KDE Project Developers about the shift in Qt framework development towards a limited commercial product, being developed without interaction with the community. In addition to the previously accepted decision to supply the LTS version of Qt only under a commercial license, Qt Company is considering a distribution model for Qt where all releases within the first 12 months will be available only to commercial license users. Qt Company has notified the KDE e.V. organization, which oversees the KDE development.
If the discussed plan is realized, the community will gain access to new Qt versions only a year after their actual release. In practice, such a decision would effectively eliminate the community's ability to participate in the development of Qt and in making project-related decisions that were previously provided by Nokia under the . As a potential motivation for the increased commercialization of the project, the need for short-term revenue growth to stay afloat due to the crisis triggered by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus pandemic is mentioned.
KDE developers hope that Qt Company will reconsider, but they are not dismissing the potential threat to the community, for which developers on Qt and KDE need to prepare. In discussions with the governing council of the KDE e.V. organization, Qt representatives expressed their willingness to reconsider their intentions, but require certain concessions in other areas in return. However, similar negotiations regarding the contract renewal were held six months ago, but Qt Company suddenly interrupted them and restricted the LTS releases of Qt.
It is noted that the collaboration between the KDE community, the Qt Project organization, and the Qt Company has remained close and mutually beneficial. The benefit for the Qt Company lay in the formation of a large and healthy community around Qt, which includes application developers, third-party participants in Qt development, and experts. For the KDE community, cooperation offered an advantageous opportunity to use the ready-made Qt product and participate directly in its development. The Qt Project benefited from having a company making a significant contribution to development and the presence of a large community supporting the project.
If the decision to restrict access to Qt releases is approved, such collaboration will be terminated.
The KDE Project has safeguarded against the potential transformation of Qt into a fully proprietary product through the establishment of the KDE Free Qt Foundation, created to protect the community from possible changes in policy regarding the distribution of Qt as a free product. The agreement made in 1998 between the KDE Free Qt Foundation and Trolltech, which extends to all future owners of Qt, provides the KDE Project with the right to relicense the Qt code under any open license and continue development independently in case of a tightening of licensing policy, bankruptcy of the owner, or the cessation of project development.
The current agreement between the KDE Free Qt Foundation and the Qt Company also mandates that all changes to Qt be published under an open license, but allows for a publication delay of 12 months, which the Qt Company plans to exploit to increase its revenues.
This time lag was intended to be eliminated in the new version of the agreement, but a new contract could not be finalized. For its part, KDE was prepared to offer the Qt Company additional opportunities to increase revenue, such as the ability to deliver Qt kits with additional software and allowing integration with third-party proprietary applications. At the same time, KDE aimed to eliminate the incompatibility between the paid Qt license and regarding the use/development of Qt as an open product. The updated contract was also intended to address the issue of licensing compatibility for Qt Design Studio and activate the agreements related to Qt components for Wayland.
Additionally, it can be noted the corrective update of Qt 5.12.8 and the development plans for Qt for 2020. In May, the release of Qt 5.15 is expected, which will be LTS for commercial users, but the open version will be supported only until the next significant release, approximately six months. The release is anticipated at the end of the year .
Source: opennet.ru
