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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

by 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.
        nly 6y ago
        Why should I alpha test their bleeding edge versions if any issues I report result in a patch that I myself, and others like me, can't access for at least 12 months? I'd be better off reporting a bug on GitHub to some FOSS fork, because at least when it's fixed I can benefit from it immediately. Likewise any contributions I made would be welcome (Qt Company are now closing patch contributions) They're already doing the work of cherry picking and testing LTS. They're saving themselves a git merge and a git push because they falsely believe this will drive further sales. Maybe it will, but they're still throwing the FOSS community using Qt 5 under the bus. It would have been better to go back to GPL, and had just had timely FOSS releases, since a small business license for the library is only $500/year.
    - detaro 6y ago
      It's literally in the official release planning and announcements that many modules are not part of the initial release.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
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".

by nly 6y ago

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.
        nly 6y ago
        Why should I alpha test their bleeding edge versions if any issues I report result in a patch that I myself, and others like me, can't access for at least 12 months? I'd be better off reporting a bug on GitHub to some FOSS fork, because at least when it's fixed I can benefit from it immediately. Likewise any contributions I made would be welcome (Qt Company are now closing patch contributions) They're already doing the work of cherry picking and testing LTS. They're saving themselves a git merge and a git push because they falsely believe this will drive further sales. Maybe it will, but they're still throwing the FOSS community using Qt 5 under the bus. It would have been better to go back to GPL, and had just had timely FOSS releases, since a small business license for the library is only $500/year.
  - detaro 6y ago
    It's literally in the official release planning and announcements that many modules are not part of the initial release.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

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".