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

Matthew Woehlke mwoehlke.floss at gmail.com
Sat Apr 4 01:03:29 CEST 2020


On 02/04/2020 01.39, Tuukka Turunen wrote:
> I know licensing in general can be a challenging topic, 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.

For me, personally, I'm not (intentionally) trying to twist anything...
but "less than friendly"? Sure.

Why? Because every time licensing comes up on the mailing lists, we seem
to get the same answers: "it depends on the particulars of the case" and
"talk to your lawyer". And over and over, I see the same reaction: "we
will no longer use or recommend Qt". (Moreover, this is *in addition* to
technical concerns that various folks, myself included, have expressed.)

This creates an impression that Qt commercial licensing is a legal
minefield, which scares off some people. Some of the "gotchas", combined
with other recent actions (installers requiring an account) creates an
impression of a TQtC that is not particularly friendly to the OSS community.

Is it any wonder people are reacting with a "less than friendly"
attitude? TQtC is coming across as increasingly adversarial; it's no
wonder the community is becoming adversarial right back. In political
terms, recent actions have resulted in a significant drop in TQtC's
approval rating, at least with the OSS community.

If you / TQtC can't understand why this is, well, that's part of the
problem right there.

Apparently TQtC has a healthy commercial relationship with... well,
someone. Unfortunately, Qt OSS seems to be suffering hugely.

-- 
Matthew


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