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

[Tuukka Turunen]

Hi Bernhard,

See answers inline below.

Yours,

	Tuukka

On 2.4.2020, 12.56, "Bernhard Lindner" <private at bernhard-lindner.de> wrote:

    Hello Tuukka,
    
    maybe I missed something. Did you answer the following most critical question brought up
    by Juergen Bocklage-Ryannel and others? From Juergens E-Mail:
    
    > > I guess the conflicting terms are these:
    > > 
    > > “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."
    > > 
    > > Especially this combination: “use … Licensed Software with any software created with 
    > > … Open Source Qt”
    > > 
    > > KDE, doxygen, Wireshark (just to name a few) are using Open Source Qt. 
    > > 
    > > Can someone reflect how does it apply to that software? Can a customer use them to 
    > > create software under the Qt commercial License terms?
    
    What about this?
    
TTT: This part is difficult to generally answer, as it depends how these are used and what these are used for. Intention of the mixing restriction is to prevent cases where someone (e.g. a company) uses the open-source version of Qt in cases where they should use commercial version. Typical example of this is a case where only part of the developers using Qt together would have a commercial license. We are aware of the fact that the way how it is written is such that it might extend further than the primary intention. This is a topic that we do not currently have a proper solution for. 

    > I know licensing in general can be a challenging topic, 
    
    Non-technical terms like "use", "combine", "integrate" and "incorporate" are a lawyer's
    paradise and make me sit up and take notice. If you want to make things less
    'challenging', use techncial terms. Otherwise complaints and distrust will never end.
    
TTT: I am sorry if the terms that I have used are not clear enough. I have tried to express also that for actual legally binding text, one should read the license agreement. That said, the baseline should be quite clear: restrictions on mixing commercial and open-source are only relevant for those who use Qt under both of these. If someone is using only the open-source Qt, LGPL and GPL are the main licenses to understand. 

    > but I can't help thinking if some people are intentionally trying to twist things 
    > around.  At least there are quite many who have not been talking about this in a 
    > friendly tone.
    
    No matter if you are wrong or right... if you are writing in behalf of a company, such
    generalized blames are a cardinal error. If you think a certain person uses inadequate
    words, criticize directly.

TTT: When discussing in the mailing lists we should follow the code of conduct: https://code.qt.io/cgit/meta/quips.git/tree/quip-0012-Code-of-Conduct.rst. I consider myself having quite thick skin, but in general when the tone of discussions in the mailing lists becomes negative or hostile, it starts to prevent people from responding. 
    
    > That said, I hope there are at least some recipients in the mailing list who consider
    > this discussion valuable. Unless there is any new actual question, this is my last email
    > to the topic. 
    
    See above.
    
    -- 
    Best Regards,
    Bernhard Lindner