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QT has retreated to what is the absolute minimum it has legally to do. They can't pull away any more. QT and KDE have legally binding agreement. >All softwar

QT has retreated to what is the absolute minimum it has legally to do. They can't pull away any more. QT and KDE have legally binding agreement. >All software changes in Qt will still be available at as Open Source as required by our contract – maybe with a delay of 12 months if the company decides to part ways with the communities. It's hassle to maintain LPGL version with 12 month lag for sure.

apitman 4y ago
I'm more concerned about the show of intent than the specific actions up to this point. What if they decide to put all the docs behind a paywall? And if they can't because of licensing reasons, what if they just stop paying people to update the docs and make a new version of the docs without licensing restrictions? There are a lot of ways this can get worse. Licensing protection isn't a silver bullet. If the organization becomes hostile, it only guarantees you the ability to fork. While that's huge, it's of limited utility if the project is too big to fork. See Chromium. I think Qt may be too big to fork.
- gmueckl 4y ago
  The Qt Company itself isn't bound by licenses on the code/documentation, but by a separate contract with the KDE Free Qt Foundation [1]. This document is publicly available and treats the documentation pretty much equal to the code itself. Qt is effin' huge, but it is also at the core of a big and diverse ecosystem. There are many, many users across various industries, including big players and there are companies that offer consulting and development services specifically around Qt. If the Qt Company was to piss enough of these users off, they could easily join forces to create an economically feasible fork. The real trick would be avoiding competing forks, I think. [1] https://kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation/ https://kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation/
nyanpasu64 4y ago
It could be worse; they could start releasing Qt 6 open-source at a 1 year delay... oh the horror!

apitman 4y ago

I'm more concerned about the show of intent than the specific actions up to this point. What if they decide to put all the docs behind a paywall? And if they can't because of licensing reasons, what if they just stop paying people to update the docs and make a new version of the docs without licensing restrictions? There are a lot of ways this can get worse. Licensing protection isn't a silver bullet. If the organization becomes hostile, it only guarantees you the ability to fork. While that's huge, it's of limited utility if the project is too big to fork. See Chromium. I think Qt may be too big to fork.

gmueckl 4y ago
The Qt Company itself isn't bound by licenses on the code/documentation, but by a separate contract with the KDE Free Qt Foundation [1]. This document is publicly available and treats the documentation pretty much equal to the code itself. Qt is effin' huge, but it is also at the core of a big and diverse ecosystem. There are many, many users across various industries, including big players and there are companies that offer consulting and development services specifically around Qt. If the Qt Company was to piss enough of these users off, they could easily join forces to create an economically feasible fork. The real trick would be avoiding competing forks, I think. [1] https://kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation/ https://kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation/

nyanpasu64 4y ago

It could be worse; they could start releasing Qt 6 open-source at a 1 year delay... oh the horror!