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All the Qt Company has accomplished here is to put another nail in the fast, native cross-platform and desktop software coffin, hinder Qt 6 adoption, and push

by nly 6y ago

All the Qt Company has accomplished here is to put another nail in the fast, native cross-platform and desktop software coffin, hinder Qt 6 adoption, and push more developers to Electron. The FOSS world will take Qt 5.15.2 as the last official version and maintain distro compatibility patches. The last Qt 4 release, Qt 4.8.7 released in May 2015, is still available in Arch AUR with 32 distro revisions and a dozen community patches. They're playing with fire gambling that the FOSS community ultimately won't fix bugs in Qt 5 faster than they do (once they switch all their energies to Qt 6)

dagmx 6y ago
This seems overly dramatic. The concept of LTS was relatively new. Qt users have gone ages without LTS. Nothing here prevents you from using older Qt versions where needed. You're not being stopped from using newer Qt versions, just that LT support is now gated behind commercial licensing. Can you expound on exactly what about this is so inflammatory to you?
- nly 6y ago
  The LTS aspect is all marketing misdirection. All Qt 5 versions are now LTS, including the latest. This means FOSS releases from the Qt Company are effectively subject to a 1 year delay, and as such they are now being as hostile to the FOSS as they can be under their legal commitments. Whatever they say, I wouldn't bank on any further public updates to Qt 5.12 or 5.9 either.
  - CarVac 6y ago
    What do you mean subject to a 1 year delay? Qt 6 is available right now.
    - nly 6y ago
      Qt 6 is less than half the size of Qt 5 in terms of modules/size. I'd also consider it alpha quality software at this point. I don't see KDE adopting it Qt 6 anytime soon given the tone. Qt have already approached KDE to try and renegotiate their agreement. It's likely that 6.1 will see 6.0 become LTS, and we will never see a FOSS stable branch again. For hobbiest developers, small enterprises, FOSS developers and LTS desktops this is pretty disastrous
      - dagmx 6y ago
        Please provide sources for your claims. This is starting to verge in to the realm of conspiracy without them. Edit: yes I know Qt 6 is only a partial release. I'm asking the poster to provide sources for their claims so they're not being editorialized to seem sinister.
        ldiracdelta 6y ago
        Not a consipiracy. There are many modules that haven't been ported to Qt 6, but are planned to be ported by 6.2: https://www.qt.io/blog/add-on-support-in-qt-6.0-and-beyond https://www.qt.io/blog/add-on-support-in-qt-6.0-and-beyond https://wiki.qt.io/Checklist_for_Qt_6.0_inclusion https://wiki.qt.io/Checklist_for_Qt_6.0_inclusion Personally, I can't migrate to Qt 6 because it lacks the location module.
        dagmx 6y ago
        That's fair. However, I guess I'm trying to get the poster to provide sources in general for all his claims in this thread. There's a big difference between: - modules not ported yet - modules ported and being held behind a commercial license where they weren't before. One is more nefarious than the other, but by omitting context, the initial poster is alluding to the more sinister option based on the dramatic context of their posts.
        nly 6y ago
        Basically nothing prevents them from declaring 6.2 LTS on day 0, only releasing sources for most modules to commercial customers and only under the LGPL up to a year later (under the KDE agreement)
        CarVac 6y ago
        That's not in their favor, though. The point of moving open-source off of LTS is to move open source onto the bleeding edge to provide testing, not to just withhold 6.2 entirely. > 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.
  - Rochus 6y ago
    > All Qt 5 versions are now LTS, including the latest. Source?
    - nly 6y ago
      Qt 5.15 will be the last Qt 5 release. It's also LTS, ergo all further patches eleases from Qt Company are for LTS branches... They have to make these changes public under their agreement with the KDE foundation after no longer than 1 year. If it wasn't for that agreement Qt 5 would be abandonware from a FOSS perspective, much like Qt 4
      - Rochus 6y ago
        > It's also LTS, ergo all further patches eleases from Qt Company are for LTS branches Time will show. Don't forget that there are many community contributors. As far as I've understood the LTS branch is closed for community contributions which makes sense since it would not be desireable to wait one year until these contributions would be accessible to other FOSS users; but this only applies to the LTS branch; the other branches are not affected. > Qt 5 would be abandonware from a FOSS perspective, much like Qt 4 Well, I still have many active projects using Qt 4.4, 4.8 and 5.4; didn't see any added value in upgrading. Maybe people using QML can profit of more recent versions, but I'm using the C++ API only with work mostly done by Trolltech and Nokia.
  - dagmx 6y ago
    Can you provide sources for your claims? Per Qt [1] the only major difference is that open source users only get patch updates for a specific version till the next minor update is out. Only commercial users keep getting patch updates to older minor versions. No where can I find mention of a year delay. [1] https://www.qt.io/blog/qt-offering-changes-2020 https://www.qt.io/blog/qt-offering-changes-2020
    - detaro 6y ago
      The problem is that at the start of a major release cycle (Qt 6) the new one is not very viable, but means the old one (5.15.x) isn't the latest anymore. So anyone who can't use 6 but relies on the open-source version now isn't getting patches. Qt company would like to pretend that is forever (and thus doesn't mention it), but actually the community contract (which exists to prevent Qt company from ever keeping parts of core Qt closed) forces them to release the patches after one year, because withholding any patches to core Qt for more than a year triggers a safeguard clause in that contract that forces relicensing of Qt. FWIW, your tone does not feel appropriate, especially when you suggest "conspiracy theories".
PragmaticPulp 6y ago
> and push more developers to Electron Qt has huge market share in embedded apps, where Electron is a non-starter. I'd love to see more open-source alternatives to Qt in the embedded systems GUI space, but it's going to be a long time before anything reaches similar levels of maturity and optimization.
- modo_mario 6y ago
  How does GTK fare in the embedded space?
  - scythe 6y ago
    Bad enough to spur corporate investment in EFL
    - varajelle 6y ago
      So bad: https://what.thedailywtf.com/topic/15001/enlightened https://what.thedailywtf.com/topic/15001/enlightened
pjmlp 6y ago
The FOSS world deserves whatever they get when not willing to pay for developer tools. I went back to Microsoft/Apple platform, because that is where paying customers live.
Pet_Ant 6y ago
Aren't you fine if you stay on the latest release? LTS releases are good for industrial or commercial applications were you need to rock solid stability... and should be paying to support development. For end users latest release should be fine. The way I see it you either pay for the library through money or by constantly moving forward with your APIs and doing updates to work with the latest version. If you are anchored to an old version and not paying, you are deadweight. While I'm not clear on the details of Qt's plan, but in the JDK space it makes perfect sense where you have a large contingent of vocal non-contributing that holds back large libraries for updating which slows the evolution of the platform.
- chaz6 6y ago
  The only way to stay on Qt 5.x (as Qt 6.x is not yet ready for production use since the ABI is not stable and many modules like QtWebEngine are missing) would be to fork it, since they will no longer accept patches from the community. Either that, or get every Qt distributer (e.g. Debian, OpenSUSE, Manjaro, etc) to accept your patch.
- jcelerier 6y ago
  > LTS releases are good for industrial or commercial applications were you need to rock solid stability... from what I could see corporations just buy LTS contracts to be able to ask for bugfixes if the need arises - I've seen products where Qt 5.12.2/3 was used even when the latest was 5.12.8
- nly 6y ago
  Most users want stability. If I shipped an app with Qt 5.12 dlls I would to bump to 5.15 and force potential bugs on users in a minor release. Qt's track record on user facing bugs just isn't good enough
pier25 6y ago
> and push more developers to Electron Or Flutter, if cross-platform desktop becomes first class compared to mobile. There's also Haxe. The language is great (inspired by AS3) but last time I tried it there were too many moving pieces (eg: OpenFL depending on Lime and both moving at different pacing). That was some years ago though. Anyone is using it for desktop gui?
Shorel 6y ago
I don't know. I have always preferred wxWidgets. People's aversion to well designed C style macros is just overreacting IMO.

by nly 6y ago

dagmx 6y ago

This seems overly dramatic. The concept of LTS was relatively new. Qt users have gone ages without LTS. Nothing here prevents you from using older Qt versions where needed. You're not being stopped from using newer Qt versions, just that LT support is now gated behind commercial licensing. Can you expound on exactly what about this is so inflammatory to you?

nly 6y ago
The LTS aspect is all marketing misdirection. All Qt 5 versions are now LTS, including the latest. This means FOSS releases from the Qt Company are effectively subject to a 1 year delay, and as such they are now being as hostile to the FOSS as they can be under their legal commitments. Whatever they say, I wouldn't bank on any further public updates to Qt 5.12 or 5.9 either.
- CarVac 6y ago
  What do you mean subject to a 1 year delay? Qt 6 is available right now.
  - nly 6y ago
    Qt 6 is less than half the size of Qt 5 in terms of modules/size. I'd also consider it alpha quality software at this point. I don't see KDE adopting it Qt 6 anytime soon given the tone. Qt have already approached KDE to try and renegotiate their agreement. It's likely that 6.1 will see 6.0 become LTS, and we will never see a FOSS stable branch again. For hobbiest developers, small enterprises, FOSS developers and LTS desktops this is pretty disastrous
    - dagmx 6y ago
      Please provide sources for your claims. This is starting to verge in to the realm of conspiracy without them. Edit: yes I know Qt 6 is only a partial release. I'm asking the poster to provide sources for their claims so they're not being editorialized to seem sinister.
      - ldiracdelta 6y ago
        Not a consipiracy. There are many modules that haven't been ported to Qt 6, but are planned to be ported by 6.2: https://www.qt.io/blog/add-on-support-in-qt-6.0-and-beyond https://www.qt.io/blog/add-on-support-in-qt-6.0-and-beyond https://wiki.qt.io/Checklist_for_Qt_6.0_inclusion https://wiki.qt.io/Checklist_for_Qt_6.0_inclusion Personally, I can't migrate to Qt 6 because it lacks the location module.
        dagmx 6y ago
        That's fair. However, I guess I'm trying to get the poster to provide sources in general for all his claims in this thread. There's a big difference between: - modules not ported yet - modules ported and being held behind a commercial license where they weren't before. One is more nefarious than the other, but by omitting context, the initial poster is alluding to the more sinister option based on the dramatic context of their posts.
        nly 6y ago
        Basically nothing prevents them from declaring 6.2 LTS on day 0, only releasing sources for most modules to commercial customers and only under the LGPL up to a year later (under the KDE agreement)
        CarVac 6y ago
        That's not in their favor, though. The point of moving open-source off of LTS is to move open source onto the bleeding edge to provide testing, not to just withhold 6.2 entirely. > 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.
- Rochus 6y ago
  > All Qt 5 versions are now LTS, including the latest. Source?
  - nly 6y ago
    Qt 5.15 will be the last Qt 5 release. It's also LTS, ergo all further patches eleases from Qt Company are for LTS branches... They have to make these changes public under their agreement with the KDE foundation after no longer than 1 year. If it wasn't for that agreement Qt 5 would be abandonware from a FOSS perspective, much like Qt 4
    - Rochus 6y ago
      > It's also LTS, ergo all further patches eleases from Qt Company are for LTS branches Time will show. Don't forget that there are many community contributors. As far as I've understood the LTS branch is closed for community contributions which makes sense since it would not be desireable to wait one year until these contributions would be accessible to other FOSS users; but this only applies to the LTS branch; the other branches are not affected. > Qt 5 would be abandonware from a FOSS perspective, much like Qt 4 Well, I still have many active projects using Qt 4.4, 4.8 and 5.4; didn't see any added value in upgrading. Maybe people using QML can profit of more recent versions, but I'm using the C++ API only with work mostly done by Trolltech and Nokia.
- dagmx 6y ago
  Can you provide sources for your claims? Per Qt [1] the only major difference is that open source users only get patch updates for a specific version till the next minor update is out. Only commercial users keep getting patch updates to older minor versions. No where can I find mention of a year delay. [1] https://www.qt.io/blog/qt-offering-changes-2020 https://www.qt.io/blog/qt-offering-changes-2020
  - detaro 6y ago
    The problem is that at the start of a major release cycle (Qt 6) the new one is not very viable, but means the old one (5.15.x) isn't the latest anymore. So anyone who can't use 6 but relies on the open-source version now isn't getting patches. Qt company would like to pretend that is forever (and thus doesn't mention it), but actually the community contract (which exists to prevent Qt company from ever keeping parts of core Qt closed) forces them to release the patches after one year, because withholding any patches to core Qt for more than a year triggers a safeguard clause in that contract that forces relicensing of Qt. FWIW, your tone does not feel appropriate, especially when you suggest "conspiracy theories".

PragmaticPulp 6y ago

> and push more developers to Electron Qt has huge market share in embedded apps, where Electron is a non-starter. I'd love to see more open-source alternatives to Qt in the embedded systems GUI space, but it's going to be a long time before anything reaches similar levels of maturity and optimization.

modo_mario 6y ago
How does GTK fare in the embedded space?
- scythe 6y ago
  Bad enough to spur corporate investment in EFL
  - varajelle 6y ago
    So bad: https://what.thedailywtf.com/topic/15001/enlightened https://what.thedailywtf.com/topic/15001/enlightened

pjmlp 6y ago

The FOSS world deserves whatever they get when not willing to pay for developer tools. I went back to Microsoft/Apple platform, because that is where paying customers live.

Pet_Ant 6y ago

Aren't you fine if you stay on the latest release? LTS releases are good for industrial or commercial applications were you need to rock solid stability... and should be paying to support development. For end users latest release should be fine. The way I see it you either pay for the library through money or by constantly moving forward with your APIs and doing updates to work with the latest version. If you are anchored to an old version and not paying, you are deadweight. While I'm not clear on the details of Qt's plan, but in the JDK space it makes perfect sense where you have a large contingent of vocal non-contributing that holds back large libraries for updating which slows the evolution of the platform.

chaz6 6y ago
The only way to stay on Qt 5.x (as Qt 6.x is not yet ready for production use since the ABI is not stable and many modules like QtWebEngine are missing) would be to fork it, since they will no longer accept patches from the community. Either that, or get every Qt distributer (e.g. Debian, OpenSUSE, Manjaro, etc) to accept your patch.
jcelerier 6y ago
> LTS releases are good for industrial or commercial applications were you need to rock solid stability... from what I could see corporations just buy LTS contracts to be able to ask for bugfixes if the need arises - I've seen products where Qt 5.12.2/3 was used even when the latest was 5.12.8
nly 6y ago
Most users want stability. If I shipped an app with Qt 5.12 dlls I would to bump to 5.15 and force potential bugs on users in a minor release. Qt's track record on user facing bugs just isn't good enough

pier25 6y ago

> and push more developers to Electron Or Flutter, if cross-platform desktop becomes first class compared to mobile. There's also Haxe. The language is great (inspired by AS3) but last time I tried it there were too many moving pieces (eg: OpenFL depending on Lime and both moving at different pacing). That was some years ago though. Anyone is using it for desktop gui?

Shorel 6y ago

I don't know. I have always preferred wxWidgets. People's aversion to well designed C style macros is just overreacting IMO.