Donating to Qt Project.
-
I have been searching for Qt my entire life. I always knew that C++ was where it was at, but could never build windows GUIs with it. Building GUIs has always been my goal. So obviously I want to donate to the project, but I don't understand how the license agreement changes. I want to keep Qt open source, and that goes for my code to. At the same time I want to find a way to port my windows code to Mac and Linux. I don't have access to either Mac or Linux machines now. I actually have been doing all of my programming at the public library. The reason I want to donate is that I want to see the day that all of the libraries we need to add to our project at deployment be automatically incorporated in the windows / mac / linux OS. Then it would be the Sh*T.
Any discussion is welcomed, thanks.
-
Qt Project does not currently have any donations scheme. You can donate KDE, for example, which is very closely related to Qt Project. Or buy the commercial license from Qt Company.
As for the rest of your post - sorry, but I don't understand exactly what you mean. I'll try to reply, but I might not get the correct answer due to that misunderstanding.
[quote]So obviously I want to donate to the project, but I don’t understand how the license agreement changes[/quote]
I don't know what you mean. Qt licenses do not change by money injection ;-)
[quote]The reason I want to donate is that I want to see the day that all of the libraries we need to add to our project at deployment be automatically incorporated in the windows / mac / linux OS[/quote]
This is impossible right now. All platforms are very different from each other, and some of them (most, actually), require binary signing. So you always need to compile the binaries yourself, for every platform. Also, you need a different binary for every platform because they use different formats and APIs. It is not possible to take an .exe file, add some Mac libraries to it, and run it on Mac OS X - it will never work, due to OS differences.
-
So can you tell me the point of buying a comercial license for a period of time? Once it expires do you have to stop selling your software?
-
[quote author="CoreyWhite" date="1420472277"]So can you tell me the point of buying a comercial license for a period of time?[/quote]
Commercial license allows you to:
Use Qt source code under any conditions you want (you are not bound by GPL or LGPL licenses)
Get access to Qt Company professional support
Your bug reports get more attention (if you notify support)
You do not need to tell your customers that you are using Qt
You do not need to attach any Qt license files
You can link Qt statically (although this is also possible under GPL license)
You get access to additional features (Qt Commercial Charts, QML compiler, and more)
[quote]Once it expires do you have to stop selling your software?[/quote]
You can sell your software regardless of which license option you are using. This means you can sell your application when using Open Source (GPL, LGPL), and when using Commercial License. When your commercial license expires - you just loose access to additional features. I think you can continue using Qt code under commercial terms after your license expires, but (you just can't download new sources), but you need to check that with Qt Company yourself - I am not sure.
-
And how would I contact the Qt Company myself?
-
Hi,
I'd go with the "contact":http://www.qt.io/contact-us/ page
-
It sounds like you don't need the commercial license at all.
You even mentioned you are developing open source. You can even develop closed source with the L-GPL license of Qt without buying commercial. Assuming you follow the rules of L-GPL.
Commercial licenses are used for companies that are selling a product based on Qt and want full control over their source and how they distribute their project (static libs vs dynamic).
You can contact Qt for licensing from the qt-project.org website. Be warned commercial licenses are not cheap. Last one I bought was almost $4000. I would develop your project using the L-GPL or open source it with GPL then if you want after you release it switch to a commercial license. That saves you a lot of money if you don't ever finish/release or make the money you want on the project.
As for the Qt libs being on systems mac/win/linux. It's quite easy to deploy them with your application. They don't need to be preinstalled with the OS and in fact I wouldn't want them to be since there are so many versions and releases in productions. Deployment on each OS is quite easy (with the exception of OSX which can be a pain due to the otool binary change requirements). But even that you can write a bash script for and make it quick after you get all the changes made to make the binaries run on a non-development system.
Welcome to Qt, it is the best library I've used in my long career. :)
-
I if you want to make some donation and help to develop third-party of Qt library please take a look at QtRPT project at https://sourceforge.net/projects/qtrpt/ or http://qtrpt.sourceforge.net
My opinion that is Qt project is the best, but donate better projects which is opensource.
