[Interest] Qt Licensing and OpenSource

[Roland Hughes]

On 12/11/2017 06:44 AM, interest-request at qt-project.org wrote:
> Sales are there to sale stuff. Not to provide you free consultations about
> Open Source software, its licensing, etc. For these things you should
> use different communication channels: mailing lists and IRC.
Your first statement would be correct if and only if Digia/Qt were 
strictly a commercial software company, but they are not. They are 
selling commercial versions of an OpenSource project. Thus, when one 
contacts them the burden is on them to explain what is and isn't covered 
by the OpenSource license. They do not do this. They simply tell you 
__everything__ needs a commercial license. At least until you get a 
really big and nasty group of lawyers involved then suddenly almost 
nothing needs a license. Funny how that works out, eh?
>
> (Also, if someone has little experience with open source, but is not
> limited in money, bying commercial license is indeed might be an
> adequate solution)
If one is not limited in money they do what pretty much every company 
I've run into, sans one, has done. They take an abandoned version of Qt 
OpenSource (if the version you need hasn't been abandoned, just wait 15 
minutes and it will be) and maintain it themselves. The cost is far 
cheaper than a license. These companies don't give a rat's rotted behind 
about what the latest idiot phone can or cannot do. They are building 
user interfaces for medical, industrial and defense industry devices. Qt 
seems to only care about phones these days.

The problem with the licensing is they've adopted the model which put 
nearly every late 1980s through mid-1990s software company out of 
business. Royalties. You cannot spend $500-$1000 for a single seat 
license and churn out whatever you want for whatever client royalty 
free. There is a per unit royalty fee on everything you make. According 
to some I've spoken with, it is everything you make whether it sells or not.

Maintaining your own local fork becomes extremely cost effective when 
you partner with an unrelated or complimentary business. None of these 
companies use QML or will they ever. It's a worthless resource hog. None 
of these companies need whatever Apple does this week or even last decade.

If you follow this list you will note that I have posted about getting 
emails every 12-18 months from this Harman whatever "consulting" firm 
about doing Qt 3 and OS/2 work for a medical device. Why? Because minor 
changes go through a much shorter and far less costly FDA approval 
process. Major changes go through new product testing which requires, in 
many cases, up to 7 years of double blind clinical trials. Same is true 
on the defense side. Minor tweaks requested by the DOD have a much 
shorter test and approval path than a major change which requires full 
field testing and quite literally blowing hundreds, sometimes thousands 
of units up.

So, having two or more employees share the duties of maintaining a code 
base which will get only minor enhancements is a far better and more 
cost effective option.

While it is true these firms will never upgrade the Qt version of any 
particular product line, it is also true they would almost all pay a one 
time $500-$1000 per floating seat license IF AND ONLY IF, the one 
selling them that license would agree to make whatever tweaks they 
needed to that particular version in a timely manner.

The commercial side of Qt appears only interested in chasing the fruit 
flies. Those phones which seem to live for 7 days and die. Businesses 
which make things that are actually worth having need a minimum of 12 
years stability, not constantly shifting sand.

Oddly enough the sand is about to shift under Qt. Google is abandoning 
Android and Ubuntu is abandoning Linux. Both are pursuing their own 
forks of Fuchsia (sp?). Microsoft is even abandoning Windows, 
buying/acquiring/whatever the Linux formerly known as Ubuntu. A very 
near future release will be like Apple, just a front end on an 
OpenSource OS. Microsoft is doing it for legal reasons. All of those 
companies making headlines with data breaches and identity theft are 
going to start suing commercial software vendors to recoup damages and 
possibly make some money. If all of the weak security parts are 
OpenSource, they can't be successfully sued.

-- 
Roland Hughes, President
Logikal Solutions
(630)-205-1593

http://www.theminimumyouneedtoknow.com
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