Qt Group about the change of license for the Qt Wayland Compositor, Qt Application Manager, and Qt PDF components, which will start being licensed under GPLv3 instead of LGPLv3 starting from the release of Qt 5.14. In other words, linking with these components will now require the source code of the programs to be opened under licenses compatible with GPLv3, or the purchase of a commercial license (previously, using LGPLv3 allowed linking with proprietary code).
Qt Wayland Compositor and Qt Application Manager are mainly in demand when creating solutions for embedded and mobile devices, while Qt PDF was previously only available in the form of test releases. It should be noted that several additional modules and platforms are already distributed under GPLv3, including:
- Qt Charts
- Qt CoAP
- Qt Data Visualization
- Qt Device Utilities
- Qt KNX
- Qt Lottie Animation
- Qt MQTT
- Qt Network Authentication
- Qt Quick WebGL
- Qt Virtual Keyboard
- Qt for WebAssembly
Another noteworthy change is the options for sending telemetry in Qt Creator. The reason for including telemetry is mentioned as a desire to understand how Qt products are used for further improvement of their quality. It is stated that the information is processed anonymously without identifying specific users, but with the use of UUIDs for the anonymous separation of user data (the Qt class QUuid is used for generation). An IP address from which the statistics are sent may also potentially be used as an identifier; however, in the on the processing of personal information, it is stated that the company does not retain links to IP addresses.
The component for sending statistics is included in today's release of . The telemetry-related functionality is implemented through the 'telemetry' plugin, which is activated if the user does not opt out of data collection during installation (a warning is issued during installation, with the telemetry sending option highlighted by default). The plugin is based on the , developed by the KDE project. Through the 'Qt Creator Telemetry' section in the settings, the user can control which specific data is sent to the external server. Five levels of telemetry detail are provided:
- Basic system information (data about versions of Qt and Qt Creator, compiler and QPA plugin);
- Basic usage statistics (additional information about the frequency of launching Qt Creator and the duration of operation in the program);
- Detailed system information (screen parameters, OpenGL data, and graphics card information);
- Detailed usage statistics (information about the license, usage of Qt Quick Designer, locale, build system, and the application of various modes in Qt Creator);
- Disabling data collection.
In the settings, you can also selectively manage the enabling of each statistics parameter and view the final JSON document sent to the external server. In the current release, the data collection mode is set to disabled by default, but in the future, detailed usage statistics mode is planned to be activated. Data is transmitted over an encrypted communication channel. The server handler runs in the Amazon cloud (the statistics storage is hosted on the same backend as the online installer).
Additionally, it can be noted the first beta version of Qt 5.14. The release is expected on November 26. The Qt 5.14 release is notable for including preliminary support for some , scheduled for . For example, a preliminary implementation of the new Qt Quick with 3D support has been added. The new scene rendering API will allow applications based on Qt Quick to run on top of Vulkan, Metal, or Direct3D 11 (without a strict binding to OpenGL), making it possible to use QML to define 3D elements in the interface without involving the UIP format, and will also address issues such as significant overhead when integrating QML with content from Qt 3D and the inability to sync animations and transformations at the individual frame level between 2D and 3D.
Source: opennet.ru
