One year wait for release of new Qt versions?
https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pa...t-New-Releases
The agreement the KDE Foundation has with the Qt Company is here, and the company appears to be relying on the 12 month limit clause:
KDE Plasma may be at 5.18 longer than folks anticipated. For those who are not familiar: paying for a Qt commercial license allows a developer to release binaries of an application WITHOUT having to release the source code for those binaries. The Open Source license of Qt requires the developer to make available to everyone who receives the binary the source code that was compiled to produce that binary.
A developer cannot patch or extend the functionality of a binary without access to the source for that binary, and doing so without permission of the copyright holder is a violation of the DMCA. This inhibits improvements and reliability of closed source Qt based application and such applications, if they fail to garner the revenue the developer anticipated, falls by the wayside. Applications made under the Open Source Qt License allows anyone to patch, modify, extend, improve or what ever, without the original developers permission, because GPL gives them that right. Also, besides being a beautiful GUI framework, the power of Qt is write once, compile anywhere (i.e., Linux, Windows, Mac or Android) and the KDE Foundation's agreement requires the Qt Company to maintain that capability.
In the long run the KDE Plasma desktop will not be hurt. Being a year behind the front line release will just be another factor in its development cycle. But, if Qt goes out of business or can't/won't execute an annual release of the Open Source version then the KDE Foundation can immediately release the latest version released by Qt, and do so under the BSD or other licenses it chooses.
With an apparent blame on the novel coronavirus, The Qt Company is said to be considering restricting new Qt releases to paying customers for a period of twelve months in an effort to boost their near-term finances.
KDE and the open-source Qt folks have been in discussions with The Qt Company especially with the restrictions announced back in January by The Qt Company that LTS point releases might only be available to commercial customers, Qt Accounts being needed for binary package downloads, etc.
But the most surprising new information made public today by KDE's Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer is that The Qt Company is considering making new releases paid-customer-only for the first twelve months.
Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer wrote, "But last week, the company suddenly informed both the KDE e.V. board and the KDE Free QT Foundation that the economic outlook caused by the Corona virus puts more pressure on them to increase short-term revenue. As a result, they are thinking about restricting ALL Qt releases to paid license holders for the first 12 months. They are aware that this would mean the end of contributions via Open Governance in practice."
Olaf went on to add, "We hope The Qt Company will reconsider. However, this threat to the Open Source community needs to be anticipated, so that the Qt and KDE communities can prepare themselves. The Qt Company says that they are willing to reconsider the approach only if we offer them concessions in other areas. I am reminded, however, of the situation half a year ago. We had discussed an approach for contract updates, which they suddenly threw away by restricting LTS releases of Qt instead."
Thus moving ahead there is the possibility of a ~12 month delay for new releases being available as open-source but The Qt Company doesn't appear to have firmly decided on this direction yet.
KDE and the open-source Qt folks have been in discussions with The Qt Company especially with the restrictions announced back in January by The Qt Company that LTS point releases might only be available to commercial customers, Qt Accounts being needed for binary package downloads, etc.
But the most surprising new information made public today by KDE's Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer is that The Qt Company is considering making new releases paid-customer-only for the first twelve months.
Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer wrote, "But last week, the company suddenly informed both the KDE e.V. board and the KDE Free QT Foundation that the economic outlook caused by the Corona virus puts more pressure on them to increase short-term revenue. As a result, they are thinking about restricting ALL Qt releases to paid license holders for the first 12 months. They are aware that this would mean the end of contributions via Open Governance in practice."
Olaf went on to add, "We hope The Qt Company will reconsider. However, this threat to the Open Source community needs to be anticipated, so that the Qt and KDE communities can prepare themselves. The Qt Company says that they are willing to reconsider the approach only if we offer them concessions in other areas. I am reminded, however, of the situation half a year ago. We had discussed an approach for contract updates, which they suddenly threw away by restricting LTS releases of Qt instead."
Thus moving ahead there is the possibility of a ~12 month delay for new releases being available as open-source but The Qt Company doesn't appear to have firmly decided on this direction yet.
The most recent agreement covers all releases of all Qt versions for the following platforms:
The following license terms are required:
If these license terms are not yet present at the time of the Qt release, then they must be applied within a timeframe of not more than 12 months.
- Core Platforms: X11 (i.e. Desktop Linux) and Android – support cannot be dropped.
- Additional Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Microsoft Windows Phone, Apple MacOS and Apple iOS – as long as they are supported at all by The Qt Company.
- The Foundation has the right to update to supported successor platforms (e.g. from X11 to Wayland) without additional negotiations with The Qt Company.
The following license terms are required:
- All parts of Qt are available under the GPLv3 or under a compatible license. Most parts are also available under the LGPLv3 and under the GPLv2.
- The core libraries of Qt (Essentials) and all existing LGPL-licensed Qt add-ons must continue to be available under the LGPLv3.
- GPLv2-compatibility must kept for all existing GPLv2-licensed Qt code and for the core part of Qt (Essentials) and for the Qt applications. Future versions of the GPL are supported “if approved by the KDE Free Qt Foundation”.
- Applications included in Qt (e.g. Qt Creator) must be licensed under GPLv2 and GPLv3. Two GPL exceptions clarify:
- generated code is not license-restricted, and
- 2. bridges to third party applications are still possible.
- New add-ons for Qt must use GPLv3 and may optionally also offer GPLv2 and/or LGPLv3. The stricter rules above continue to apply if existing functionality is replaced by new modules.
If these license terms are not yet present at the time of the Qt release, then they must be applied within a timeframe of not more than 12 months.
A developer cannot patch or extend the functionality of a binary without access to the source for that binary, and doing so without permission of the copyright holder is a violation of the DMCA. This inhibits improvements and reliability of closed source Qt based application and such applications, if they fail to garner the revenue the developer anticipated, falls by the wayside. Applications made under the Open Source Qt License allows anyone to patch, modify, extend, improve or what ever, without the original developers permission, because GPL gives them that right. Also, besides being a beautiful GUI framework, the power of Qt is write once, compile anywhere (i.e., Linux, Windows, Mac or Android) and the KDE Foundation's agreement requires the Qt Company to maintain that capability.
In the long run the KDE Plasma desktop will not be hurt. Being a year behind the front line release will just be another factor in its development cycle. But, if Qt goes out of business or can't/won't execute an annual release of the Open Source version then the KDE Foundation can immediately release the latest version released by Qt, and do so under the BSD or other licenses it chooses.
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