Some Qt Contributors Uneasy About The Growing Commercial Focus Of The Qt Company
Olivier Goffart started the conversation about the open-source project being less represented under The Qt Company's new web-site. No longer is there prominent information available on the Qt.io web-site about the open-source project and how to make contributions from the community. Planet Qt references were also removed. Olivier concluded, "I acknowledge that The Qt Company is by far the biggest contributor to Qt. And that because of the CLA, they have no obligation whatsoever. But I just feel it's not fair to hide the open source nature of Qt and the open source contribution completely from qt.io. When the unification was announced, it was said that the open source qt-project would continue to be represented, but i just feel it's no longer the case with the new website."
Other Qt contributors outside of The Qt Company also agreed with Goffart. Particularly as with the new site it's less clear that Qt can be used under FOSS licenses for free and that still a lot of the development of this toolkit is done outside of The Qt Company.
Tero Kojo of The Qt Company did say the open-source side needs to be more visible and hopes to make some improvements to the web-site.
Another Qt contributor also came out to voice more concerns over the direction of The Qt Company, "I also see a growing trend at The Qt Company on trying to sell more commercial licenses by creating fear because of the opensource licenses. At any corner you hear 'ohh, ohh that may not be legal to distribute, but just be sure buy a license'. This makes me kind of sad. I love Qt, I love commercial services and I love open source. Commercial support or additions to opensource projects should be sold by providing a benefit to the customer, not by creating fear."
Have you noticed any other changes from the Qt camp lately? Let us know what you think by commenting on this article in our forums.
20 Comments
