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tl;dr explanation: Qt is dual-licensed under the GPL and commercial licenses. Selling the latter is how The Qt Company makes money. To be able to sell exception
by josephcsible 3y ago
tl;dr explanation: Qt is dual-licensed under the GPL and commercial licenses. Selling the latter is how The Qt Company makes money. To be able to sell exceptions to the GPL, the company needs to own all of the copyright, which means there's a risk they might change the license to something non-free one day (like MongoDB, Elastic, etc. did).
This is basically a poison pill to mitigate that risk. If The Qt Company ever stops releasing Qt under the GPL (or a GPL-compatible license), then the KDE Free Qt Foundation is allowed to release it under a pushover license, which would remove the need for anyone to purchase a commercial license and so end The Qt Company's revenue stream.
- Rochus 3y ago> Qt is dual-licensed under the GPL GPL and LGPL > To be able to sell exceptions to the GPL Not required, just use it under LGPL. > the company needs to own all of the copyrigh The Qt contribution agreement doesn't transfer ownership, but authorizes QTC to enforce the rights in court on behalf of the developer (at least last time I had a look at it). But the agreement is not attractive for many reasons, which is why I never entered into one.