[Interest] QML vs Electron

[Christoph Keller]

Well in 2015 there was the Independent Dev License for $25/month which 
disappeared and was replaced with the $350/month one and last year they 
changed prices over night to $460/month (all prices seen from a 
mobile-only dev perspective). That's about $2000 more per year for a 
single developer! Also the perpetual license disappeared, so you're now 
forced to the subscription model. The startup license prices were 
removed from the website, also you have to get a coupon from the sales 
team now to get it. If you've got a Qt license in your business plan, 
you're screwed since there's no way to estimate the costs for new 
developers.

Not only that, they also changed 2.9 in the FAQ in January 2017: If you 
distribute your mobile app with a commercial license to an app store, it 
seems you have to remove it from the moment you stop paying your Qt 
license. Before, this was allowed 
(https://web.archive.org/web/20170118212739/https://www1.qt.io/faq/). 
The FAQ is not really clear about whether "distribute" means in fact 
"upload to the app store" or "distribute through the app store".

 From my point of view the 2.9 line silently forces you to switch to 
LGPL or another framework especially if you're not using Qt for all of 
your projects, so smaller agencies and independent developers are out. 
Prices can change randomly and you're forced to pay or refactor years of 
work.

I'm a Qt fan and user for over 10 years now but I really think they're 
never gaining traction on mobile with this licensing model. It's 
absolutely worth $99/month but not $460/month or more in the future 
(still speaking about mobile-only here) :(


On 06.08.18 15:44, ekke wrote:
> Am 04.08.18 um 19:23 schrieb Sylvain Pointeau:
>> On Tue, 20 Feb 2018 at 12:58, René Hansen <renehh at gmail.com 
>> <mailto:renehh at gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>>
>>     Taxing big corporate use, while exempting smalltime adoption,
>>     even commercial, might be the way to go. This is just speculation
>>     on my part though, I have no idea how a licensing scheme like
>>     this would work in practice.
>>
>>
>> This was exactly my issue. I have an idea for a phone / tablet app 
>> and I really wanted to go with Qt but ~500 euros per month was a no 
>> go (for all people involved)
>
> I'm doing all my mobile Apps (Android, iOS) with Qt (QtQuickControls2) 
> and really like Qt. (compared with Flutter, ReactNative, Xamarin, etc)
>
> As a single developer (Freelancer) I'm using the Start-Up License 
> (99$/Month)
>
> the info about the startup license is something hidden on the web 
> sites: https://www1.qt.io/start-up-plan/
>
>
> presenting my apps to other devs at conferences or so there's always a 
> "wow" effect, because of UI/UX and performance of even very complex apps.
>
> the problem is the license.
>
> developers looking at Qt site always think they must pay ~500 EUR as 
> independent devs which is too much compared with other frameworks
>
> even the Startup License isn't easy to do
>
>
> this is frustrating: knowing that Qt is great for mobile apps, but 
> there's a license cost barriere
>
>
> I'm really waiting for a 30 EUR or so Indiependent Dev License.
>
> I know from discussions that in the past there already was such kind 
> of license with less success.
>
> But in the past there were no QtQuickControls2 and HighDPI support. 
> (Both was the reason why I started developing mobile Apps with Qt)
>
>
> -- 
>
> ekke (ekkehard gentz)
>
> independent software architect
> international development native mobile business apps
> Qt Mobile (Android, iOS)
> workshops - trainings - bootcamps
>
> *Qt Champion
> BlackBerry Elite Developer
> *
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Interest mailing list
> Interest at qt-project.org
> http://lists.qt-project.org/mailman/listinfo/interest

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/interest/attachments/20180807/05067ec6/attachment.html>