[cocoa19]

My interpretation is you can build commercial products with Qt for free as long as you can comply with LGPL. Mostly this means link dynamically (if closed source), only use LGPL components and give attribution.

Lots of GUI native, non-web libraries have been started in Rust, but they are VERY far from being close to what Qt supports. You may get closer using web based libraries (Tauri, etc), but I wouldn’t personally start web based desktop applications.

[rubymamis]

Exactly! There's always misunderstanding about Qt's license that I believe they should make the LGPL license clearer on their website. I believe many developers are struck down because they think it's not permissive enough where actually it's quite permissive.

[jwells89]

Some of it might be misunderstanding, but complication of distribution may also play a role. Making sure that your application is correctly dynamically linked and packaged to run without issues across all supported platforms and configurations can be considerably more involved than statically linking depending on the toolchain in question.

Which on that note, last I knew getting Qt apps correctly stripped and packaged for all platforms was a bit of a bear. In particular I remember building Mac application bundles being messy.

[rubymamis]

This is true, but then again, these days, it's easy to look up at a popular open source Qt app and copy its CI recipes. For example, anyone that wants recipes for creating binaries for multiple operating systems can copy the GitHub workflows in my open source note-taking app: https://github.com/nuttyartist/notes/tree/master/.github/wor...

That said, I really think Qt should have a separate commercial license that is exactly like LGPL but allows you to link statically and costs much less (without all the enterprisy things).

[jenadine]

One problem with Qt is that some modules are under the GPL and it is easy to end up inadvertently with a GPL dependency. Also it seems the Qt company makes it confusing on purpose.

[rubymamis]

> Also it seems the Qt company makes it confusing on purpose.

Yes, things have changed. So annoying you can't just download an offline installer using a mirror of your choice, for example.

> One problem with Qt is that some modules are under the GPL and it is easy to end up inadvertently with a GPL dependency.

I never encountered such a problem, the GPL modules always seemed very niche and targeted toward specific industries (automobile, etc).

[JanisErdmanis]

The only issue though is that Qt does not agree that mobile apps on app stores can use LGPL license due to anti-tivotization clause. Nevertheless they do have a somewhat reasonable pricing for small business of 500$ per year.

[hermitcrab]

What cocoa19 says. Also there is a small business license that is quite affordable to commercial indie developers and gives access to all modules.