[Development] Commercial-only LTS phase starts: Closing the 5.15 branch(es) on 5th January

[Max Paperno]

On 1/5/2021 1:02 PM, Adam Light wrote:
> 
> 
> On Tue, Jan 5, 2021 at 7:56 AM Volker Hilsheimer 
> <volker.hilsheimer at qt.io <mailto:volker.hilsheimer at qt.io>> wrote:
> 
>     Apart from that: is Qt 5.15.2 really so broken that people can’t use
>     it without getting more patches?
> 
> 
> I can't speak to 5.15 as we decided not to upgrade since it's not a real 
> LTS release (we do not believe we are eligible to purchase a commercial 
> license), but the minor fixes that come later in LTS releases (5.9 and 
> 5.12) have often fixed problems our users have reported in our 
> application, particularly on macOS. Due to behavior changes in different 
> Qt minor versions (again, primarily on macOS), we typically change the 
> Qt minor version only when we release a new major version of our 
> application (~every 2-3 years).
> 
> LTS releases have been critical in our successful use of Qt, and I am 
> not sure what will happen moving forward.
> 
> Adam
> 

Hear, hear.  Stuck on 5.12 here.

Working on OS projects, commercial is not even an option, and resources 
(e.g. for testing/fixing on every new Qt release) are very limited 
(read: one person often does everything). E.g. testing one app on 5.14.1 
yielded 3 breaking Qt issues which had to be fixed upstream, and mostly 
didn't make it into .2 either. LTS (after like a .3 or so update) is the 
only way to go IMHO, the others are for testing/playing.

I'm so sick of "scheduled releases come hell or high water" in the 
programming world (in general, not just Qt).  The quality is (usually) 
crap.  Once upon a time this release quality was called 
Alpha/Beta/Preview/NFP (not for production).  Qt6 has literally been 
called as being "primarily" for testing/feedback.  That's a new major 
release now?  /further rant aborted

Sorry, I'm only passionate about it because I love what Qt does and I 
love when it does it well and consistently.  Everyone who's helped make 
it that way is my hero, thank you!

-Max