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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 The problem is that these releases are in effect no longer maintained.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."
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday January 07 2021, @04:24PM (2 children)
I've avoided using Qt like it was the plague. Mostly due to their restrictive license. I don't want to use a license that forces me to give away my source code, if I want to sell something. I also am mostly fiddling with stuff, so don't want to pay for a commercial license. Thus, Qt is the plague. This just proves that I used good judgement.
In reality, I likely will never make a dime on my side projects, but putting out something that could theoretically make me money is a nice dream. As opposed to me working all day to make money. At the least it would be nice to have a little pizza money or something. Still, I likely don't have the time and will to make it happen. I'm much more interested in making sure I can support my family, make sure my kid sees me around, make sure I play with my kid, and go on the occasional fun outing with family. Everything else is gravy.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 5, Interesting) by stormreaver on Thursday January 07 2021, @10:41PM
Qt is LGPL. If your reason for not using it is because you think you have to give your work away for free, you were avoiding it for the wrong reason.
I stopped using Qt with version 4 because the API change broke everything I had made before that. The compatibility libraries weren't, and it took me a year to rewrite a SINGLE large program. I decided I was never going to do that again.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 08 2021, @06:24AM
then why are you even commenting on this article