Commercial-Only Qt 5.15.3 LTS Now Released As Open-Source

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Commercial-Only Qt 5.15.3 LTS Now Released As Open-Source

One year ago this week Qt 5.15.3 LTS was released with 200+ bug fixes for this toolkit but that long-term support release was made commercial-only. Today The Qt Company has made available an open-source release of the Qt 5.15.3 changes...

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Qt-5.15.3-Open-Source

[You-]

1 day under 12 months - are they doing this because they are compelled to under their agreement with the KDE Free Qt Foundation?

[King InuYasha]

1 day under 12 months - are they doing this because they are compelled to under their agreement with the KDE Free Qt Foundation?

Yes, it is precisely because of that.

[bug77]

Whatever was open sourced, was already available in the main branch. But yes, that's Qt 6.x and most software isn't making use of that yet, so 5.15.3 is still welcome.

[Danny3]

Wonderful!
There are quite a few small open source programs that I use which remained on Qt 5.15.2 because of course they don't have money to pay.
I don't understand why the Qt company doesn't offer these updates for free to open source projects that don't sell their software so they don't make any money.

[andyprough]

Good. Finally something in this bleeding edge pile of janky cruft we call Linux-land won't be pushed onto end users with zero time from coding to release. Hopefully this will help stabilize Qt apps and KDE itself greatly.

[ClosedSource]

Wonderful!
There are quite a few small open source programs that I use which remained on Qt 5.15.2 because of course they don't have money to pay.
I don't understand why the Qt company doesn't offer these updates for free to open source projects that don't sell their software so they don't make any money.

I can see a few reason why not.

1. There is nothing that guarantees these open source project won't redistribute or resell the code in form of binaries. Nothing prevents the sale of open source software.
2. Qt is more customer oriented than developer oriented.
3. They are trying to create a niche multi-platform framework and they feel that prioritizing paid customers increases their credibility while still making use of open source developers for main branches.

Keep in mind that with commercial products, open source would not exit. The Linux kernel would not be alive without commercial products based upon it and contributions from large companies. Even fully volunteer projects are developed by people making profit elsewhere.

Having said that, it would be beneficial for open source in general for Qt LTS to be available for open source developers but not the general public.

[ClosedSource]

I can see a few reason why not.

1. There is nothing that guarantees these open source project won't redistribute or resell the code in form of binaries. Nothing prevents the sale of open source software.
2. Qt is more customer oriented than developer oriented.
3. They are trying to create a niche multi-platform framework and they feel that prioritizing paid customers increases their credibility while still making use of open source developers for main branches.

Keep in mind that with commercial products, open source would not exit. The Linux kernel would not be alive without commercial products based upon it and contributions from large companies. Even fully volunteer projects are developed by people making profit elsewhere.

Having said that, it would be beneficial for open source in general for Qt LTS to be available for open source developers but not the general public.

I mean to say "without" commercial products, open source would not exist.

[doom_Oo7]

> I don't understand why the Qt company doesn't offer these updates for free to open source projects that don't sell their software so they don't make any money.

All the patches have been available for months in the public gerrit repos. The only new thing is that there is an official "release package" / "installer". But if you need those patches you can just git clone https://invent.kde.org/qt/qt/qtbase/-/tree/kde/5.15 and that will give you something very close to whatever is in the commercial-only LTS Qt branches.

That's what Arch Linux is doing for instance.

[RealNC]

>All the patches have been available for months in the public gerrit repos. The only new thing is that there is an official "release package" / "installer".

No, that's not the "only new thing." You can't "git clone" a gerrit repo. There is no way to clone the 5.15.8 branch, for example. The release package and installer have nothing to do with any of this.

This release happening just 1 day before the deadline of the KDE agreement is more like a middle finger to open source. "Here's the now outdated source code. Have fun. Fuck off now."