> Qt use is increasing and it shows in the number of buying customers.
As if that was of any relevance to the question whether many Qt developers are switching. Given that commercial licenses are only used by a very small minority of the professional developers using Qt (most using open source Qt), themselves only a subset of all developers using Qt… the fact that that small minority is currently increasing while remaining a small minority… doesn't say anything about the proportion of still Qt using developers switching away.
Besides, the sustainability of a temporary increase of that minority is highly questionable. Of course QTCOM's pressure towards Pay-to-Play temporarily forces some of those who are still tied by all of their still-Qt-based code to buy Qt licenses as long as they haven't finished switching to a better alternative… but on the long term most of them quit too. Precisely because of that.
We'll see how that strategy of maximal monetization and maximally squeezing developers works out for QTCOM in the long term
Developers stop using Qt for good technical reasons in projects that don't require the unique features of Qt. Qt's strength is being multiplatform. It works in embedded and realtime operating systems. It's not even useful for scrape by contract workers who do better with free web framework/UI stuff. Your TV, car, Television, have Qt in them. Its in medical devices and industry automation.
Qt may lose market share for Adobe PhoneGap, React Native, Flutter, Xamarin but that's because those target restrictive subset of what Qt is good for. Again, it's for good technical reasons. Nothing to do with licenses or Qt being evil company.
It just so happens that the biggest part of my work is in embedded. And while it's obvious that QTCOM is trying to establish itself in that domain… this here is merely wishful thinking:
> Your TV, car, Television, have Qt in them
no, actually neither has. And let's face it: while QTCOM does have clients in those domains… it doesn't have any huge share in either. Most use simpler lower-level graphical libs. Apart from that, you'll notice that those are Domains that account for a small minority of embedded… and a very unrepresentative one in that TVs, cars and TVs, unlike most of the embedded market, are stuff that are built by big corporations. So yeah, QTCOM seems to just focus on those big fish only now, as opposed to Nokia's strategy. As for industrial automation: don't make me laugh. Qt is totally irrelevant there.
And yes, licensing problems ARE a good reason which is a sore point, ESPECIALLY in embedded (where in most use cases you can't just dynamically link for LGPLv3 like on a desktop but have the whole mess of the build chain and update management if you are to let the user replace the Qt version).
If you work in embedded like me, you already know that we make actual money. Nobody cares about license cost of Qt. It's quite low compared to everything else. We don't use LGPLv3 in Qt. We buy commercial license.
what part of the thread did you not read? We've covered that already: the other option is the closed commercial license which since the switch from Nokia to QTCOM has become exorbitantly expensive
> Nobody cares about license cost of Qt (…) We don't use LGPLv3 in Qt. We buy commercial license.
You sound like you work in Qt Marketing, not in embedded.
> It's quite low compared to everything else
That's rather ridiculous. Most alternatives cost zero.
As if that was of any relevance to the question whether many Qt developers are switching. Given that commercial licenses are only used by a very small minority of the professional developers using Qt (most using open source Qt), themselves only a subset of all developers using Qt… the fact that that small minority is currently increasing while remaining a small minority… doesn't say anything about the proportion of still Qt using developers switching away.
Besides, the sustainability of a temporary increase of that minority is highly questionable. Of course QTCOM's pressure towards Pay-to-Play temporarily forces some of those who are still tied by all of their still-Qt-based code to buy Qt licenses as long as they haven't finished switching to a better alternative… but on the long term most of them quit too. Precisely because of that.
We'll see how that strategy of maximal monetization and maximally squeezing developers works out for QTCOM in the long term