[Development] Changes to Qt offering

[Volker Hilsheimer]

> On 29 Jan 2020, at 15:20, Benjamin TERRIER <b.terrier at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, 29 Jan 2020 at 14:10, Cristián Maureira-Fredes <Cristian.Maureira-Fredes at qt.io> wrote:
>> 
>> but for Windows/macOS this might have three solutions (maybe more):
>> - Using package managers that provide Qt,
>> - Download and compile Qt by themselves,
>> - Create an account and use the installer.
> 
> 
> How is any of these a solution to the fact that your a putting a barrier for new users?
> These are just 3 bad solutions to a problem that did not exist yesterday and that we have to deal with
> because you removed the 2 main points of entry for new Qt users: the offline installer and
> the non-privacy-violating online installer.

Hm, if the problem didn’t exist, then why did the solutions exist? Package managers on Windows and macOS provide Qt in the past, after all, and

$ sudo apt-get install -y qtcreator
PS C:\Users\vohi> choco install qtcreator
$ brew install qt-creator

give me a Qt development environment on Linux, Windows, and macOS.


You obviously don’t trust that TQtC will treat the data the online-installer either demands or requires with the appropriate confidence. So, shouldn't you build Qt from sources? Your IP address is PII, after all. Why did you trust that The Qt Company didn’t collect personal data from you previously - just because you didn’t have to enter your email address?


>> Good thing that you replied in any case,
>> because I really think we should separate the different use cases:
>> 
>> - For people already using Qt, with Qt accounts,
>> that's not a problem.
> 
> This, and a lot of what TQC employees are saying on these changes, does sound like the famous sentence
> from Don Mattrick about the Xbox One: "We have a product for people who aren't able to get some form of connectivity; it's called Xbox 360."
> 
> Back to the topic, I have a Qt account, I do NOT want to use it to install Qt.
> I am pretty sure we will have community provided offline, and even maybe online, installers soon enough.


I wonder where all this love for the Qt installer comes from. I personally consider “sudo apt-get install -y qtcreator” or “brew install qt-creator” or “choco install qtcreator" to be vastly superior to using the installer UI, and very easily integrated in VM provisioning. Any energy spent on making sure that the versions we get from those package repos is up-to-date would be worth a lot more (to me) than building another installer.


Volker