Qt 6.2 LTS Released With Qt6 Now Aiming To Be Ready For Widespread Adoption

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Qt 6.2 LTS Released With Qt6 Now Aiming To Be Ready For Widespread Adoption

Qt 6.2 LTS is out today as the first long-term support release in the Qt6 series and also with all of the major modules now ported over from Qt5 in aiming to make this a suitable point to transition from Qt 5.15 LTS...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Qt-6.2-LTS-Released

[DanL]

As with Qt 5.15 that proved to be controversial, Qt 6.2 LTS point releases are just intended for The Qt Company's commercial customers.

Not exactly.

"Both open-source and commercial users receive Qt 6.2.0 and all the Qt 6.2.x patch releases created until the Qt 6.3.0 release (in H1/2022). After Qt 6.3 is released, the subsequent patch releases of Qt 6.2 will be available only for commercial license holders." -- https://www.qt.io/blog/qt-roadmap-for-2021

[Alexmitter]

It will be interesting to see what things KDE can do when it eventually has switched to Qt6 in a few years.

[uid313]

I hope to see VLC media player get ported from Qt 5 to Qt 6.

[bug77]

And now all attention shifts to KDE.
Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?

[bug77]

It will be interesting to see what things KDE can do when it eventually has switched to Qt6 in a few years.

I don't expect many (if any) new things. Since Qt6 is mostly a cleaned up Qt5, I'd expect cleaner KDE code, too, which, in turn, should lead to fewer papercuts.

[Danny3]

Qt 6.2 LTS point releases are just intended for The Qt Company's commercial customers.

Can someone explain this better ?
Which point releases, as 6.2 is a point release too of version 6.
6.2.x releases are intended for commercial customers or 6.2.0 too ?
As a KDE Plasma and a few Qt-based programs too user, I don't understand what will happen with these projects that depend on Qt.
Is there any exception for open source programs or they need to pay money too ?
I don't understand if Qt is open source anymore.

[JackLilhammers]

Danny3
6.x.0, 6.x.1, and 6.x.2 are open source
6.x.3 and beyond are commercial

Kde is maintaining a subset of stability patches while they move to Qt 6 https://community.kde.org/Qt5PatchCollection
There are no exceptions for open source projects, however I don't think anything will happen to most them.

Small to medium sized commercial projects are those "suffering" the most from this decision, mostly because tQtC has no "medium priced" licencing options...

[cytomax55]

My take on this is the open source ppl using qt are essentially being forced into a beta position to test for the paying customers... Is this accurate?

[bug77]

My take on this is the open source ppl using qt are essentially being forced into a beta position to test for the paying customers... Is this accurate?

Not in the slightest. Bugfixes in LTS branches are merged into later versions as well. E.g. whatever is behind a paywall in 6.2.7, you'll get in 6.3 or 6.4. This is just a means to get money from companies that stick with LTS versions. Those companies are making money off of Qt, so they shouldn't have a problem forking out some cash so that we can continue to have nice things.