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

[ix900]

omg. people are soo over reacting. So you will have to build Qt yourself.... so what if they restrict binary releases. We will always have the sources. Stop over reacting!

It really depends on how they treat the source. Their focus is moving to paying customers which works against the free source.

Considering, using their API kind of locks a person into Qt, it has potential to be a problem.

[DeepDayze]

KDE has never floated my boat, however I do like Calibre, KeepassXC, OBS, Virtualbox, VLC, ocenaudio, and x2go (all of which use Qt). I'll be watching what those projects do in reaction to all this. That's as far as I'm concerned.

BTW: great command in debian, to check which packages you have installed, which rely upon some Qt5-related library package:

aptitude why <some_qt_library_package>

I would be perfectly content if the above projects just kept using a "stagnant" Qt, as seen in Debian stable, at present. Projects like LXDE and MATE desktop historically demonstrate that you can get by for years on end, just using a "stagnant" widget set. Just so long as security fixes get backported somehow.

Even with a "stagnant" Qt, many bugs found within Qt can be worked around especially when applications using Qt get upgraded or security fixes applied. So yes KDE can still use the last Qt snapshot before this change and just keep the base Qt libs while making changes to the framework (fixing bugs adding features), until the releases of Qt to the OpenSource community open up again. This should be an option for the KDE maintainers to consider.

[mastermind]

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

[GNOME_Shill_3.x]

tildearrow Calm down. It’s not like a surprise that Qt would eventually implode. I knew it. You knew it.
Question is what happens now. Most likely nothing. KDE just accepts Qt’s abusive behavior. Then the usual appeasements and compromises. And in a few months KDE loves Qt and CLA again.

Right, on brother! GNOME/Gtk is the path to pure nirvana. All dissidents must be surpressed! Let us suck the cox of all RedHat devs who work on GNOME, for it is the sacred fluid!

[betam4x]

Bye KDE. It was nice knowing ya. That is what you get for being just a tech demo for Qt.

Umm, do you not know about their agreement with QT? QT becomes FOSS if they pull a stunt like this.

[betam4x]

Reading through the comments, there appears to be a ton of ignorance here. There was an article posted here and elsewhere a few months ago that stated that in this situation KDE could re-license QT how they see fit.

I have been toying with the idea of building a new desktop environment for a long time now. I wanted to build something from the ground up that centers around vulkan and has an API that happens to be compatible with the win32 API (it will also have it's own API of course). The goal would be to design it for the ground up to work with any GPU that supports vulkan. Threaded input, composition built in, tons of interesting features. This wouldn't just compete with Xorg/Wayland, but also with GNOME/KDE. I may have to jump on this project after all.

[CommunityMember]

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

[sarcasm]What, get out of my mom's basement and actually contribute rather than "first post"? Not going to happen![/sarcasm]

[TemplarGR]

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

And you fanboy can go back to Windows....

[TemplarGR]

Reading through the comments, there appears to be a ton of ignorance here. There was an article posted here and elsewhere a few months ago that stated that in this situation KDE could re-license QT how they see fit.

I have been toying with the idea of building a new desktop environment for a long time now. I wanted to build something from the ground up that centers around vulkan and has an API that happens to be compatible with the win32 API (it will also have it's own API of course). The goal would be to design it for the ground up to work with any GPU that supports vulkan. Threaded input, composition built in, tons of interesting features. This wouldn't just compete with Xorg/Wayland, but also with GNOME/KDE. I may have to jump on this project after all.

Yes master. We are all ignorant, you are the ONE. Your l33t skills will lead you to code a superior GNOME/KDE alternative all by yourself, based on Vulkan, from the ground up. We believe in you.

[cynical]

Reading through the comments, there appears to be a ton of ignorance here. There was an article posted here and elsewhere a few months ago that stated that in this situation KDE could re-license QT how they see fit.

Of course they could fork it. That doesn't mean they will or that the fork will be successful. At this point I would have to ask, why bother? Just take GTK/Gnome libs and improve upon them. Qt was a nice base I guess, but if they can't work something out with this company, they are going to have this guillotine hanging above their heads from now on.