[Development] Changes to Freenode's IRC

[Tuukka Turunen]

Hi Jason,

You can check the planned modules for Qt 6.2 from: https://www.qt.io/blog/qt-roadmap-for-2021

The first snapshot of Qt 6.2 does not yet contain all of those, but then again we are still some weeks (2.5) away from FF.

It is ok to discuss this type of matters in the mailing list, but it is not constructive to use it in order to derail other discussions. Like this one being about what to do with the IRC situation at hand.

While many are still somewhat tuned in on the IRC channel it is clear that the traffic is very modest. It may be that having another system would work better, or perhaps the mailing lists and other available channels are adequate for the need.

Yours,

Tuukka

________________________________
Lähettäjä: Development <development-bounces at qt-project.org> käyttäjän Jason H <jhihn at gmx.com> puolesta
Lähetetty: keskiviikkona, toukokuuta 19, 2021 11:16 ip.
Vastaanottaja: Kai Köhne
Kopio: development at qt-project.org
Aihe: Re: [Development] Changes to Freenode's IRC


> Can we agree to keep the bashing out of this channel?

You raise important questions. First, what is "bashing", and where is it appropriate? Or, as I see my behavior, where is being critical of Digia appropriate?

As a long-time Qt user (first commercial license was for 3.3.3) I've seen it go through many phases. Nokia LGPL Qt was so great, but I've watched erosion of that openness. I formulate my opinions based on ecosystems that I participate in, like Arduino, React, Node, etc. I see IMHO criticism of Digia is on the rise (https://www.qt.io/blog/commercial-lts-qt-5.15.3-released). I also get a lot of emails privately in agreement with my criticisms. So where is the proper feedback channel?

I think the situation is exacerbated because of the confluence of two decisions on how the Qt 5.15/Qt 6 transition:
1. Qt 6 does not contain all the modules Qt 5.15 did.
2. Qt 5.15 was a LTS, but the releases after 5.15.2 are commercial only.

If Qt 6 had contained all the modules that 5.15 did, OpenSource users would be able to switch to 6.
>From https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/whatsnew60.html#removed-modules-in-qt-6-0 the following modules are not in Qt6:
Qt Android Extras       androidextras
Qt Bluetooth    bluetooth
Qt Charts       charts
Qt Data Visualization   datavisualization
Qt Graphical Effects            only QML types
Qt Location     location
Qt Mac Extras   macextras
Qt Multimedia   multimedia
Qt Multimedia Widgets   multimediawidgets
Qt NFC  nfc
Qt Positioning  positioning
Qt Purchasing   purchasing
Qt Remote Objects       remoteobjects
Qt Script       qtscript
Qt SCXML        scxml
Qt Script Tools scripttools
Qt Sensors      sensors
Qt Serial Bus   serialbus
Qt Serial Port  serialport
Qt Speech       texttospeech
Qt WebChannel   webchannel
Qt WebEngine    webenginecore
Qt WebSockets   websockets
Qt WebView      webview
Qt Windows Extras       winextras
Qt X11 Extras   x11extras
Qt XML Patterns xmlpatterns

Qt 6.1 then adds back (though some modules got rolled into other modules):
Qt Charts
Qt DataVis
Qt Lottie
Qt SCXML and StateMachine
Qt VirtualKeyboard

This leaves open source users of the Qt6 missing modules in a bind. I decline to attribute this to malice, but one way to fix the situation is to provide the 5.15 non-commercial updates until Qt6 is complete (6.2? allegedly includes Serial and WebSockets, but plenty aren't yet included, also: https://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/development/2020-November/040704.html) and then just have Qt 6 LTS as commercial only.  I had also thought that the 5.15 LTS was only going to be limited by commerical-only offline packages, that online 5.15 LTS would still be fine.

I would even be fine with there being only one LTS as opposed to how it is done now with multiple overlapping LTSs. (Currently 5.12 and 5.15 are LTS)

I don't know how to square Digia's behavior with Qt's Open Governance model (https://wiki.qt.io/Qt_Project_Open_Governance) ? I'm trying to where in the open source/governance stuff it was decided that making LTS commercial only was 1) approved by the Open Governance Model 2) exhibits the principals talked about in the Open Governance Model.

Let me be clear: I still think Qt (the library) is really great amazing stuff and want to thank every single contributor for it. But this shenanigans with the licensing is well, shenanigans. Show me another "open source" project that goes commerical-only in the LTS branch? The criticism is warranted. By that alone, not to mention having a not-yet-viable-next-version.










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