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

[Matthew Woehlke]

On 31/03/2020 14.16, Francis Herne wrote:
> Having looked through said document, the relevant sections seem to be:
> 
>> 1. ... “Prohibited Combination” shall mean any means to (i) use, combine, 
> incorporate, link or integrate Licensed Software with any software created 
> with or incorporating Open Source Qt, (ii) use Licensed Software for creation 
> of any software created with or incorporating Open Source Qt, or (iii) 
> incorporate or integrate Applications into a hardware device or product other 
> than a Device. ...
> 
> Can't use licensed Qt Creator to develop open-source Qt apps; ok.

That *is* what the above appears to say. It's also *beyond* asinine. YTH
should TQtC care if I buy their IDE and use it to develop OSS software?
This just strikes me as a reason to *not* buy their IDE. I fail to see
how it is in any way beneficial to TQtC.

The *intent* here is to not use the licensed Qt *libraries* to build a
product which also leverages the OSS version of Qt in any way, to avoid
people "shirking" by writing most of their code against OSS Qt and then
later bolting on a tiny proprietary bit. I won't comment whether I think
that approach makes sense, but it's at least comprehensible.

> In general, the only "clear" policy is that The Qt Company deliberately 
> obfuscates the conditions under which the GPL version can be used, to put 
> people off exercising the rights that do exist.
> 
> This goes along with the general downplaying of, and FUD about, the GPL option 
> on the website, and the bizarre retrospective licensing.
> 
> It's disrespectful to the outside contributors who've built so much of Qt and 
> its ecosystem in exchange for those rights, and doesn't bode well for the 
> future of Qt in the free software community.

No argument here...

-- 
Matthew