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by vram22 2975 days ago
>You can totally use it for free in large scale commercial projects. Just link with it dynamically.

Can anyone explain why it is free to use if you link with dynamically, but not statically? (I've seen this point come up a few times in discussions about Qt here on HN.) I know what dynamic and static linking mean, but not clear about the connection to free vs. paid Qt use. Is it something obvious that I'm missing? Only thing I can think of (admit I didn't think a lot about it yet) is that if you use it for free with dynamic linking, deployment is more of an issue, vs. just shipping a self-contained statically linked app.

Thanks in advance.

1 comments

> Can anyone explain why it is free to use if you link with dynamically, but not statically? (I've seen this point come up a few times in discussions about Qt here on HN.)

long story short: it's actually false, you can entirely ship your app linked statically with Qt under LGPL and still comply with the license. However, you have to ship your .o files: basically, what the LGPL requires is for people getting your app to be able to relink your app with their custom version of the LGPL libs (so Qt).

Thanks for the reply.