[Qt-creator] License update! Please check license template!

Konstantin Tokarev annulen at yandex.ru
Sat Jan 16 14:30:01 CET 2016



16.01.2016, 15:21, "Hunger Tobias" <Tobias.Hunger at theqtcompany.com>:
> Hi Peter,
>
> I was not involved in the agreement between the Free Qt Foundation and the Qt Company, so I can not comment in any meaningful way, sorry. Neither have I insight in our sales numbers, so I can not comment on the effect of GPL or LGPL on actual sales figures either.
>
> Please consider to comment on the blog post announcing the change: You are more likely to contact people driving this change there. This is basically just our out-of-the-way technical mailing list.
>
> I *personally* welcome the outcome very much: We get to provide more free software and I agree with the idea of software freedom as expressed by the GPL. It also makes my work-live much easier as I will have less repositories to juggle once the code moved into the public repository.

There are actually two separate license change events here: 

1. Proprietary plugins were relicensed under GPL. I believe that everyone here agrees that this is a positive change that should be highly appreciated.

2. Exisiting code base (including core components) was relicensed to much more restrictive license. I *personally* see this as a negative change, however I guess it as a necessary precondition for point #1 to happen.

I know there is a third party that was (is?) trying to make a commercial IDE based on Qt Creator with value added components. Their chief didn't want to allow developers to act as a part of community, he wanted to just grab the sources, cripple them and sell as their own product. I am happy that this license change will drive away such people. But I'm concerned that it will also drive away more well-intentioned contributors having some commercial interest.

As for my personal contributions to Qt Creator project, I'm happy to see them being in use under any free license that community likes, be it GPLv3 or BSD or something else.

-- 
Regards,
Konstantin



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