How much cost Qt for Indie developers ?
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OK I can't say I'm a huge fan of the current licensing arrangement.
Having tried to get my head round it for a while I have come to the following
conclusions:
1)
License is actually a pretty good deal for many independent developers. More precisely,
the developers that don't need to modify QT source and don't need to statically link don't
seem to need to pay a thing (which is why I say its a good deal).Unfortunately if you do need to do these things then its very painful indeed.
Now why all the confusion about the license ? I think its probable that Digia want to sell as many
Licenses as possible so don't mind having a little uncertainty in the minds of the richer independent
developers (ones can afford the price but might skip the payment if they thought they didn't need
to pay) What I'm saying is there are a certain number of cashed up developers that roll their eyes
at all the legal mumbo jumbo and reach for their credit card. -
What confusion?
You require a commercial license for static linking and closed-source modifications of Qt; if you get along with dynamic linking and the fact, that you will have to provide the sources of modifications of Qt (not your application) if you publicly publish your application you will get Qt for free under the terms of the LGPL or the GPL.
If you are interest in the prices of Qt feel free to ask Digia.
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Thanks Lukas you just made something more clear to me: So I can use QT for free
for a commercial closed source application provided I 1) use dynamic linking 2)Publish source code of modifications to QT. Cool, since I'm happy to publish my mods to QT (if I make any)
and for most application style applications dynamic linking is preferred as a matter of good software engineering. So as far as I can see the only real prohibition the on use of the free
license is using QT to make binary libs, since these must to be statically linked.I still do like my confusion theory its got a nice whiff of conspiracy about it.
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But what about the future?
I work in a small software company. We can't afford ourselves to port our applications to a new framework each year. The question is as follows: is it possible that Digia will close the sources of the next version of Qt and drops the support of older versions while one will have to pay 60 000 euros for the only available commercial version? Something other like that: will the whole Qt technology be dropped from development?It will be so nice to hear your opinion including the opinions of professionals that keep their nose close to wind with Qt technology and Digia's licensing.
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[quote author="zzz9_z" date="1368448854"]... is it possible that Digia will close the sources of the next version of Qt and drops the support of older versions while one will have to pay 60 000 euros for the only available commercial version? ... [/quote]
Thats sounds like a some scary story...
I hope its not happend. Anyway if Digia decide close the Qt sources, Qt will continue live in GPL. Of course Digias version will evolves faster but Qt as we know today never die. -
zzz9_z, qxoz: That case is actually covered by the "free Qt foundation":http://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php
Basically if Digia stops releasing GPL/LGPL Qt versions than the code becomes available under a BSD license for everybody to use as they see fit (incl. commercial use and whatnot).
I think the availability of Qt to you as a business is way more certain than any other toolkit out there.
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Tobias Hunger, that sounds good, still developers have a guarantee that they can still use Qt in their already written applications.
Regarding the previous messages about the price of the framework: you pointed right about passion and hunger.
Regularly there is no need to make his own version of Qt for an indie (there is sometimes workaround for some cases) and large companies can afford this price themselves (to make the development like conveyer, for example adding an ability to set custom QTabBar for QMdiArea out of the box). I see some small commercial projects (like GameCore) use Qt for their tools, I don't think they have a commercial license for developing a set of windows with buttons.
I don't know where this license paranoia comes from. I have defeated mine one after you clarified some questions. Maybe Qt Project must have a special "License Paranoia FAQ" covering all of its aspects, seriously!
I still have some questions about older versions of Qt like 4.7. Are they still supported: bug fixes, updates or one should port to the newer version to see them in Qt? I mean, what is the model of Qt development: 1. 'dropping' the older version and switching to a new one or 2. developing the new Qt version while making bug fixes and small updates to the old one? Sorry for offtopic but I think it is indirectly relates to the topic (buying the newer Qt version).
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Could you (or someone else) please elaborate on the fact that you can use the LGPL license to develop commercial Qt driven applications?
Where does the limit go? If you include libraries as runtime libs, if you use static linking? How does it work in practice?I've tried to read the LGPL licence but the definitions are vague at best...
[quote author="Andre" date="1316158186"]When the licences were still sold by Nokia, I believe that they cost something like EUR 1400 per developer for a single platform licence. You could also buy a 2 or 3 platform licence at a few hundred per additional platform. No idea if Digia is using a very different price model, but I doubt it.
If you need more exact data, you have to ask Digia, of course.
Note that you may also considder using the LGPL version of the toolkit. That would be a much cheaper option for an "indie", I think. The limitations are not such that it is impossible to develop commercial software that way. [/quote]
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But still. The current pricing is not friendly to individual developers who actually wishes to get the benefits of a commercial license. For most people it's a huge amount of money, and the prices are in my eyes targeted at corporations and not single developers.
Is it not possible that by offering a more fine grained price structure, more developers might actually be able to/want to pay for a license?
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Well, I think most independent developers are satisfied with the current state of affairs. Even if reduce the price of the commercial version, do you think strongly increase the number wanting to buy?
Static build and direct support are not critical for indie developers, peace of mind - most people even don't know how is it :) .
Maybe good reason for buying would be a tools like Charts, but i dont know. -
I think that most people are happy with the terms too. It's up to the individual to judge whether one actually gains from the stated benefits.
Personally, I'm finding myself in situations where I wish I had more veto power, so to speak, in order to push development for certain features. My development platform is Mac OS, and there's still missing critical features in 5.1 that prevents my current product getting in a finished state. With a commercial license in hand, I would feel that I had the right to raise my voice higher. As it is now, the answer I'm getting is more or less "we happily accept patches".
Different strokes for different people. Yes, I believe a reduced price would increase sales significantly.
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I still feel confused.
Can someone explain how I would go about developing an application that I could sell commercially, built with Qt Components, like:Use the Qt Creator IDE with the Widgets and bells, Create a GUI (possibly with QML) and the C++ code behind (using Qt libraries), compile it to executable code and possibly creating an installer, then sell it as a commercial app, using the LGPL licensed version of the Qt tool-set?
Ces't possible?