How much cost Qt for Indie developers ?
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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?
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[quote author="Andre" date="1374218615"]Your freedom even goes a bit further than that, but let's not cloud the issue :)[/quote]
I don't think that would cloud it up in any way, on the contrary I think it would be a nice addition for motivating "indie" developers to use Qt, so, please, make a short list over the additional advantages.
If you don't feel like posting it to the forum, please pm me with it, as I'm working on a blog entry covering this exact topic.
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With LGPL:
- you can distribute your application under any license, including commercial ones
- you don't have to provide source code of your application to your users
You have to:
- provide any large patches to Qt that you are using (for example when you have fixed something in QPoint). Small changes are exempt from this by Qt License extension to LGPL. Also, if you push changes to Qt Project, and they are integrated into Qt, you don't need to provide anything
- provide license file for Qt
- allow libraries to be swapped (no static linking)
- inform your users that Qt is being used (About box, readme, etc.)
So you can modify Qt itself, but you need to give your users the means to run your application with Qt they build on their own (if they wish to do it).
With GPL:
- all your code needs to be GPL'ed, too
- you need to provide source code to your clients upon request (you don't have to make them publicly available and you don't have to ship them by default. Any recipient can propagate those files, though)
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While I really like using Qt SDK much more than Visual Studio when I was using it (before C#); Qt Creator is light-years ahead of anything for wxWidgets; I like the idea of running natively to avoid the slow startup and garbage collection vs .NET applications; and I love that it is multi-platform, including phones - it seems overpriced for me. Sure, LGPL is still a good deal, BUT, I am coming across more problems with it than at first seemed apparent when I started:
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If you want to, e.g. make VST/RTAS plugins, Qt LGPL is simply a non-starter; unless you are making freeware ones, even if you could solve the technical issues. Users are used to having single DLL's they can re-arrange and copy about; but with Qt5, we are up to 12 DLLs needed to make my application run on a target Windows machine, coming in at 12.5 MB+ (counting one in the "platforms" folder needed to make it run on XP). The same project in Qt4 needed 3 DLL's coming in at a svelte 11.6 MB.
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This bloat of DLL's is including things like D3DCompiler, EGL, GLES, and the huge icu*.dll files; most or all of which I'm not even using, but they are required just to run. I assume that statically linked versions are a lot smaller for a total install; since linkers will ordinarily exclude unused functions, etc. This isn't a stopper for me, but developers do like to avoid excess bloat wherever possible. For those who cannot abide the extra bloat, this will be a problem.
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If developing for phones, a 36.2 MB program is pretty large; vs. the 12.5 MB my app used to be in Qt4. So, if I want to sell a phone app, must I pay 2995 Eu.; and will my app then be small enough? It's nice that it can cross compile for them, and simulate them, but is it the case that LGPL version is just a non-starter here too?
For cases #1 & maybe #3, LGPL is a non-starter, and it would be good if they would warn prospective programmers. For case #2, the deliverable install size just bloated considerably, although it is not a stopper. I am not ready to be done with it. Unlike wxWidgets, I can get it to do what I want, in most cases, without undue grief; and they have an excellent IDE (I was really amazed at the ease that it integrated with Git; although I've not needed advanced Git features yet). While LGPL sounds really great, further reflection shows problems with it that are not readily apparent for prospective developers.
The licensing for Qt is way more expensive than most or all of the competing products. I'd like to see that come down; although M$ doesn't have the LGPL users like Qt. It is quite a boon for FOSS software, of course; but this too cuts into their user base. Will this be a benefit or liability for them in the long run? Time will tell. If you want to develop for both Windows and e.g. Linux, or Windows and say, Andriod phones, when they are supported, am I to understand that one must pay for each, and that isn't included in the 2995 Eu? The cost is staggering to use it in those cases where LGPL doesn't work. I'd suggest that they might have e.g. an enterprise edition and a standard edition, so as to provide something for small developers so they could statically link, and not have to pay what are the highest or among the highest prices in the business.
Note: edited to reflect the removal of unneeded DLL's.
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I see people here has discussed pretty much how things really stay and I agree that an indie developer license would be a very nice offer - I would totally buy this license. Still, we're stuck with the licenses that Digia is providing right now and we can't do anything about it.
I am an indie developer too.. well, not really as much of a developer as I just got out of high school with C++ knowledge and I'm experimenting with Qt. But in my mind I have a lot of projects I'd like to make real, some are very small while others are huge projects; and I'd like to get some money out of them so I could afford better hardware to develop on, and something to live.
As stated before by others, the only thing that would allow me to make money for free out of Qt-made applications is to use LGPL. But while reading the LGPL license I could not understand all the license statements. It may be because my mother tongue is not English... I don't know...So, if that's not too much of asking, could someone please explain the LGPL license in a section-by-section manner, so I can understand all the terms and conditions provided along the license?
Also, another big issue as I could understand is the deploying size of shared libraries. So, while I still don't get all the terms the LGPL license provides, let's suppose I just decide to use it. Then, when compiling the Qt shared libraries, would I be allowed by LGPL to (and how do I) exclude modules from being compiled in the shared libraries to reduce the final size? e.g. in an application I'm trying to get done right now I don't need to use any other modules than QtGUI, QtCore, QtWidgets and maybe QtNetwork - can I compile just those and exclude all the others?
And last question, still related to shared libraries; a lot of code on the web (not necessarily Qt) is known to have issues when dynamically linked (probably because of not-that-well-done-code). Does Qt have any of these issues?Thanks in advance for anyone willing to answer the amount of questions I made :)
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@T3STY
There are argument about statically linking with LGPL licence. Since Digia it self advising not to statically link Qt libraries for LGPL users you might better to stay away from it.Technically I don't see a point to having issues with dynamic linking unless there are multiple libraries installed in same system. With proper deployment strategy you can avoid it.
Just see the "Sierdzio"s answer replied on "July 19, 2013". There are answers for all your questions.
