[Development] [Interest] Change in open-source licensing of Qt Wayland Compositor, Qt Application Manager and Qt PDF

[Lars Knoll]

Hi,

As it turned out, there was some miscommunication that happened regarding the re-licensing of Qt PDF, and not all contributors were on board regarding the license change. That means we’re not changing the modules license and won’t be adding it to become a supported part of Qt until this has been sorted out.

Cheers,
Lars

On 10 Oct 2019, at 10:00, Tuukka Turunen <tuukka.turunen at qt.io<mailto:tuukka.turunen at qt.io>> wrote:


Hi,

Open-source licensing of Qt Wayland Compositor, Qt Application Manager and Qt PDF is to be changed from LGPLv3/Commercial to GPLv3/Commercial. Change becomes in effect with Qt 5.14 release. Going forward, these modules are no longer available under LGPLv3 license option. The key rationale for this is to increase the amount of GPLv3/Commercial licensed Qt add-ons. Blog post announcement of this is at: https://www.qt.io/blog/change-in-open-source-licensing-of-qt-wayland-compositor-qt-application-manager-and-qt-pdf

Qt Wayland Compositor and Application Manager are mainly used in complex multi process embedded systems. The Wayland Compositor is a special purpose module and is not used on desktop and mobile platforms. The module does require significant ongoing investments and licensing it under GPLv3 will help cover those expenses. The Application Manager is using the Wayland Compositor. It is currently not part of Qt and only available through the Automotive Suite, but being developed on qt-project.org<http://qt-project.org/>. Qt PDF is a new module, which has not been released earlier despite the pre-release code being available. Changing the license to GPLv3 will allow The Qt Company to support the module going forward.

Since January 2016 many of the completely new Qt add-on modules developed by The Qt Company have been licensed under GPLv3 license for open-source users in addition to the commercial licensing option. We use GPLv3 license for the selected Qt Add-Ons in order for those making closed-source applications or devices to pick the commercial option when using these add-on modules, while still providing the functionality under an open-source license for open-source applications.

In addition to developers from The Qt Company, the main contributors of these modules are from Luxoft and KDAB. We have discussed the license change beforehand with both of them and they accept making this license change.

The change in licensing of Qt Wayland Compositor, Qt Application Manager and Qt PDF is implemented in the coming days to be in effect by Qt 5.14 release timeframe and later releases.

Yours,

                Tuukka Turunen
                The Qt Company




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