[Development] Updating the licence policy for Qt Project

[Knoll Lars]

On 22/08/14 09:29, "Jake Petroules" <jake.petroules at petroules.com> wrote:

>On 2014-08-22, at 03:21 AM, Knoll Lars <Lars.Knoll at digia.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>> 
>> The goal here is that adopters of those new Qt modules will have to
>>abide
>> by the terms of the LGPLv3, which require the ability to replace the Qt
>> that is on the device on the actual device, thus creating an open
>> ecosystem for application developers, or instead purchasing a different
>> licence from Digia, which results in investments in Qt.
>
>Can you clarify how this would affect, for example, a closed source
>Qt-based application on iOS 8.0 using LGPLv3 and dynamic linking (or
>static linking + providing object files)? Does the FairPlay DRM used by
>Apple constitute a breach of the requirement to be able to replace the
>copy of Qt that is on the actual device? Or is this more about the
>hardware itself being read-only (i.e. baked-in firmware on embedded
>devices)?

From what I know (and IANAL), the iOS App Store is not really compatible
with LGPLv3, and even LGPLv2.1 is somewhat questionable. Fortunately I
can't see any issues with Google Play or the Microsoft Marketplace. Both
are apparently compatible with LGPLv2.1 and LGPLv3.

But as said the modules that we have in Qt 5.3 continue to be available
under LGPLv2.1.

Cheers,
Lars