New Qt Releases Might Now Be Restricted To Paying Customers For 12 Months

[Volta]

All the whining entitled commies are free to fork it and invest their own time and money in updating it however they want.

GTFO thieve. At first they should give back invested code. I know it looks a bit different, but it is to show how stupid you are.

[bvbfan]

from https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-c...q2/006098.html

It is still unclear what this implies for contributions to Qt and for the sharing of security fixes between the various parties (including The Qt Company, the many Qt experts contributing, the KDE community, and Linux distributions).

Qt cannot hide fixes of released source code, so it can hide the master and it's every new release from, so when Qt 6.0 is released it will receive all security fixes, then 6.1 will be hidden till be available its source code. I don't see how Qt will hide security fixes to released source code.

[jo-erlend]

Of course it's their decision, but how would this work? The public gets the beta/RC versions and once they're deemed stable they just vanish for 12 months?

Qt 6 arrives as a proprietary toolkit in March 2021, then Qt 6 arrives as a FOSS toolkit in March 2022? Personally, I think it's a good idea. In fact, I proposed that model of financing when Richard Stallman was here in Oslo many years ago. He wasn't very receptive, saying he didn't care about financing at all.

Plus, the IT industry is one of the least affected. We can work just as well (better in many cases) from home. Unless a number of Qt Company's clients canceled products, I don't see an impact here.

Working from home, isn't a problem. Getting paid in money for that work is the problem. For instance, here in Norway, banks have said they're offering a maximum of three months delay on down payments and interest. We have a government that claims to be "non-socialist" and they've said they won't keep up payments forever. That means we're running a very serious risk of a very serious mortgage crisis in the coming months and because modern money is based on debt, when a loan is forfeited, those money are deleted. That affects everyone.

Like the virus itself, there's no immunity against the economic consequences. Even if Europe and Asia gets the virus under control in a timely manner, the Americans won't and if we keep their heads under water for the next few years, financial problems could be the least of our worries.

Point is, don't think IT is unaffected by covid-19. Nobody are.

[Volta]

Point is, don't think IT is unaffected by covid-19. Nobody are.

But the Qt company made everything harder for themselves. They can now forget about voluntary commits. I don't know the numbers, but I believe it was quite meaningful (from KDE?). However, it looks like the Qt company will die soon probably Qt is finished as a viable Open Source toolkit.

[oleid]

Qt cannot hide fixes of released source code, so it can hide the master and it's every new release from, so when Qt 6.0 is released it will receive all security fixes, then 6.1. (...) I don't see how Qt will hide security fixes to released source code.

It depends on who is doing the fixes. If the fixes were part of 6.0,then they would be released with 6.0.
But what if they are done after release of 6.0? would they be delayed as well? Would they be released at all? Remember, as of this year, LTS is only available for paying customers.

I'm sure those questions
will be solved, eventually. But I don't see them answered, yet.

[bug77]

But the Qt company made everything harder for themselves. They can now forget about voluntary commits. I don't know the numbers, but I believe it was quite meaningful (from KDE?). However, it looks like the Qt company will die soon probably Qt is finished as a viable Open Source toolkit.

Definitely looks like a company on a downward spiral grasping at straws. But maybe I don't have the whole picture here?

[Volta]

Definitely looks like a company on a downward spiral grasping at straws. But maybe I don't have the whole picture here?

There's also a possibility it's a hostile action toward Open Source, but one would have to check their finances to figure out. However, their move seems very stupid.

[bvbfan]

It depends on who is doing the fixes. If the fixes were part of 6.0,then they would be released with 6.0.
would they be delayed as well? Would they be released at all?

The fixes will be as are now, 6.0.1, 6.0.2, that's mean it cannot hide, when the code is released you cannot hide it again, it's clear now? They don't mean
6.0.1 - 12 months delay
6.0.2 - 12 months delay
....
6.1 - 5 years later
That's not make any sense to do it, no one is interesting to do that.

[bvbfan]

The worst thing that they can do is, release the code and never updated it. I also don't think they wanna do that.

[jo-erlend]

But the Qt company made everything harder for themselves. They can now forget about voluntary commits. I don't know the numbers, but I believe it was quite meaningful (from KDE?). However, it looks like the Qt company will die soon probably Qt is finished as a viable Open Source toolkit.

Do you not see the inherent contradiction in that statement? If the death of the Qt Company means the death of Qt as a viable Open Source toolkit, that simply means that the volunteers aren't enough, meaning they aren't making it harder on themselves – as long as it actually works and they can make it more lucrative to pay for Qt.