MaxBarraclough 7y ago
Would it even increase their short-term revenue? Users who use the FOSS licence will just wait for the next release, won't they? Unless it's urgent that they use the latest Qt, why would they pay up?
- oefrha 7y ago
  Beats me, I'm certainly not dying to upgrade to Qt6. Now, it will be a nuisance if they withhold security patches for a year, though, so maybe that's what they're counting on? Holding security patches ransom?
justinclift 7y ago
>> The Qt Company is proud to be committed to its customers, open source, and the Qt governance model. Bull. From January (eg ~2.5 months ago) they've stopped people being able to download the Open Source Windows, macOS, and Linux versions of Qt without first signing up for a "Qt Account". eg you're now required to be tracked / able to be spammed / (etc) for even the OSS version of Qt. That's not how companies "committed to Open Source" do things. :( The crap they're reported as wanting to do now, is right in line with their demonstrated anti-OSS direction.
- de_watcher 7y ago
  That's FUD. It's in virtually every Linux distribution as binary and source. You don't need a "Qt Account".
  - justinclift 7y ago
    It's not FUD. Grab the official Qt installer, and try downloading anything: http://download.qt.io/official_releases/online_installers/ http://download.qt.io/official_releases/online_installers/ It will not work unless you sign in with a Qt Account.
    - jcelerier 7y ago
      They can only do that for the packages they build themselves, which are mainly useful to enterprise customers. Qt being under LGPL, there is nothing that prevents anyone else from redistributing open-source builds of Qt - Debian / Ubuntu through apt, MSYS2 (pacman -S mingw-w64-qt5-whatever), homebrew (brew install qt), conan (conan install qt/5.14.0@bincrafters/stable), vcpkg (vcpkg install qt5)...
      - justinclift 7y ago
        Sure. But 99% of people use those packages. Not sure why you say they're only useful for enterprise customers, as they're literally the reference packages. :) On Linux/BSD though, obviously most people use the in-built package managers where the Qt version is recent enough for their purposes.
    - de_watcher 7y ago
      I took qt-unified-linux-x86-2.0.5-2-online.run, launched, pressed "Skip" when it was asking for the account, and it's downloading. Have you tried it? Does it ask after the download?
      - justinclift 7y ago
        That's weird. That launcher version you have is version 2.0.5-2. They retired the 2.x series a while back, and it's up to version 3.2.x now which will not work without a Qt account. :( Oh it looks like you obtained that launcher from the old "archives" directory? http://download.qt.io/archive/online_installers/2.0/ http://download.qt.io/archive/online_installers/2.0/ It's unfortunate that only has an old Linux installer. Saw it yesterday, but needed an OSX downloader and was out of luck. :(

by oefrha 7y ago

AsyncAwait 7y ago

They're not saying anything definitive. It's just a move to try and avoid bad PR.

MaxBarraclough 7y ago

Would it even increase their short-term revenue? Users who use the FOSS licence will just wait for the next release, won't they? Unless it's urgent that they use the latest Qt, why would they pay up?

oefrha 7y ago
Beats me, I'm certainly not dying to upgrade to Qt6. Now, it will be a nuisance if they withhold security patches for a year, though, so maybe that's what they're counting on? Holding security patches ransom?

justinclift 7y ago

>> The Qt Company is proud to be committed to its customers, open source, and the Qt governance model. Bull. From January (eg ~2.5 months ago) they've stopped people being able to download the Open Source Windows, macOS, and Linux versions of Qt without first signing up for a "Qt Account". eg you're now required to be tracked / able to be spammed / (etc) for even the OSS version of Qt. That's not how companies "committed to Open Source" do things. :( The crap they're reported as wanting to do now, is right in line with their demonstrated anti-OSS direction.

de_watcher 7y ago
That's FUD. It's in virtually every Linux distribution as binary and source. You don't need a "Qt Account".
- justinclift 7y ago
  It's not FUD. Grab the official Qt installer, and try downloading anything: http://download.qt.io/official_releases/online_installers/ http://download.qt.io/official_releases/online_installers/ It will not work unless you sign in with a Qt Account.
  - jcelerier 7y ago
    They can only do that for the packages they build themselves, which are mainly useful to enterprise customers. Qt being under LGPL, there is nothing that prevents anyone else from redistributing open-source builds of Qt - Debian / Ubuntu through apt, MSYS2 (pacman -S mingw-w64-qt5-whatever), homebrew (brew install qt), conan (conan install qt/5.14.0@bincrafters/stable), vcpkg (vcpkg install qt5)...
    - justinclift 7y ago
      Sure. But 99% of people use those packages. Not sure why you say they're only useful for enterprise customers, as they're literally the reference packages. :) On Linux/BSD though, obviously most people use the in-built package managers where the Qt version is recent enough for their purposes.
  - de_watcher 7y ago
    I took qt-unified-linux-x86-2.0.5-2-online.run, launched, pressed "Skip" when it was asking for the account, and it's downloading. Have you tried it? Does it ask after the download?
    - justinclift 7y ago
      That's weird. That launcher version you have is version 2.0.5-2. They retired the 2.x series a while back, and it's up to version 3.2.x now which will not work without a Qt account. :( Oh it looks like you obtained that launcher from the old "archives" directory? http://download.qt.io/archive/online_installers/2.0/ http://download.qt.io/archive/online_installers/2.0/ It's unfortunate that only has an old Linux installer. Saw it yesterday, but needed an OSX downloader and was out of luck. :(