[yawaramin]

> I guess they could alternatively bet on Gnome

Yeah, except Gnome looks pretty crappy on every other OS (and only marginally less crappy on Linux). Meanwhile, Lazarus Component Library looks native on every desktop.

> if you want to download official Qt binaries--ones that are at all supported by them--you have to have a Qt account; offline installers and LTS access are now commercial-only.

I was just now able to download the installer for open source usage without a Qt account from https://www.qt.io/download-open-source , so that seems very questionable. By the way, of course Qt is not going to provide production level support for free for open source software, why should they be expected to?