14 ms·

Heads up for anyone on a commercial license (this does not affect the LGPL-Version): Qt6 does not offer a perpetual license anymore, you need to switch to a sub

• chrisseaton 6y ago
  > you need to have a subscription for as long as you distribute your software with Qt6 under the commercial license! Seems reasonable? As long as you're getting benefit from Qt by distributing software using it you need to keep paying for it?
  • academia_hack 6y ago
    If I buy a frying pan and open up a restaurant with it I don't have to keep paying the frying pan company so long as I use my pan to create meals. Subscriptions for software libraries and components weird me out much more than subscriptions for services and end-products (with recurring costs for the service providers) do.
    • chrisseaton 6y ago
      A frying pan is owned property. Software is copyright literature under licence.
      • FpUser 6y ago
        Let the authors enjoy reading their own creation. I'll pass.
      • academia_hack 6y ago
        Fair point. I'm personally not convinced that distinction is intrinsically meaningful rather than just legally and commercially convenient - especially in the case of libraries or programming languages. Qt is valueless as literature absent independent creative art that uses it to build a program - like screws in a piece of furniture. Charging people to use the component is fine by me, but making their own creative work contingent on third party approval that can be modified or revoked at any time seems unreasonable/immoral even if it's permitted by law.
      • CyberDildonics 6y ago
        You are conflating the IP of a company with the product people buy.
    • mjburgess 6y ago
      Subscriptions are much safer pricing models. You want apps, software etc. to be sold by subscription. Why? Most businesses are not MS/etc. which have resilient multiple income streams. Many single-app companies either go under, or stop selling that app and so no longer update or support it. A subscription model ensures that the developer always has a reliable app-specific income stream to justify investment & support.
      • ReactiveJelly 6y ago
        > You want apps, software etc. to be sold by subscription. I want options. Don't tell me what I want.
        • mjburgess 6y ago
          There's a difference between "telling you what you want", and the sense here. In this case it just means, "it's in your interest"; as in, "you want to see this!". In any case, "options" sounds good, but it is precisely this short-term economic logic I am claiming many misperceive as being in their interest. There are many instances of apps (, libraries, etc.) simply disappearing and being frozen in old versions because of no revenue stream against them. You may "want" something quite different 2yr after you've invested a massive amount in using Qt, only for there to be no future versions and your app becomes uncompetitive with others which are using increasingly modern libraries.
          • krelian 6y ago
            It's not in my interest if it costs me more and makes future planning more difficult. The software subscription business is essentially a huge price hike masked by paying in installments. >simply disappearing and being frozen in old versions because of no revenue stream against them. It means that the new features in version X were not good enough to entice new buys or upgrades. Subscription model is great - for the software companies. It's not a good model for consumers. The current subscription model will end up being just like Fifa or Madden games, the same thing every year with minor changes because consumers are locked-in and have no alternative.
    • eggy 6y ago
      But does that frying pan evolve new features or fixes while you have it and use it in your restaurant? Do you make requests to the manufacturer to make the handle bigger/smaller on the frying pan you own and use? Aren't there recurring costs in providing incremental updates to the software or support. Analogy sometimes seem perfect until you actually dissect them.
      • academia_hack 6y ago
        I feel like this is trivially resolved by selling a subscription to those additional services (e.g. for product updates or support agreements). I'm just imagining a scenario where I build something with a subscription library and then 5 years down the line they get acquired by some private equity firm and increase the subscription cost by a factor of ten. Now I'm faced with a choice of either paying license ransom or losing the ability to use all of my own original software and creative effort.
        • flarg 6y ago
          Your approach doesn't allow the vendor to reach the critical mass required to keep a product updated and evolving. I for one appreciate products that evolve and improve.
          • toyg 6y ago
            Something like Qt or Photoshop does not need to “reach critical mass” - they actually did already do that while using a simpler licensing model. Which proves the “everything is SaaS” model is not necessary, but rather another way to extract more money from customers.
            • chrisseaton 6y ago
              > rather another way to extract more money from customers This is just cynical!
            • chipotle_coyote 6y ago
    • dontspeak 6y ago
      Subscriptions are a perpetual source of revenue. They take your money for as long you use your product. There is nothing wrong with that.
      • stjohnswarts 6y ago
        Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's not a hug turnoff to potential customers. I'll pass and stick with other alternatives. I'd be happy to pay a large sum for the traditional "buy it, get free updates for a while, pay again for new updates after x months" but this "we own your software and you will pay forever", no thanks.
    • tomc1985 6y ago
      As it should. Our industry seems to have normalized rent-seeking as status quo
  • FpUser 6y ago
    >"Seems reasonable?" Maybe to you. To me it reads like: do not ever touch this tool to do anything that has even remote chance to go commercial.
    • toyg 6y ago
      Ironically, it’s easier if you don’t pay Qt and just use it as LGPL: ship it unmodified, distribuite Qt sources unmodified on request, and go your merry way.
      • FpUser 6y ago
        This is theoretical for me. I am small company and have no time/desire/money for lawyers to decipher all those intricacies of LGPL (also they say that some stuff there is GPL). I prefer to pay reasonable one time fee for permanent license and upgrade when I feel it is needed.
  • detaro 6y ago
    The problem is that you have no idea what they'll think is a reasonable license fee in 3 years (and that's not theoretical, Qt does change their mind on terms and fees regularly when there's another random sales target to meet). With the previous model, you only have that issue when you want to update, and know you can always ship what you currently have to your customers in the future at known cost.
    • Forge36 6y ago
      I wonder if "cost lock-in" for 6.0 would make sense in this case? 7.0 is a new version with a new price? (or 6.1?) This allows price increases with major changes. "Free support for life" isn't sustainable, and striking the balance here is hard.
      • macjohnmcc 6y ago
        Change for support. If I am happy with the version I have and don't need support I gain nothing in a subscription model based licensing.
        • Nullabillity 6y ago
          If they had anything valuable with actual recurring costs then they wouldn't be this desperate to force you into their subscription model.
      • tomc1985 6y ago
        > "Free support for life" isn't sustainable, and striking the balance here is hard. Image-Line (makers of FLStudio) have been pulling it off for a couple of decades now... "Celebrating Lifetime Free Updates for over 20 years" -- right on their front page
  • deng 6y ago
    > Seems reasonable? As long as you're getting benefit from Qt by distributing software using it you need to keep paying for it? Development, distribution and usage are different things. I don't have much of a problem with selling a subscription for the development environment, but for distribution and usage you should only need a (perpetual) runtime license, which you usually buy in bulk. AFAIK that's how QNX does it, for instance.
  • j1elo 6y ago
    When I worked with Qt we built a product on top of Qt 4.8.4. Not 4.8.3, not 4.8.5. This was due to some very technical details, and the product was standalone and offline so updating wasn't a concern. Why would we have to pay multiple times for the exact same piece of software, lines of code? Also given that software is by default sold with defects (as it is "impossible" to write perfect software), it makes sense that the selling price includes, at least, future minor patches. I would consider them as the vendor covering for its own manufacturing defects (because that's what bugs are). I agree however with charging for new features. That's fine and makes sense.
  • ksec 6y ago
    >Seems reasonable? Yes. I dont quite understand what's the fuss here. So someone please explain to me like I am five. QT 6 decide to charge money, in this case a commercial license for commercial usage. i.e If your software is making some money using QT6, you will have to pay. Otherwise you can happy use the LGPL License. Seems fair. You might disagree with its pricing, depending on your business model, And may be that business model would not be a good match / fit for using QT6. But so far all the comments seems to be against the company charging anything. Why?
    • vesinisa 6y ago
      > If your software is making some money using QT6, you will have to pay. Otherwise you can happy use the LGPL License Nope, you can make a commercial closed-source application that links against LGPL-licensed library. Also, the source code model has nothing to do with "making money". For example, Qt is certainly "making money" with their source code, but did you know that the WebView component in Qt is actually COPIED from Apple's Safari WebKit source code? Yes! So they are STEALING Apple LGPL source code and making money with it! And what more, Apple Safari certainly runs on iPhones and Apple if someone is certainly making some big $$$! You seem to have misunderstood what changed. No, Qt did not change the licensing terms to charge for "making money" with Qt. They just made more of their previously free support functions exclusive to paying licensees.
      • djsumdog 6y ago
        > Nope, you can make a commercial closed-source application that links against LGPL-licensed library. So in this case, you'd have to package the software so it doesn't include Qt (in an RPM/deb) so it pulls in the system Qt? Or on Windows, provide them a link so they can download that component manually?
        • cxr 6y ago
          Almost every comment in this thread against the subscription licensing model is addressing a legitimate issue. This comment is not—it's misinformation/FUD. That's not how the LGPL works. The cavalier attitude of people who just utterly make up bullshit, like what's in the comment above, is something that we should have a lot less tolerance for.
  • izacus 6y ago
    > Seems reasonable? As long as you're getting benefit from Qt by distributing software using it you need to keep paying for it? No, the reasonable model (as someone how's shipped commercial libraries and researched the market) is that subscription gates support and future updates. So as long as the subscription is active you get updates, patches and support. Once it passes you're kept on old version. It's fair to the seller (keeps a steady revenue stream and most customers will want to keep the subscription for updates anyway) and fair to the customer (they can't be easily extorted with price hikes and their software doesn't get sabotaged by external subscription pricing).
    • HelloNurse 6y ago
      The reasonable model is that the Qt company cannot be allowed to mess with the software their customers have developed and released, by requiring unexpectedly high fees or just terminating the license. Why expect good faith and dependability with the precedent of their decision to screw KDE?
  • stjohnswarts 6y ago
    These perpetual licenses are capitalism run amok. No one has an issue with subscriptions these days, but you should be able still compile and distribute your software without paying them into perpetuity if you're not worried about their latest and greatest. I'm just waiting for them to end LGPL in the next few years and why I don't use it any more. I use wxwidgets. Which I don't like as much but it gets the job done and I'm not doing anything fancy.
• CommieDetector 6y ago
  We phased out QT after hostile licensing e-mails.
  • andi999 6y ago
    Care to elaborate?
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• xbar 6y ago
  This. I shake my head every time Qt shows up in HN as an upvoted thread. Its licensing model is so antithetical to smart planning I find it unusable for any project. I gave up ongoing fees for software components I use to develop with Borland Turbo C++. I am not going back now.
  • stagger87 6y ago
    Any reason you can't use the LGPL license?
    • xbar 6y ago
      A fair question. My interpretation is that I could switch to LGPL Qt for client software and keep my source code if I dynamically link to Qt. I may be too strident as a commercial developer in my anti-LGPL 3 rhetoric, but my cloud-apps have been avoiding it assiduously. Client side, I should look for this kind of flexibility.
      • npteljes 6y ago
        Even the GPL should not be a problem for you in the cloud, since you're not distributing the software, just provide a network interface to it. And the LGPL is even more forgiving. This web service use case is the reason for the AGPL, which does prescribe that even web services should open their code, should they use AGPL dependencies.
  • _iyig 6y ago
    What are some good alternatives for native, cross-platform GUI applications? Qt used to be my preferred solution.
    • zelly 6y ago
      There is no alternative. No one other than Qt will expend the massive amount of effort to maintain such a thing. Everyone sees the writing on the wall with the new ARM Macs if it wasn't already apparent. Desktop applications are on their last leg. You will just write a mobile app and that will be backwards compatible with desktop automatically.
• dekerta 6y ago
  I don't see a problem with a subscription model for development, but requiring a perpetual license as long as you distribute your Qt-reliant software is insane in my mind. The software is built. It's not getting any benefit from future Qt improvements or bug fixes. It's amazing how many people in this thread are not only defending this, but talking about how great this licensing model is. I'm guessing all these people have startups (or ideas for startups) that rely on gouging customers with never-ending subscription models. I personally think subscription licensing models is the worst thing to happen to the software industry. I miss being able to purchase and own copies of software. I recently stopped using any Adobe apps and moved my entire workflow over to the Affinity suite. I prefer to support developers who don't rip-off their consumers
  • joezydeco 6y ago
    but requiring a perpetual license as long as you distribute your Qt-reliant software is insane in my mind I'm an embedded Qt licensee. I don't get any of this at all and now I need to spend hours I don't have with my legal team understanding what the impact is. I suppose we're staying on 5.15 for the lifetime of the product I haven't even launched yet. I mean, it's a given every time Qt pops up on HN a good 50% of the thread is sucked up with licensing questions and information/misinformation. Getting kind of tired of it all.
    • sgerenser 6y ago
      I don't think this is necessarily new with Qt 6.0. The details and pricing may have changed, but as far as I know, the commercial Qt Embedded product has always required a distribution license. This means you have to pay a royalty fee for each product that you sell that uses Qt. This is on top of the license you pay per developer to develop the software. If development is "done" but you are still distributing the product, presumably you would have had to pay the distribution license but could let the development license lapse. Has this changed with Qt 6?
      • joezydeco 6y ago
        I don't know yet, I'm putting in a call to my account rep. What I do recall is that if you let the development license lapse, you're locked into whatever version was latest at the time. So I can't upgrade Qt on any in-field device updates which is usually just fine, especially if you managed to get to a decent LTS version, but any Qt bugfixes after that are off limits.
• bzb6 6y ago
  Qt has been changing hands a lot. I assume it’s a money black hole at this point. The future is Electron. I don’t like it either but this is the nail in the coffin of Qt.
  • stef-13013 6y ago
    You're right, Electron app. are ok... If there is only one in RAM ! On my 8 GB computer, I used to run in the same time : - VsCode (700 MB) - Teams (600 MB), - PostMan (350 MB !? WTF) - WhatsApp (consumes almost 600 MB after 1 hour !) I had to switch to the web version for the last 3... In contrast, running 25 torrents with qBitTorrent: ~25 mb.
    • whereistimbo 6y ago
      You could run WhatsApp on a browser instead of having another seperate chromium instance.
      • stef-13013 6y ago
        Yes, that's what I've done... (and not only it) It is just to illustrate the fact that Electron, after all, might be a real problem for native app.
    • Iwan-Zotow 6y ago
      Hate to tell you, but 16Gb is a pretty much minimum now. Running with 32 and looking for 64Gb laptop
      • anthk 6y ago
        2GB laptop here, I can run several qt5 applications, with Electron I would bring to its knees with just three.
        • Fnoord 6y ago
          Ripcord instead of Discord and Slack.