Qt open source licensing changed [LWN.net]

Qt open source licensing changed

Posted Jan 13, 2016 18:54 UTC (Wed) by nye (guest, #51576)
Parent article: Qt open source licensing changed

So I guess the license change is irrelevant for FOSS projects - I presume there's no reason any non-proprietary software would be using the LGPLv2 option specifically?

The part that's actually more interesting is the bit after that that's not in the summary:
>The Qt Company will streamline the
>Qt product structure (starting with Qt 5.7) by providing many formerly closed
>Qt APIs and tools in the Open Source offering, as well
...
>Users who comply with open source obligations now have new features,
>such as charting, data visualization, virtual keyboard and advanced
>profiling, available to them.

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Qt open source licensing changed

Posted Jan 13, 2016 19:30 UTC (Wed) by danieldk (guest, #27876) [Link] (2 responses)

> So I guess the license change is irrelevant for FOSS projects

The LGPL version 3 is incompatible with the GPL version 2 [1]. So GPLv2 projects that do not have the "any later version" wording cannot use Qt under the LGPLv3.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/license-list.en.html#LGPL

Qt open source licensing changed

Posted Jan 13, 2016 19:38 UTC (Wed) by robmv (guest, #103765) [Link] (1 responses)

But it is GPLv2 too so GPLv2 client code still can link to a GPLv2 library

Qt open source licensing changed

Posted Jan 14, 2016 15:34 UTC (Thu) by k8to (guest, #15413) [Link]

Indeed, if that license meets their needs.
One option is closed to a certain class of people. I'm not sure how many this has any practical impact for.
It seems the most likely case is non-free software which was comfortable with lgplv2 but not lgplv3 which seems like the explicitly highlighted case for the most part.