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by edgarvm 2276 days ago
Qt's license and cost is another valid reason to continue developing on GTK
6 comments

All the important parts of Qt are available under LGPLv3. This only makes a difference to you if you want to do Tivoization of your software (Gtk uses LGPLv2, this being the only major difference AFAIK). In which case you still have the option to buy a commercial license.
Yeeeeahhh.... at the moment. They have gotten really aggressive about commercial licensing recently, and even a conservative extrapolation should give one pause.

Today they might limit themselves to forced registration, SEO, and spamming business contacts with carefully crafted statements designed to stir fear, uncertainty, and doubt around free licenses by strongly suggesting (without actually claiming) that commercial use without a commercial license is illegal. But tomorrow? Also, keep in mind that a business partner who isn't already familiar with Qt and LGPL is going to be about 10x more susceptible to the FUD. That's the whole idea.

My guess: 30% chance of an ugly fork and lots of drama in the next few years. Then, absent a change in direction, another 30% chance in the few years after that, and so on.

Qt will be free because there is agreement with KDE Free Qt Foundation

https://dot.kde.org/2016/01/13/qt-guaranteed-stay-free-and-o...

The Qt Company went over my head and tried to deceive my boss (as I perceive it).

We don't even use Qt. I was just evaluating it. A year before they "reached out."

I still see that as a strike against Qt, even though I understand that the existence of a technically free fork is effectively guaranteed.

Yes, there is a lot of FUD about the licensing for Qt when you search online, definitely not helped by how unclear the Qt site's explanation of it is (to me at least)
> unclear

That's charitable. The FUD is consistent, persistent, and targeted enough that I'd call it "intentionally deceptive."

Monetizing open source is hard. Maybe this is necessary, and if it is, maybe that's fair. But it's also fair to stay away because of it.

I don't find this unclear at all. I'm not sure what you would do to make it clearer. Thoughts?

https://www.qt.io/download-open-source?hsCtaTracking=9f6a217...

My boss looks at this page, he sees that open source programs can use Qt for free and that commercial programs need to pay. That's not the case, but the page is carefully worded to prevent him from confidently coming to the correct conclusion.

If this were the extent of the shenanigans, I wouldn't be mad. I like having a "help me sell this to my boss" page. But it isn't the extent of the shenanigans. They went around me to shake someone down on my behalf (as I perceive it). Last time it was my boss. Next time I choose a GUI framework for an open source side project, I'll primarily worry about it being my users.

> Make "open" consumer devices

So Macs are out of question... Can't be signed can they?

What if we get a commercial license? Apple disallowes GPL...

Can't support GTK either, Expat Licensed GUI alternatives please...(I suggest Godot but it comes with a bit of pain and some baggage as well)

There are also other corner cases that they might want to cover, with more documentation.(Not sure if I have missed something)

If anyone has more info pls do share it. :)

How dare them, wanting to be paid for their work!

A business partner has enough money to actually pay for licenses.

Qt being C++ also makes creating language bindings often harder so not all languages will let you build a Qt interface. GTK is C so it's more straightforward.
Qt is free and LGPL for Audacious, any other FOSS app, or any other project that is not looking to ship a patched version of Qt.
It's even free if you want to ship a patched version of Qt, as long as you also share the modified Qt code.
Update you. Qt has been LGPL many years.
Both reasons are why I'm trying to develop an OSS alternative with easiness & platform-independence of the web but much lower system requirements than what electron has.

I'm currently close to prealpha, if you're interested. https://github.com/cztomsik/graffiti/

Under project scope, there's this statement:

> To name just a few things you usually don't need: ... flawless i18n & accessibility

Lack of basic accessibility support is (or should be) a complete nonstarter for any serious project.

I'd demand better than basic accessibility support!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwSh0dAaqIA

you can join the effort and help me, the scope is limited to something I can do myself in reasonable time :-)
This is ultimately why I went with gtk in a recent Rust project. Qt bindings are a pain, and the license stuff was coming out. But most of the native Rust GUI libraries don't even try. Maybe its a maturity thing and they'll get there but I picked GTK for now
Note though that GTK has no accessibility support on Windows and Mac. If you're only targeting GNOME, then that's fine. For something that's more or less accessible cross-platform, I'd go with wxWidgets or something Web-based.
Also, what is "flawless" i18n support?
To have what browsers do. And getting there would take few months on its own so it's not a priority right now.
A friend and I were just wishing something like this existed. "pre-prealpha" is a bit too early for me, but I definitely wish you luck in this.
I thought the license issue was one of the past?