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> Push the proprietary version hard enough and I'll reconsider whether I even want to use the Open Source version Qt is pushing hard for commercial licensing (

> Push the proprietary version hard enough and I'll reconsider whether I even want to use the Open Source version Qt is pushing hard for commercial licensing (which I heard prevents you from using the open-source version), putting L/GPL FUD on their websites, and trying to track users of their installers more.

JoshTriplett 6y ago
The model of "copyleft if your project is open, pay us if your project isn't open" is one where I have no problems or concerns, and will happily use the open version and recommend that people building something proprietary purchase a paid license. Nor will I typically worry about the motives or future of the project unless I have some other reason to. And the KDE Free Qt Foundation means I never have to worry about Qt going proprietary.
- account42 6y ago
  Qt is more and more trying to get away with restricting the open source version as much as they can without triggering KDE's escape rights.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  Does anyone know a good license for that? Maybe the Prosperity license? EDIT: I've just realized that I want a revenue-limited trial, rather than a time-limited one. I basically want the Prosperity license, but with the ability to say "you have to pay me if your company makes more than $100k in annual revenue". Is there a license like that? I've emailed the License Zero people, hopefully they'll do something for that.
  - pnutjam 6y ago
    Well, once I paid the fees to license our logo from subcompany A, and the rent on all my servers to subcompany B; we didn't make any money.
    - StavrosK 6y ago
      Yes, this is an example of a company I wouldn't want to charge for my software, at least until you're into six figure revenues.
      - nitrogen 6y ago
        Not sure but I think maybe they were mixing up profit vs. revenue and pointing out how a company can ensure it has zero profit. But I guess you'd also have to be careful about which entity or sub-entities are covered by a license and the revenue limits.
        StavrosK 6y ago
        Ah, I see, by "subcompany" they meant their own subsidiaries. Yes, that's why I said "revenue" in the original post, thank you for the clarification.
  - tlb 6y ago
    Unreal engine charges a 5% royalty on sales after the first $1M in revenue. And source is all on github, so it's basically zero friction until you get big. https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/faq https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/faq
  - RabbitmqGuy 6y ago
    Also have a look at polyform licenses https://polyformproject.org/licenses/ https://polyformproject.org/licenses/
    - StavrosK 6y ago
      Ahh, yes! I think I want a cross between the Prosperity and the Small Business license.
  - JoshTriplett 6y ago
    > Does anyone know a good license for that? The "that" in question was "copyleft if your project is open, pay us if your project isn't open". For that, try the AGPL or GPL, depending on your use case and customers, and then sell alternate licenses for people who don't want to make their own code open. > Maybe the Prosperity license? That isn't an open source license, despite its efforts to be ambiguous on that front. That and the even worse "commons clause" are exactly the kind of license that motivated the latter half of my original comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24005833 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24005833
    - StavrosK 6y ago
      The Prosperity license seems like a better fit to me, as the GPL/AGPL has a different set of constraints (e.g. customers who want to keep their code closed). What's wrong with a license that's non-OSI "open" but gets developers paid from large companies to develop otherwise open software?
      - JoshTriplett 6y ago
        The comment you originally responded to said: > The model of "copyleft if your project is open, pay us if your project isn't open" is one where I have no problems or concerns, and will happily use the open version and recommend that people building something proprietary purchase a paid license. Nor will I typically worry about the motives or future of the project unless I have some other reason to. And the KDE Free Qt Foundation means I never have to worry about Qt going proprietary.' Software under a proprietary license is something I can't build other Open Source software atop of that I expect other developers to use and collaborate on. I don't want to have a forked ecosystem of proprietary-with-source-available software, I want to actually collaborate on Open Source software. With Open Source, I'd feel confident that if we had to manage it ourselves, or fork it and add a patch, or get a third-party to develop a patch, or work with a dozen others with the same needs we have and collaborate on it, we can do so. It's reasonable to build an ecosystem or community or company around. You cannot replicate that with any non-open license; by the time you're done granting all the necessary rights, what you'd have is a non-standard-but-Open-Source license, at which point you'll get more traction if you use an existing well-established Open Source license. I don't really care about encouraging the development of more proprietary software, whether or not it happens to have source available. There are already well-established models for getting people to pay for proprietary software. If someone is looking for a funding model for Open Source, and what they find is "turn it proprietary and generate FUD that it's as good as open", that's a failure. And when people are looking for Open Source and they find proprietary-with-source-available, it undermines decades of careful work and explanations by the FOSS community, and generates substantial confusion. It's your software, and ultimately your choice how to license it. Various companies have tried the "source-available but still proprietary" model. Just please don't call it open or contribute to the FUD around proprietary-with-source-available licensing. Speaking from experience, when encountering software under a proprietary-but-source-available license that tries to act like it's open, the response from companies that actually deal in Open Source is not "Ah, OK, let's pay them and use it", it's "yikes, get this away from us, how did this even end up in consideration, let's either use something Open Source or use something actually proprietary, not something by someone who is either confused about the difference or hopes other people will be". (The set of engineers and lawyers who deal with software licensing professionally, at various companies, tend to talk about it with each other.)
speedgoose 6y ago
And nowadays, most people use Electron instead of Qt.
- jgalt212 6y ago
  which is deeply unfortunate due to how resource hungry Electron is.
- tonyarkles 6y ago
  I’ve been using Qt/C++ for a few months here and I’m really really impressed. It’s really nicely done, and the performance is fantastic. Honestly, I’d have probably considered Electron, but the software runs in a somewhat resource constrained environment and has pretty significant soft real-time processing requirements (the C++ part)

JoshTriplett 6y ago

The model of "copyleft if your project is open, pay us if your project isn't open" is one where I have no problems or concerns, and will happily use the open version and recommend that people building something proprietary purchase a paid license. Nor will I typically worry about the motives or future of the project unless I have some other reason to. And the KDE Free Qt Foundation means I never have to worry about Qt going proprietary.

account42 6y ago
Qt is more and more trying to get away with restricting the open source version as much as they can without triggering KDE's escape rights.
StavrosK 6y ago
Does anyone know a good license for that? Maybe the Prosperity license? EDIT: I've just realized that I want a revenue-limited trial, rather than a time-limited one. I basically want the Prosperity license, but with the ability to say "you have to pay me if your company makes more than $100k in annual revenue". Is there a license like that? I've emailed the License Zero people, hopefully they'll do something for that.
- pnutjam 6y ago
  Well, once I paid the fees to license our logo from subcompany A, and the rent on all my servers to subcompany B; we didn't make any money.
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    Yes, this is an example of a company I wouldn't want to charge for my software, at least until you're into six figure revenues.
    - nitrogen 6y ago
      Not sure but I think maybe they were mixing up profit vs. revenue and pointing out how a company can ensure it has zero profit. But I guess you'd also have to be careful about which entity or sub-entities are covered by a license and the revenue limits.
      - StavrosK 6y ago
        Ah, I see, by "subcompany" they meant their own subsidiaries. Yes, that's why I said "revenue" in the original post, thank you for the clarification.
- tlb 6y ago
  Unreal engine charges a 5% royalty on sales after the first $1M in revenue. And source is all on github, so it's basically zero friction until you get big. https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/faq https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/faq
- RabbitmqGuy 6y ago
  Also have a look at polyform licenses https://polyformproject.org/licenses/ https://polyformproject.org/licenses/
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    Ahh, yes! I think I want a cross between the Prosperity and the Small Business license.
- JoshTriplett 6y ago
  > Does anyone know a good license for that? The "that" in question was "copyleft if your project is open, pay us if your project isn't open". For that, try the AGPL or GPL, depending on your use case and customers, and then sell alternate licenses for people who don't want to make their own code open. > Maybe the Prosperity license? That isn't an open source license, despite its efforts to be ambiguous on that front. That and the even worse "commons clause" are exactly the kind of license that motivated the latter half of my original comment at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24005833 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24005833
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    The Prosperity license seems like a better fit to me, as the GPL/AGPL has a different set of constraints (e.g. customers who want to keep their code closed). What's wrong with a license that's non-OSI "open" but gets developers paid from large companies to develop otherwise open software?
    - JoshTriplett 6y ago
      The comment you originally responded to said: > The model of "copyleft if your project is open, pay us if your project isn't open" is one where I have no problems or concerns, and will happily use the open version and recommend that people building something proprietary purchase a paid license. Nor will I typically worry about the motives or future of the project unless I have some other reason to. And the KDE Free Qt Foundation means I never have to worry about Qt going proprietary.' Software under a proprietary license is something I can't build other Open Source software atop of that I expect other developers to use and collaborate on. I don't want to have a forked ecosystem of proprietary-with-source-available software, I want to actually collaborate on Open Source software. With Open Source, I'd feel confident that if we had to manage it ourselves, or fork it and add a patch, or get a third-party to develop a patch, or work with a dozen others with the same needs we have and collaborate on it, we can do so. It's reasonable to build an ecosystem or community or company around. You cannot replicate that with any non-open license; by the time you're done granting all the necessary rights, what you'd have is a non-standard-but-Open-Source license, at which point you'll get more traction if you use an existing well-established Open Source license. I don't really care about encouraging the development of more proprietary software, whether or not it happens to have source available. There are already well-established models for getting people to pay for proprietary software. If someone is looking for a funding model for Open Source, and what they find is "turn it proprietary and generate FUD that it's as good as open", that's a failure. And when people are looking for Open Source and they find proprietary-with-source-available, it undermines decades of careful work and explanations by the FOSS community, and generates substantial confusion. It's your software, and ultimately your choice how to license it. Various companies have tried the "source-available but still proprietary" model. Just please don't call it open or contribute to the FUD around proprietary-with-source-available licensing. Speaking from experience, when encountering software under a proprietary-but-source-available license that tries to act like it's open, the response from companies that actually deal in Open Source is not "Ah, OK, let's pay them and use it", it's "yikes, get this away from us, how did this even end up in consideration, let's either use something Open Source or use something actually proprietary, not something by someone who is either confused about the difference or hopes other people will be". (The set of engineers and lawyers who deal with software licensing professionally, at various companies, tend to talk about it with each other.)

speedgoose 6y ago

And nowadays, most people use Electron instead of Qt.

jgalt212 6y ago
which is deeply unfortunate due to how resource hungry Electron is.
tonyarkles 6y ago
I’ve been using Qt/C++ for a few months here and I’m really really impressed. It’s really nicely done, and the performance is fantastic. Honestly, I’d have probably considered Electron, but the software runs in a somewhat resource constrained environment and has pretty significant soft real-time processing requirements (the C++ part)