[Interest] the path forward - that 7 year thing - was, willy-nilly

[Roland Hughes]

On 4/1/21 12:40 AM, Thiago Macieira wrote:
> I'm painting a scenario to understand how you'd have to handle such a
> situation, when there isn't a company you can call upon to fix the problem for
> you.
>
> We keep discussing the ability to upgrade Qt but not upgrade the rest of the
> OS. I understand that Qt is a central component of the UI, but it's no less
> critical than a lot of other components that you may need to upgrade in order
> to deal with circumstances changing.

What you are describing is __exactly__ why companies buy commercial 
licenses and pay for support contracts. They pay to have their 
environment supported and not be told that they have to replace their 
environment.

At the crux of the issue is the extremely narrow project life cycle. You 
and others consider 7 years a long time. It's not. It's less than half 
of adequate. Companies that need adequate pay for a commercial license 
and support to get adequate, that's why they fork over the money. QtC 
(or whoever) even came out with Boot2Qt to encourage these markets into 
the Qt space.

Honestly, at this point, if Qt project/QtC wants to continue with its 
7-year-or-less window, it needs to put an official disclaimer on the 
project like Microsoft had to in some of their products.

"Not for use in medical devices or devices where SAFETY is a 
requirement/concern."

Not squirreled away in a doc file nobody looks at, but very publicly and 
everywhere.

That will solve the problem for the future because nobody will ever be 
able to get a product using Qt through regulatory approval from that 
point forward.Well, they might, but it will be __really__ expensive 
because the SOUP (Software Of Unknown Providence) research will turn up 
the "not for use" clause which will add a whole bunch of paperwork and 
testing requirements.

Scott will still be screwed. Sorry Scott. On the bright side you won't 
be screwed in the future because your company will have had to move to 
something else.

Existing medical device companies with licenses and contracts will have 
to abandon them then hold their breath some new HIPA/FDA tweak doesn't 
come down the pipe forcing them to bite a very bitter bullet.

The medical device companies using 4.x and earlier have already bitten 
that bullet.

As a project Qt cannot serve both the bleeding edge and the deep pocket 
medical device world that needs decades (plural) long support for an 
existing device. It needs to make a choice and officially rip the 
bandage off.

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

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