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posted by Fnord666 on Thursday January 07 2021, @01:21AM   Printer-friendly
from the shooting-yourself-in-the-foot dept.

Open-source contributors say they'll pull out of Qt as LTS release goes commercial-only:

The Qt Company has followed up on its plan to make long-term support releases commercial-only by closing the source for 5.15 today, earning protests from open-source contributors who say that the 6.0 release, which remains open, is not yet usable.

[...] Yesterday senior VP Tuukka Turunen posted: "With Qt 6.0.0 released and the first patch release (Qt 6.0.1) coming soon, it is time to enter the commercial-only LTS phase for Qt 5.15 LTS. All the existing 5.15 branches remain publicly visible, but they are closed for new commits (and cherry-picks)... closing happens tomorrow, 5th January 2021.

"After this the cherry-picks go to another repository that will be available only for the commercial license holders... first commercial-only Qt 5.15.3 LTS patch release is planned to be released in February."

[...] The problem is that these releases are in effect no longer maintained. If there is a security issue, or a fix needed to support some change in one of the target operating systems, open-source users will not get that fix other than in the not-ready version 6.0.

Open-source contributor Thiago Macieira, an Intel software architect, said of the decision: "That means I will not be participating in the development of those fixes, commenting on what's appropriate or not, reviewing backports, or bug reports."

"Tend to agree," said Konstantin Ritt, another developer. "If there is a decision to close 5.15 sources, there'll be no more work from external/unpaid contributors."

Turunen responded that: "This is well understandable and expected. The Qt Company is prepared to handle the Qt 5.15 LTS phase work."


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  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 07 2021, @04:19PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 07 2021, @04:19PM (#1096501)

    He's making things up. He has no clue what he is talking about.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 26 2021, @01:52AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 26 2021, @01:52AM (#1104963)

    I'm not "making things up"
    >Lawrence Rosen - Open Source Licensing - Sofware Freedom and
    >Intellectual property Law
    >https://www.amazon.com/Open-Source-Licensing-Software-Intellectual/dp/0131487876
    >
    >p46 "There is one important caveat: Even a perpetual license can be revoked.
    >See the discussion of bare licenses and contracts in Chapter 4"
    >--Lawrence Rosen
    >
    >p56 "A third problem with bare licenses is that they may be revocable by
    >the licensor. Specifically, /a license not coupled with an interest may
    >be revoked./ The term /interest/ in this context usually means the
    >payment of some royalty or license fee, but there are other more
    >complicated ways to satisfy the interest requirement. For example, a
    >licensee can demonstrate that he or she has paid some consideration-a
    >contract law term not found in copyright or patent law-in order to avoid
    >revocation. Or a licensee may claim that he or she relied on the
    >software licensed under an open source license and now is dependent upon
    >that software, but this contract law concept, called promissory
    >estoppel, is both difficult to prove and unreliable in court tests. (The
    >concepts of /consideration/ and /promissory estoppel/ are explained more
    >fully in the next section.) Unless the courts allow us to apply these
    >contract law principles to a license, we are faced with a bare license
    >that is revocable.
    >--Lawrence Rosen
    >
    >p278 "Notice that in a copyright dispute over a bare license, the
    >plaintiff will almost certainly be the copyright owner. If a licensee
    >were foolish enough to sue to enforce the terms and conditions of the
    >license, the licensor can simply revoke the bare license, thus ending
    >the dispute. Remeber that a bare license in the absence of an interest
    >is revocable."
    >--Lawrence Rosen

    --

    > David McGowan, Professor of Law, University of Minnesota Law School:

    > "Termination of rights

    > [...] The most plausible assumption is that a developer who releases
    > code under the GPL may terminate GPL rights, probably at will.

    > [...] My point is not that termination is a great risk, it is that it
    > is not recognized as a risk even though it is probably relevant to
    > commercial end-users, accustomed to having contractual rights they can
    > enforce themselves.

    --
    https://www.dmlp.org/legal-guide/creating-written-contract-transfer-or-license-rights-under-copyright [dmlp.org]
    >Nonexclusive licenses also do not require consideration in order to be valid. However, nonexclusive licenses are revocable (meaning the copyright owner can revoke the license at any time) in the absence of consideration. This means that, whether or not you set a fixed time limit for the duration of the non-exclusive license in the licensing agreement, you (as the copyright owner) can revoke the license at any point if you do not receive consideration for it. Conversely, if you (as the copyright owner) receive consideration in return for the grant of the license, then you cannot revoke the license unless you provide for revocation in the license agreement