[Development] Changes to Qt offering

[James Maxwell]

I run a small business. we are 2.5 developers (one is working half time),
and our revenue is about 150 000 $. We do general development for other
small businesses, from web applications to desktop software. Probably about
half of our revenue is based on software where we use Qt.

So we don't qualify for the start-up plan. I would be happy paying 500 $
per developer per year, as I also want the Qt company properly funded so Qt
development is secured. But as it is now, we would need to pay 15000 $ for
Qt licenses for our small business. So for our Qt related revenue of 75000
we would need to pay 15000 $ in license fees. This simply does not make
sense for us, so we need to go the LGPL way. And if Qt would turn GPL or
Commercial only, we would simply need to abandon Qt and look for other
options (which I would hate to do as I really enjoy using Qt).

I would strongly suggest that Qt thinks again about their offering for
small businesses. It makes it impossible to hire part time people, or let
interns contribute to a little project, or ask a befriended freelancer to
help a bit, if you face for every person a 5000 $ entry hurdle.

I know that from an economical point of view the pricing would be chosen
such that profits are maximized, and 5000 $ might be a good number for
that. This might be shortsighted though, as I think it actually hurts Qts
business in the longer run. You would turn away many small businesses,
leading to fewer developers which know Qt, making Qt less relevant in the
IT world. And developers attention is also an asset. Qt could become a
framework developers just start to learn once they are within a big company
which can handle the license costs. I would strongly suggest, to make the
entrance easier, e.g. by offering a 500 $ developer number independent
license fee for every started 100 000 $ of revenue up to 500 000 $ dollar.

Best regards,
James
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