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This is awesome. The major disadvantage of using Qt was the huge price for a license if you didn't make opensource software. Now that they took that away I gues

This is awesome. The major disadvantage of using Qt was the huge price for a license if you didn't make opensource software. Now that they took that away I guess I will never look back to GTK or wxWidgets. Thank you a million times Nokia.

uuilly 18y ago
As a bootstrapped hacker who just let his qt license expire this is awesome news. Score on for the guy who didn't pay his bills.
jcl 18y ago
Agreed. The Qt commercial licensing was unusual in that you had to buy it before you started coding -- any code written against the free version could never be commercially distributed, even if you later bought a commercial Qt license. I'd been avoiding Qt precisely for this reason; I didn't want to pay for a license for experimentation, but I also didn't want to restrict my options in the unlikely case that the experimentation turned into something worthwhile. I notice they are adding LGPL to the list of licensing options... Why would anyone continue to choose the commercial licensing option when an LGPL one is available?
- bad_user 18y ago
  The commercial licensing still has value, because LGPL has the same restrictions as GPL, minus the clause that states that you can't combine GPL with licenses that have more restrictions that it. For example, it must be possible for customers to link your application to newer versions of the LGPL licensed library. And any modifications you make to the library itself must be also licensed under LGPL or compatible.
  - jcl 18y ago
    In that case, they really need to change their commercial licensing model. It may be hard for a hobbyist to tell if they'll need a commercial license ahead of time, but it will be even harder for a commercial company to tell if they'll eventually need an LGPL exception.
- icefox 18y ago
  Trolltech provides a trial license for the very purpose you are describing. When evaluating Qt for a commercial project you can get a trial license and see if Qt would work for you.
- wheels 18y ago
  If you want to link statically against an LGPL'ed library you have to distribute your object files. I've switched one library I maintain to dual LGPL / MPL for that reason. A lot of companies have bans on the LGPL because it's still an annoyance for them.

uuilly 18y ago

As a bootstrapped hacker who just let his qt license expire this is awesome news. Score on for the guy who didn't pay his bills.

jcl 18y ago

Agreed. The Qt commercial licensing was unusual in that you had to buy it before you started coding -- any code written against the free version could never be commercially distributed, even if you later bought a commercial Qt license. I'd been avoiding Qt precisely for this reason; I didn't want to pay for a license for experimentation, but I also didn't want to restrict my options in the unlikely case that the experimentation turned into something worthwhile. I notice they are adding LGPL to the list of licensing options... Why would anyone continue to choose the commercial licensing option when an LGPL one is available?

bad_user 18y ago
The commercial licensing still has value, because LGPL has the same restrictions as GPL, minus the clause that states that you can't combine GPL with licenses that have more restrictions that it. For example, it must be possible for customers to link your application to newer versions of the LGPL licensed library. And any modifications you make to the library itself must be also licensed under LGPL or compatible.
- jcl 18y ago
  In that case, they really need to change their commercial licensing model. It may be hard for a hobbyist to tell if they'll need a commercial license ahead of time, but it will be even harder for a commercial company to tell if they'll eventually need an LGPL exception.
icefox 18y ago
Trolltech provides a trial license for the very purpose you are describing. When evaluating Qt for a commercial project you can get a trial license and see if Qt would work for you.
wheels 18y ago
If you want to link statically against an LGPL'ed library you have to distribute your object files. I've switched one library I maintain to dual LGPL / MPL for that reason. A lot of companies have bans on the LGPL because it's still an annoyance for them.