[Qt-interest] [Ann] Nokia to license Qt under LGPL

[Justin Noel]

Qt Software (and Nokia),

Qt 4.5 under the LGPL!!! This is fantastic news! Trolls, thank you so
much for such a generous gift to not only the open source community, but
to C++ developers everywhere. I see no reason not to use Qt even for the
simplest in house software now. Even those with a $0 tools budget! There
is now almost no barrier to entry for C++ developers to pick up Qt and
start using it everyday on any kind of software.

For those who may not be intimately familiar with the precise conditions
of LGPL 2.1 here is a link to the exact license text:
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl-2.1.txt  Also, ICS has a new whitepaper
detailing the simple steps to making sure your application (or
libraries) are compatible with LGPL libraries. The whitepaper is located
here: http://www.ics.com/files/docs/Qt_LGPL.pdf on http://www.ics.com.

Thanks again! I certainly appreciate all the effort Qt Software and
Nokia are putting in to make Qt the best toolkit around. It's now the
best Free toolkit around too!

--Justin


nobody at trolltech.com wrote:
> We have some exciting news we'd like to share with you: Qt will be
> licensed under the terms of the LGPL version 2.1 with the upcoming Qt
> 4.5 release, in addition to our standard GPL and commercial licenses.
> We are also pleased to announce that we are going to open up the Qt
> source code repository and also make it easier for the community to
> contribute to Qt.
>
> Adding LGPL version 2.1 will greatly increase adoption of Qt across
> Windows, Linux, embedded Linux, Mac, S60, Windows CE, maemo, and Ovi
> web services. Having a larger number of users, including Nokia
> developers, providing feedback and contributions will help Qt remain a
> cutting edge, robust UI and application framework.
>
> Going forward we will speed up the development of Qt using additional
> resources and work in even closer cooperation with the free software
> community. We will do this in a number of ways, including:
>
> - Employing more Qt developers
> - Opening our source code repository
> - Reducing the overhead needed to make a submission, including no
> longer requiring copyright assignments.
> - Launching a new web infrastructure to support contributions later
> this year.
>
> As we know that license versions are important for many in the free
> software community, we wanted to also take the opportunity to provide
> some highlights of our upcoming changes:
>
> - Versions of Qt prior to 4.5 are not impacted by this announcement
> - We will continue to support the GPL version 2 through the newly added
> LGPL version 2.1 license, as it allows for the automatic conversion to
> the GPL.
> - We will continue to release Qt under GPL 3
>
> As a first step we have selected LGPL version 2.1 as this is the
> version of the LGPL that best fits our purposes and we are most
> comfortable with at this point in time. We will continue to evaluate
> the adoption, use and legal interpretation of LGPL version 3 by the
> community and may use this version of the LGPL for future releases.
>
> Finally, we will open the Qt repositories and provide more information
> regarding how interested parties can contribute to Qt with the release
> of Qt 4.5, which is scheduled for March. To learn more, please visit
> the announcement landing page at http://qtsoftware.com/licensing.
>
> Sincerely,
>
>
>
> Sebastian Nyström
> Vice President, Qt Software
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Qt-interest mailing list
> Qt-interest at trolltech.com
> http://lists.trolltech.com/mailman/listinfo/qt-interest
>
>   

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