[Interest] Contributor agreement rundown

Thu Apr 19 03:07:58 CEST 2012

But closing code happens in EVERY release... Every release of Qt, has an
open and closed component.

The fact that Qt is releases in both LGPL AND Commercial, means that the
code when under the commercial license, is CLOSED...  It has been that
way sicne the day they FIRST releases a dual license software product.

While I enjoy the virtues of open source, and have contributed to Qt
through the years.. the good of HAVING it used commercially FAR FAR
outweigh the bad of the possibility of a contribution being added to and
not contributed

Scott

-----Original Message-----
From: interest-bounces+scott.bloom=onshorecs.com at qt-project.org
[mailto:interest-bounces+scott.bloom=onshorecs.com at qt-project.org] On
Behalf Of Nikos Chantziaras
Sent: Wednesday, April 18, 2012 6:00 PM
To: interest at qt-project.org
Subject: Re: [Interest] Contributor agreement rundown

That is totally irrelevant to me.  If closing code doesn't happen in
practice, then the agreement has no reason to secure that possibility.

I can also see that many people here don't value open source software. 
I was under the impression Qt had transformed into an open project,
surrounded by open source developers.  At least that's what the shift to
open governance and contribution wants to make people believe.  But what
I see is people who value proprietary methodologies more than open
source ones and who fail to understand why an open source developer
might have huge moral issues with the agreement.

I am disappointed.

On 19/04/12 03:35, Scott Aron Bloom wrote:
> I couldn't disagree more....
>
> While I don't recommend to clients to pay for digia support.   I
> understand why some companies insist on it, mainly for the priority 
> support they get..
>
> There has ALWAYS been code, ALWAYS, that first Trolltech, then Nokia, 
> and now digia, that is for commercial customers only.
>
> Embedded only code for one, the Visual Studio plugins for two, but not

> in the main desktop or mobile code...
>
> Digia doesn't want that.. Nobody wants that.
>
> Does anyone have an example of code that they submitted and later 
> learned it was extended and NOT folded back in??  Yes its possible, 
> that as an open source contributor, a commercial developer could 
> extend it, and not send it back in..
>
> However, I can tell you from personal experience, in working with over
> 25 different commercial licensees.. THEY DON'T WANT THAT.. If they 
> feel that they HAVE to fix a Qt bug, or extend Qt for their needs.  
> They send it back to the Trolls/Nokia  and now Digia.. So they never 
> have to worry about it again.. They basically say, here, I fixed this,

> but please make sure I don't have to fix it again...
>
> And based on the VERY VERY active digia check in list to the Qt 
> codebase... Im betting this is exactly whats going on (or they are 
> fixing bugs found by customers that have priority for them to fix).
> Which is exactly the way it was when TrollTech or Nokia owned the 
> commercial support for the code base.
>
> I guess Im saying, I see NO difference here...  None.
>
> Scott
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: interest-bounces+scott.bloom=onshorecs.com at qt-project.org
> [mailto:interest-bounces+scott.bloom=onshorecs.com at qt-project.org] On 
> Behalf Of Nikos Chantziaras
> Sent: Wednesday, April 18, 2012 5:16 PM
> To: interest at qt-project.org
> Subject: Re: [Interest] Contributor agreement rundown
>
> Then I'd say Qt was not suitable for "open governance" and "open 
> development".  Or not ready for it.
>
> It's a funny situation right now.  I can use Qt like an open project, 
> but am not allowed to contribute to it in an open manner.  In a sense,

> you must contribute more than you get.  That is unfair.
>
>
> On 19/04/12 00:10, BRM wrote:
>> As pointed out, the main reason Qt Commercial customers buys the
> commercial license is to not to have to worry about some of the LGPL 
> requirements - namely the ability to static link.
>> Where I presently work has a commercial license. We static link a lot
> of things. Could we dynamically link? Probably.
>> We don't modify Qt itself (though we could); but we primarily don't
> want to have to worry about the LGPL requirements either (e.g. 
> providing object files that can be relinked, etc.) - the company is 
> too small to try to keep track of all of that, nor are our customers 
> really interested in it.
>>
>> So there are very big concerns that the Qt Commercial License
> alleviates.
>>
>> Ben
>>
>>
>>> ________________________________
>>> From: Nikos Chantziaras<realnc at gmail.com>
>>> To: interest at qt-project.org
>>> Sent: Wednesday, April 18, 2012 4:05 PM
>>> Subject: Re: [Interest] Contributor agreement rundown
>>>
>>> Again, that's not my issue.  LGPL allows commercial exploitation of 
>>> the code.  The issue is taking open code and closing it, not 
>>> allowing
>
>>> me anymore to see how it was modified.  Being commercial has nothing

>>> to do with this.
>>>
>>>
>>> On 18/04/12 22:10, Jason H wrote:
>>>> Really It's a question of comparative greed. If you don't want your

>>>> source in the commercial arena, where people can make money off of 
>>>> you, well what's the value of that as compared to the value of the 
>>>> code that you get for free, as well as the value you get by those 
>>>> commercial interests testing the code for you.
>>>>
>>>> Really the commercial interests (and this is a generalization) use 
>>>> the commercial license to buy support. Their main concern is in 
>>>> having Qt work, while not divulging their "competitive advantages"
>>>> which has nothing to do with the Qt toolkit (unless you count Qt as

>>>> a whole). I've worked at several (4) companies that used Qt and 
>>>> some
>
>>>> commercially licensed Qt (3), and it wasn't about withholding 
>>>> patches or profiting from your code. In all cases it was getting 
>>>> our
>
>>>> existing code to work with a GUI, and not having to publish our 
>>>> source. (Now moot due to LGPL)
>>>>
>>>> Give some, get a lot.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> *From:* Girish Ramakrishnan<girish at forwardbias.in>
>>>> *To:* Bo Thorsen<bo at fioniasoftware.dk>
>>>> *Cc:* interest at qt-project.org
>>>> *Sent:* Wednesday, April 18, 2012 2:46 PM
>>>> *Subject:* Re: [Interest] Contributor agreement rundown
>>>>
>>>> On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 2:01 AM, Bo Thorsen<bo at fioniasoftware.dk
>>>> <mailto:bo at fioniasoftware.dk>>   wrote:
>>>>     >   Den 18-04-2012 10:33, John Layt skrev:
>>>>     >>   It is a trade-off, but not entirely one-way. They get to
sell
>
>>>> your code, but
>>>>     >>   the money raised goes towards supporting Qt.
>>>>     >
>>>>     >   Actually, I see this more as a "yes, you can buy commercial
> support". It
>>>>     >   closes one of the objections my customers have. Of course,
I
> usually
>>>>     >   convince them that I'm all the support they need :) But it
is
> a question
>>>>     >   I've heard so often with OSS software, and it's one of the
> things
>>>>     >   non-OSS people are concerned about.
>>>>     >
>>>>     >   It doesn't look like Digia is using this to fund a lot of
new
> Qt
>>>>     >   development, but if they use it to support older Qt
versions,
> this is a
>>>>     >   great thing as well (assuming those patches go to the OSS
Qt).
> People
>>>>     >   paid on OSS projects should do the boring parts :)
>>>>
>>>> A quick update from qt-project: Digia may not be contributing a lot

>>>> to new development (yet) but they have been contributing quite a 
>>>> bit
>
>>>> (a quick grep shows ~1500 patches with them as author) to Qt4 and 
>>>> they have been doing a great job so far.
>>>>
>
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