[nottorp]

Actually Trolltech was doing pretty well while selling Qt (which was full GPL at that time) for a fixed price per major version.

Then Nokia bought it and made it LGPL because they were planning on using it as the foundation for (some of) their mobile phones. Unfortunately, they couldn't decide which phones and went on a downwards slide.

Then Microsoft bought most of Nokia, and Qt got spun off into an enterprise thingy that takes their sales tactics from Oracle. Yes, I know the LGPL allows me to link dynamically for free, no, I don't trust Digia not to sue me for that.

Their pricing is also out of reach of anyone who's not in an industry that charges an arm and a leg due to regulation or niche.