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

Roland Hughes roland at logikalsolutions.com
Mon Apr 6 14:48:22 CEST 2020


On 4/6/20 7:21 AM, Christian Gagneraud wrote:
> On Sat, 4 Apr 2020 at 02:19, Roland Hughes <roland at logikalsolutions.com> wrote:
>> On 4/3/20 6:11 AM, Christian Gagneraud wrote:
>>> On Fri, 3 Apr 2020 at 19:09, Roland Hughes <roland at logikalsolutions.com> wrote:
>>>   Well I hope you didn't use doxygen for your documentation when using
>>> your commercial license. It seems you can't use anything built with
>>> OpenSource Qt when using the commercially licensed version.
> Citation needed.
>
> Chris

 From Bernhard Lindner's exchange with Tuukka quoting the license (I 
don't remember who originally posted it)

 > > “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."

The critical phrase and source of much of this thread is using 
OpenSource binaries and libraries with a commercial license. It's the 
"use" word after the (i) in the first line of the quote that opened up 
this can of worms.

The original question was if developers working on a project writing 
non-Qt C++ code for some part of the project where other developers were 
using licensed Qt could use the OpenSource QtCreator because they liked 
the IDE. The resounding answer from Qt was no, everybody needs a license.

The broad based wording of the license also lead to these questions 
which, as far as I've seen were never answered.

 > > 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?

The lack of clear and concise answers to these questions is giving 
credibility to the FUD claims.


-- 
Roland Hughes, President
Logikal Solutions
(630)-205-1593

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