4. Qt mobile edition

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Qt mobile edition


  • Friends, what do you think of Qt mobile edition license ? $147 per month ? Think it is costly, probably not for indie or small business though that is what they claim. It is not clear if we can submit to appstore with lgpl edition

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  • Moderators

    [quote author="Jayakrishnan.M" date="1381370183"]Friends, what do you think of Qt mobile edition license ? $147 per month ? Think it is costly, probably not for indie or small business though that is what they claim.
    [/quote]
    IMHO this is a logical step for digia.

    [quote author="Jayakrishnan.M" date="1381370183"]
    It is not clear if we can submit to appstore with lgpl edition[/quote]
    What makes you think that?
    AFAIK all Android, Blackberrry and iOS apps should be submittable to their respective AppStores.

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  • Apple appstore don't allow dynamic linking. The libraries should be statically linked. Does LGPL allows static linking of Qt libraries ?

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  • Moderators

    this is only a problem if you want your application to be closed-source.
    For open source applications the terms of the LGPL kick in (e.g. distribute the source code of your application, ...).

    You may want to read about the "licensing talk":http://qt-project.org/wiki/Licensing-talk-about-mobile-platforms.

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  • Moderators

    This "article":http://multinc.com/2009/08/24/compatibility-between-the-iphone-app-store-and-the-lgpl/ is also interesting (regarding LGPL and static linking for iOS)

    As stated in the article it's funny that at the end you have to spend alot of effort which is almost sure that it wont be used anyway!
    I mean providing the object files of your closed source application so the user can relink the application and can install it on the iPhone. Which actually requires him to jailbreak the phone or buy an develoepr account for 99$ per year. ^^

    So developing for the mobile platforms (Android, iOS) with the LGPL version of Qt is no problem, when you provide the source code of your project or at least the object files.

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  • When do I need to buy the license (for IOS)?

    • When start development
    • When deploy to Apple Store

    And do I need to pay one month only or "forever"?

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  • Moderators

    you have to pay the fee per month.

    And i think it applies during your whole development time.
    But to make sure you should contact digia directly.

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  • This seems an enterprise license and this is the only one available. Think Digia should add a few more licensing options. For example the xamarin framework has a free license (which allows submission to appstore), an indie license ($299 /year), a business license and an Enterprise license. For apps submitted to appstore, I don't think giving away the source or object files will be possible most of the cases. So I don't think we can submit to Apple appstore with LGPL Qt.

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  • Could someone please explain what is meant by "Object Files"?
    I think it will further help out people who stumble upon this thread from google.

    For example, say I developed a QT app that's free, but essentially "closed-source". Would that qualify as giving away the object files?

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  • I'm not sure how this applies to QML files.

    If I build my application entirely in .qml are these considered part of the source as well?

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  • @ebonflex
    [quote author="ebonflex" date="1395855234"]Could someone please explain what is meant by "Object Files"?
    [/quote]

    An object file is a common binary format produced by a compiler for storing object code that will be linked into your application.

    Where as shared object files (.so) are loaded at runtime - object files (.o) are statically linked into your application at compile time.

    Shared object files (.so) makes it possible for others to replace those parts of your application (others with access to the code) as they need to be distributed with the executable or already exist on the host system.

    However if those parts are compiled/linked in as object files (.o) - others can't replace those parts of the code without reverse engineering - hence it becomes a closed source application.

    Please see Object file: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Object_file for more info on object files (.o).

    Please see Shared object: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_object#Shared_libraries for more info on shared objects (.so).

    In layman's terms it means that if you don't contribute your source or object code back to the community/project you will have to pay a licence fee - the source or object code is, among other places, lying in those (shared/static) object files.

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  • Moderators

    [quote author="Larpon" date="1407345013"]I'm not sure how this applies to QML files.

    If I build my application entirely in .qml are these considered part of the source as well?[/quote]Yes.

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