[Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt, Commercial developers

Wed Apr 1 12:43:31 CEST 2020

Hi,

What I get from the explanations from Tuukka is that the commercial
contract includes what amounts to legal carpet-bombing aiming to prevent
bad faith actors to use loopholes to their advantage.
The unfortunate consequence is that good faith actors can feel unsafe if
they try to read the legal terms.
There's some concerns about the definition of a "project" or "product" but
most important terms are ill-defined if you think about it:
- what does "using" means exactly ?
- what does "depends" means exactly ?
- what does "affecting" means in the context ?
- and so on

You can't escape that increasingly anything tends to depends on everything,
so the dual-licensing model is more and more complicated to get right.

The general intent of the Qt license is somewhat clear, but someone said
that the "get a lawyer" advice is FUD, and it's tempting to agree. I think
it's even worse for the QtC because a lawyer may advise to not use the
commercial license if he tries to get to the bottom of it and fails (as he
should).

Ilya

Le mer. 1 avr. 2020 à 09:04, Tuukka Turunen <tuukka.turunen at qt.io> a écrit :

>
> Hi,
>
> I think you are now twisting and mixing things incorrectly.
>
> For example, working in a company who has a commercial license of Qt does
> not in any way hinder contributing to Qt.
>
> Yours,
>
>         Tuukka
>
> On 1.4.2020, 9.32, "Interest on behalf of Roland Hughes" <
> interest-bounces at qt-project.org on behalf of roland at logikalsolutions.com>
> wrote:
>
>
>     On 3/30/20 1:03 PM, Andy wrote:
>     > That makes no sense. Your license prevents a company from using an
>     > open-source tool? It says "if you license our stuff you cannot use
> the
>     > open-source tool X"?
>     >
>     > This whole thread is yet another great example of where the Qt
> Company is
>     > totally tone-deaf.
>     >
>     > Nobody understands your licensing. You have fewer people using Qt and
>     > Qt-based things because of this.
>
>     I've honestly been expecting KDE to kick Qt to the curb any day now if
>     they are reading this.
>
>     Medical device companies have been running screaming away from Qt over
>     the past year. Many moving to Rust. Some are even moving to Zinc which
>     really kind of surprised me.
>
>     Some companies in other markets are abandoning embedded Linux for
>     embedded DOS so they can use other GUI tools. Before you Guffaw at
> that,
>     AGCO uses a lot of embedded DOS and they make an awful lot of Ag heavy
>     equipment. Last I heard they were moving away from Qt as well.
>
>     What is impressive is how "company" and "project" get thrown around
>     interchangeably. So, if one tiny little project in GE in some remote
>     location is using a commercial license, from what was stated, every
>     person in every GE location around the world __must__ have a
> commercial
>     Qt license to use QtCreator even if they are just using C++. I guess
>     everyone has to move to Emacs, CodeLite, KDevelop, and VSCodium.
>
>     https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/
>
>     https://codelite.org/
>
>     https://www.kdevelop.org/
>
>     https://vscodium.com/
>
>     I suppose if they didn't want free they could pay $299 for SlickEdit.
>
>     https://www.slickedit.com/
>
>     or a $100/yr annual subscription to UltraEdit.
>
>     Just be aware that UltraEdit like many other PC originating editors
> gets
>     tabs wrong. When you set tabs to spaces and set their width to 4,
>     hitting <TAB> when cursor is in first column of the line has to put
> the
>     cursor in column 4, not 5 like far too many PC editors.
>
>
> https://www.logikalsolutions.com/wordpress/information-technology/most-text-editors-get-tabs-wrong/
>
>     Having followed this "discussion" for a bit now I have a relevant
> question.
>
>     Assuming Intel, given all of the locations it has around the globe,
> owns
>     a single commercial Qt license at any one of them, by what has been
> said
>     here, Thiago not only has to have a commercial license to work on Qt,
> he
>     technically can't work on the OpenSource version. He has to commit his
>     code to the commercial version where it may or may not ever find its
> way
>     into the OpenSource version, if there ever is to be an OpenSource
>     version again.
>
>     Cause that's what I've been hearing in this conversation. The new new
>     new new licensing "strategy" is once anyone in an organization has
>     touched a commercial version they must perpetually pay forever and
> ever
>     for everyone. It almost sounds like a person couldn't even leave a
>     company and go work on OpenSource.
>
>     I went back tot he archive.
>
>     Vyacheslav Lanovets actually asked:
>
>     =====
>
>     A company has a few developers with Qt Commercial subscription who
>     write applications in Qt for iOS.
>     There are many other developers, who work on other projects and don't
>     use Qt libraries.
>     They talk to each other and sometimes even work on the same code.
>
>     Is it still possible for the developers who don't use Qt libraries in
>     any way, use Qt Creator IDE for editing and debugging?
>     To be on the safe side, company plans to prohibit usage of Qt Creator
>     IDE for all employees.
>     I reckon this is a popular solution.
>     If I understand correctly, Qt even sells a special option to ban all
>     company IP addresses for open-source installer.
>
>     =====
>
>     The question clearly states the second group just like the IDE for
> C++.
>     They aren't using Qt at all. That was the question asked.
>
>     What this conversation is really starting to sound like is "The
>     OpenSource version has ceased to exist."
>
>     Please clarify explicitly while I dust off my Zinc books.
>
>
> https://books.google.com/books?id=cdx_nLaqMn0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=Zinc+It!&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwidibzz8sLoAhVrUN8KHXzSBtkQ6AEwAXoECAIQAg#v=onepage&q=Zinc%20It!&f=false
>
>
> https://books.google.com/books?id=4vu5LwUGT28C&pg=PP1&dq=Zinc+It!&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwidibzz8sLoAhVrUN8KHXzSBtkQ6AEwAHoECAEQAg#v=onepage&q=Zinc%20It!&f=false
>
>     --
>     Roland Hughes, President
>     Logikal Solutions
>     (630)-205-1593
>
>     http://www.theminimumyouneedtoknow.com
>     http://www.infiniteexposure.net
>     http://www.johnsmith-book.com
>     http://www.logikalblog.com
>     http://www.interestingauthors.com/blog
>
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