[Development] Changes to Qt offering

[Filippo Cucchetto]

> Just because it seems like a good price for you doesn't mean it's a good
> price. Reducing the licence price to one tenth what it is today could mean the
> revenues for the company reduce to one tenth too, which means the development
> team might need to reduce to around one tenth what it is. For a licence one
> tenth what it is today, you have to prove that sales would be ten times bigger
> or more. Do you have such proof?

Let's be clear, here all people are just telling their own opinions
(you too) and i'm not pretending
to be correct. I've no proof but: first, the offer announced here is
of 499$ thus not very different
from the one i've stated, second i've pointed out another example
(JetBrains tools) for a product
used by developers with a reasonable price. Just to be clear i work
for a company that pay for
a commercial license thus i somewhat know the price.

>
> You have absolutely no information on how elastic the Qt commercial price is,
> so kindly don't speculate on what price would be good. The only entity that is
> close to having that information is the one doing Qt sales in the first place
> and even then I don't know they know very well.
I'm not a TQC sales guy (nor you) but i know that sales guys know exactly the
income and state of the company that owns a commercial license. Thus they
should have a good picture of their commercial customers.
The problem is that a lot of developers that use the LGPL license
currently cannot afford
a commercial license. Those users are wasted money that could benefit
the TQC.

>
> > Furthermore i think that current LGPL users could be more
> > willing to buy a commercial company once a good price for them is available
> > (at that point i would simply turn Qt dual licensing GPL or Commerical
> > period).
>
> No, they aren't. Just see that someone else posted on this thread that they
> were paying for a year and then decided to stop doing so because they weren't
> using the licence or support. That's the big issue: why keep paying for
> something you're also getting for free? Companies don't pay out of the
> goodness of their hearts.

Maybe you didn't get it but i meant to both put a reasonable price for
a commercial
license (500$) and turning everything GPL or commercial. Making everything GPL
forces all LGPL to buy a commercial license. This obviously could turn
away some people
but only if there isn't a proper offer for the commercial license. I
would borrow ideas also
from other frameworks (Unreal engine) and trigger license payment only when
gross revenues exceed a threshold.
Honestly the QTC is fighting itself with LGPL users and on every release
something is added or turned GPL. IMHO i would turn everything GPL or
commercial.

>
> > Another point is that a great framework like Qt need some big investors
> > that are willing to use Qt for their ecosystem. We don't have big
> > informations onthis
> > area but maybe the partnership with LG or with one or more company in the
> > automotive field can give a stable flow of cash.
>
> What makes you think that the automotive field isn't exactly the worst field,
> using Qt in a large set of devices and not contributing code nor paying for
> commercial?

I don't know if it's the worst or the best field but i know that it's
a field with big companies.
I said that a collaboration with a big company could go beyond a
simple payment of a license.
Furthermore Qt licensing is also per device in the embedded field.

> And how do you convince them to pay more? You have to give them something they
> want and wouldn't otherwise get for free.

Turning everything GPL is a good convincement.

> Like a release supported for a big
> number of years. At least for the automotive industry, allergic to the
> (L)GPLv3 as it is, there's one other: the incentive of a licence that doesn't
> have the TiVo clause.

Agree

>
> > In conclusion a 400 euro per developer/year is a nice spot for converting
> > most LGPL users to Commercial.
>
> Conclusion based on opinion, not data. Sorry, this is not how it works.

I'm talking for myself. I wouldn't pay more that $600 yearly (per dev). Again
the announced offer (500$) is not very different from my conclusion.

--
Filippo Cucchetto

Il giorno mer 29 gen 2020 alle ore 23:37 Konstantin Shegunov
<kshegunov at gmail.com> ha scritto:
>
>
>
> On Thu, Jan 30, 2020 at 12:22 AM Matthew Woehlke <mwoehlke.floss at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Aside from issues with Patreon's reputation
>
>
> I was not aware of such, but I'm going to take your word for it.
>
>>
>> Besides, I was thinking more along the lines of something that could
>> integrate with other OSS tools (e.g. GitHub).
>
>
> Fair enough.
>
>>
>> I want a "proud sponsors" page. I want to be able to offer bounties for
>> specific bugs or feature requests.
>
>
> I believe everybody would welcome that.
> On that note, just a wild idea, paying per module (i.e. 50$ / year for QtCore + 50$ / year for GUI, etc.) could be more flexible scheme to license. Not sure how that aligns with QtC's sales people, but seems more fair to me to pay for what you use (and by extension support its development).
>
> On Thu, Jan 30, 2020 at 12:26 AM NIkolai Marchenko <enmarantispam at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> I personally want a goal oriented fundraiser model. Like "revamp qtwidgets", "do a round of serious bugfixes in qml" etc
>
>
> That also seems fine to me.
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-- 
Filippo Cucchetto