[Development] Changes to Qt offering

[Benjamin TERRIER]

I've had a Qt account for years, it doesn't change that I do not want to
use it to download a Qt version.

It is obvious that that in the world that we live today having an account
> for a service is not a blocker for people in general.
>

Qt users are not "people in general", they are software developers and they
understand that this is an artificial barrier.
I hope all software developers understand that they should not need an
authenticated access to download public tars of an open source project.

we believe that we provide value to our users through the installer and the
> Qt Marketplace to justify the Qt Account.
>

Do all Qt users have value in the Qt Marketplace?
For open source user, I am pretty sure the answer is no.
For commercial/company users, I doubt all developers need access to the
marketplace.

What does the installer brings now that was not their in 2015 ?
Nothing. So it was a bad idea in 2015, and still is a bad idea.

On a more general note. It seems you are trying to make money by taking
feature from the open source versions (like the offline installer).
What you take really hurts the usage of open source users and hurts the Qt
community.
But at the same time I am not sure these small features will justify buying
a license that  cost several thousand dollars per seat.
Especially when company that want to move from open source to commercial
have to pay a prohibitive retroactive license fee.
It is cheaper and faster to make your own offline installer.

Le lun. 27 janv. 2020 à 17:25, Tuukka Turunen <tuukka.turunen at qt.io> a
écrit :

>
> Hi,
>
> Well, quite many things have changed since 2015. One important item is
> that almost one million users have already voluntarily created (and
> verified) themselves a Qt account.
>
> See the FAQ (linked from the blog post):
>
> “Q: Will requiring the Qt Account drive away all Qt users?
> A: We have had the Qt Account as an option for over 4 years, and during
> that time there has been already nearly a million people who have
> registered and verified their Qt Account. It is obvious that that in the
> world that we live today having an account for a service is not a blocker
> for people in general. Everyone has the option of building Qt from sources
> if they do not like the installer, but we believe that we provide value to
> our users through the installer and the Qt Marketplace to justify the Qt
> Account.“
>
> Yours,
>
> Tuukka
>
> ------------------------------
> *Lähettäjä:* Development <development-bounces at qt-project.org> käyttäjän
> Benjamin TERRIER <b.terrier at gmail.com> puolesta
> *Lähetetty:* maanantaina, tammikuuta 27, 2020 6:03 ip.
> *Vastaanottaja:* Qt development mailing list
> *Aihe:* Re: [Development] Changes to Qt offering
>
> Quoting The Qt Company itslef:
>
> Thanks for your feedback to the new online installer asking for a Qt
>> Account signup. We have evaluated the feedback received via the blog,
>> various discussion forums, irc and other channels. Based on all these
>> comments and discussions with our partners we realize that this was not our
>> finest moment.
>> Preventing the growth and usage of Qt in the open source community is not
>> what we want to happen. We did already see a nice jump in the number of Qt
>> Accounts,
>> but it was never our intention to make our valued community and
>> contributors upset with us or stop using and contributing to Qt.
>> *We clearly ill-calculated how asking for a Qt Account with the online
>> installer would make our users feel*. A mistake. Sincere apologies.
>>
> [...]
>> *We do hope that this eases your concerns, and that we can continue with
>> your trust*.
>>
>>
>>
>> https://www.qt.io/blog/2015/05/06/changing-qt-account-to-be-optional-in-the-online-installer
>>
>
>  So apparently the trust of the QT community os nt a concern anymore...
>
> Le lun. 27 janv. 2020 à 15:42, NIkolai Marchenko <enmarantispam at gmail.com>
> a écrit :
>
>> I am afraid I do not have other words for this model than : absolutely
>> disgusting and a complete dick move. Especially login requirement for
>> binaries.
>> I don't even understand how distros are now supposed to keep qt code safe
>> since constantly pushing qt version up is recipe for problems and there
>> will be no critical bugfixes to branches that distros were stabilized at.
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Jan 27, 2020 at 5:35 PM Lars Knoll <lars.knoll at qt.io> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> The Qt Company has done some adjustments to the Qt will be offered in
>>> the future. Please check out
>>> https://www.qt.io/blog/qt-offering-changes-2020 .
>>>
>>> The change consists of three parts.
>>>
>>> One is a change in policy regarding the LTS releases, where the LTS part
>>> of a release is in the future going to be restricted to commercial
>>> customers. All bug fixes will (as agreed on the Qt Contributor Summit) go
>>> into dev first. Backporting bug fixes is something that the Qt Company will
>>> take care of for these LTS branches. We’ve seen over the past that LTS
>>> support is something mainly required by large companies, and should
>>> hopefully help us get some more commercial support for developing Qt
>>> further.
>>>
>>> The second change is that a Qt Account will be in the future required
>>> for binary packages. Source code will continue to be available as
>>> currently. This will simplify distribution and integration with the
>>> Marketplace. In addition, we want open source users to contribute to Qt or
>>> the Qt ecosystem. Doing so is only possible with a valid Qt Account (Jira,
>>> code review and the forums all require a Qt Account).
>>>
>>> The third change is that The Qt Company will in the future also offer a
>>> lower priced product for small businesses. That small business product is
>>> btw not limited to mobile like the one Digia had some years ago, but covers
>>> all of Qt for Device Creation.
>>>
>>> None of these changes should affect how Qt is being developed. There
>>> won’t be any changes to Open Governance or the open development model.
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>> Lars
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Development mailing list
>>> Development at qt-project.org
>>> https://lists.qt-project.org/listinfo/development
>>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Development mailing list
>> Development at qt-project.org
>> https://lists.qt-project.org/listinfo/development
>>
>
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