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by bombolo 1151 days ago
Just release your own thing as open source, then Qt doesn't cost anything at all.
2 comments
rubymamis 1151 days ago
I don't think LGPL requires you to release your source code if you link dynamically and not modify the LGPL code itself.
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bombolo 1150 days ago
Yes you're right. Doing it open source works but it's not even necessary.
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qtzfz 1151 days ago
That's one way of looking at it, but remember that Electron is better and free even if you don't release your code. On mobile, you have Flutter, React Native... In this situation, why would anybody want to go with Qt, unless they have an existing, legacy codebase? Who's starting new projects in Qt?
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bombolo 1151 days ago
Electron is better if your only metric to evaluate quality is "can I use it in my proprietary product?".

I work in a company that uses electron. The amount of time the UI guys spend to reimplement things that are already in Qt is incredible (for example a portable tray icon, menus, tabbing).

Yes we are saving money on license (but spending probably much more on developers reimplementing things).

> Who's starting new projects in Qt?

People who want portability and are aware that not everybody has 32GB of RAM like their overly expensive developer machine?

People that do not feel like reimplementing things that have existed for ages is fun?

People who do open source and do not have to pay for a license, and thus have no reason to "save money" and use electron?

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fifticon 1151 days ago
I second this. On the projects where I work, I see a lot of 117 reinventions of square wheels, with their accompanying bugs, for things like multi-column lists, scroll, selection models, and drop-downs. And I know we used to have those things as built-in standard-widgets, where you had to put in extra effort, in order to F them up.

I have an open bug registered on the aurelia framework concerning virtual scroll sometimes breaks when you reach the edges. The answer from the maintainer could be translated to "the guys who understood this code is no longer here". I tried to figure it out from the source code, and came to the same conclusion.

It's as if, ever since we got a full set of widgets available on desktops, we have been busy re-inventing them from scratch in other idioms (notably in the HTML DOM.)

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regularfry 1151 days ago
This. It is incredibly easy to underestimate the functionality in a fully-fledged widget set, especially once you factor in accessibility integrations. UI development is 10% shiny, 90% edge-case.
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