Qt offering changes 2020
From February onward, everyone, including open-source Qt users, will require valid Qt accounts to download Qt binary packages. We changed this because we think that a Qt account lets you make the best use of our services and contribute to Qt as an open-source user. We want open-source users to help improve Qt in one form or another, be that through bug reports, forums, code reviews, or similar. These are currently only accessible from a Qt account, which is why having one will become mandatory."
Posted Jan 27, 2020 20:40 UTC (Mon)
by anarcat (subscriber, #66354)
[Link] (21 responses)
Posted Jan 27, 2020 20:42 UTC (Mon)
by ttuttle (subscriber, #51118)
[Link] (17 responses)
Posted Jan 27, 2020 21:56 UTC (Mon)
by Karellen (subscriber, #67644)
[Link] (16 responses)
From the article: From the linked FAQ: So it looks like even with a free account you can't just download the binary packages.
One thing that isn't referenced in the article, or the FAQ, is whether Open Source users are allowed to redistribute binary packages that they've built. The article says "From February onward, everyone, including open-source Qt users, will require valid Qt accounts to download Qt binary packages." but I'm hoping there's an implied "...to download official, supported Qt binary packages from Qt" - not that open source users can't redistribute binary packages they themselves have built. Unfortunately, the actual new license isn't linked, and I'm not interested in hunting it down and then reading it all to find out. We still have the last release under the old license, which is at least DFSG-free - because Qt is in Debian. So if the worst comes to the worst, and the new license is that bad, we can at least work from the current codebase while we transition away from Qt. Hopefully it won't come to that.
Posted Jan 27, 2020 22:13 UTC (Mon)
by bovinespirit (subscriber, #88348)
[Link] (12 responses)
This blog reads like the main aim is to find commercial users of open source Qt. If every Mac/Windows programmer has to ping Qt for updates then the Qt Company can simply search their logs for many users on a single IP address and then get in contact with legal@that IP and see if they can plant a few seeds of doubt.
Posted Jan 27, 2020 23:02 UTC (Mon)
by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325)
[Link] (3 responses)
Well, that's not going to work at all. The IT department will download one copy of the binaries with a Qt account, then redistribute them internally. Under GPLv3, you don't even need the source code to do that, as long as you don't redistribute externally.* But if, for whatever reason, the lawyers decide they do need the source code, then IT just downloads that too, so no big deal either way.
That would suggest the real target is shadow IT (users downloading Qt by themselves without the IT department's involvement). But I can't seriously imagine a large number of users even knowing what Qt is, let alone downloading it all by themselves. So I'm a bit confused about what the Qt folks think they're going to accomplish here.
* See https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#v3CoworkerConve...
Posted Jan 29, 2020 2:06 UTC (Wed)
by luto (guest, #39314)
[Link] (2 responses)
I would be rather surprised if the binary is GPLv3.
Posted Jan 29, 2020 4:22 UTC (Wed)
by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jan 29, 2020 6:20 UTC (Wed)
by luto (guest, #39314)
[Link]
Posted Jan 27, 2020 23:05 UTC (Mon)
by ballombe (subscriber, #9523)
[Link]
> This blog reads like the main aim is to find commercial users of open source Qt. If every Mac/Windows programmer has to ping Qt for updates then the Qt Company can simply search their logs for many users on a single IP address and then get in contact with legal@that IP and see if they can plant a few seeds of doubt.
They could use their http log already without requiring an account...
Posted Jan 27, 2020 23:45 UTC (Mon)
by Karellen (subscriber, #67644)
[Link] (4 responses)
Yes, you can redistribute all the binaries you have received under the GPL (as long as you adhere to the other license requirements....) But, Qt either holds the copyrights for the parts they wrote, or have made external contributors agree to the Qt Contribution Agreement (source) for their parts, which states in §3.1: (emphasis mine) So while the current source is currently available under the GPL, the binaries redistributed from Qt's website to people with Qt accounts might not be, and future versions of the source code made available by Qt could be under any other license terms that Qt feels like releasing under - and possibly only those other terms that Qt feels like releasing under.
Posted Jan 28, 2020 0:12 UTC (Tue)
by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)
[Link] (3 responses)
Any other license will have to be limited to 12 months according to https://kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php
Posted Jan 28, 2020 1:08 UTC (Tue)
by NYKevin (subscriber, #129325)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jan 28, 2020 2:56 UTC (Tue)
by rahulsundaram (subscriber, #21946)
[Link]
My impression from the post is that all patches go into the non LTS version first. If they mark security patches as such, long term distributions can handle backporting
Posted Jan 28, 2020 13:41 UTC (Tue)
by lisandropm (subscriber, #69317)
[Link]
Posted Jan 28, 2020 3:23 UTC (Tue)
by scientes (guest, #83068)
[Link]
Sounds reasonable, and I have no problems with this business model which Red Hat first championed. It keeps the ethics, while still proving that the project has value by selling convenience.
Posted Jan 28, 2020 12:11 UTC (Tue)
by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958)
[Link]
I suspect they want to force people to have accounts so that it is then less effort to post bugreports, since the account is already made.
Posted Jan 27, 2020 22:45 UTC (Mon)
by rschroev (subscriber, #4164)
[Link] (1 responses)
Out of interest: should it come to that, do you have any plans about what you would be transitioning to?
Posted Jan 27, 2020 23:06 UTC (Mon)
by anselm (subscriber, #2796)
[Link]
Qt, presumably. See https://kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php.
Posted Jan 28, 2020 10:25 UTC (Tue)
by halla (subscriber, #14185)
[Link]
What has changed is that the Qt company now searches the utter boundaries of the agreement it has with the KDE Free Qt Foundation (https://kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php) to entice commercial parties to buy the commercial license.
The KDE Free Qt Foundation's agreement cannot be broken by the Qt company. Even going broke and selling the assets to a new company won't break the agreement.
And that means that Qt is free software; that hasn't changed. The Qt company is just playing mean little tricks with the binaries they build and their gateway to the download site.
Posted Jan 27, 2020 20:57 UTC (Mon)
by jebba (guest, #4439)
[Link]
Posted Jan 28, 2020 12:08 UTC (Tue)
by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958)
[Link]
Posted Feb 3, 2020 20:05 UTC (Mon)
by garloff (subscriber, #319)
[Link]
Posted Jan 27, 2020 20:54 UTC (Mon)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jan 28, 2020 13:44 UTC (Tue)
by lisandropm (subscriber, #69317)
[Link]
Posted Jan 28, 2020 1:14 UTC (Tue)
by pabs (subscriber, #43278)
[Link]
Posted Jan 28, 2020 14:15 UTC (Tue)
by pabs (subscriber, #43278)
[Link] (1 responses)
https://valdyas.org/fading/software/about-qt-offering-cha... Posted Apr 19, 2020 4:20 UTC (Sun)
by pabs (subscriber, #43278)
[Link]
Qt offering changes 2020
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The offline installer will also become commercial-only.
If only the online installer is available by default, what should users do that are working in an offline setup (no internet connection)?
Commercial users can request offline installers from The Qt Company, or possibly these are given to everyone via Qt Account like currently. Open-source user would need to build from source or go commercial.Qt offering changes 2020
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But once you have a copy of the binaries, you can redistribute them at little cost.
Now people will be encouraged to download from a third party website and they will get nothing.
Qt offering changes 2020
The code is still GPL/LGPL so you can distribute binaries all you like as long as you distribute the sources as well.
Licensor hereby grants [...] to The Qt Company a sublicensable, irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free and fully paid-up copyright and trade secret license to [...] make available and distribute Licensor Contribution(s) and any derivative works thereof under license terms of The Qt Company’s choosing including any Open Source Software license.
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... if this was what you referred to with downstream distributors.
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https://tsdgeos.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-qt-company-is-st...
Qt offering changes 2020