KDE project developers a shift in the development of the Qt framework towards a limited commercial product developed without interaction with the community. In addition to the previously adopted After delivering the LTS version of Qt only under a commercial license, the Qt Company is considering the possibility of switching to a Qt distribution model in which all releases for the first 12 months will be distributed only to commercial license users. The Qt Company notified the KDE eV organization, which oversees the development of KDE, of this intention.
If the discussed plan is implemented, the community will be able to access new versions of Qt only a year after their actual release. In practice, such a decision will put an end to the possibility of community participation in the development of Qt and making decisions related to the project, which were once provided by Nokia as part of the initiative . The need to increase short-term income in order to stay afloat as a result of the crisis caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus pandemic is mentioned as a motive for a possible increase in the commercialization of the project.
The KDE developers hope that the Qt Company will change their minds, but they are not discounting a possible threat to the community that Qt and KDE developers need to prepare for. When speaking with the governing board of the KDE eV organization, Qt representatives expressed a willingness to reconsider their intentions, but demanded certain concessions in other areas in return. However, similar negotiations to renew the contract were carried out six months ago, but the Qt Company suddenly interrupted them and limited LTS releases of Qt.
It is noted that cooperation between the KDE community, the Qt Project organization and the Qt Company has so far been close and mutually beneficial. The benefit for the Qt Company was the formation of a large and healthy community around Qt, including application developers, third-party Qt contributors, and experts. For the KDE community, the collaboration was a beneficial opportunity to use an off-the-shelf Qt product and directly participate in its development. The Qt Project benefited from having a company making huge contributions to the development and having a large community supporting the project.
If the decision to restrict access to Qt releases is approved, then such cooperation will be terminated.
The KDE project has hedged against the possibility of Qt becoming a completely proprietary product through the KDE Free Qt Foundation, which was created to protect the community from possible changes in policy regarding the delivery of Qt as a free product. An agreement concluded in 1998 between the KDE Free Qt Foundation and Trolltech, which applies to all future owners of Qt, gives the KDE project the right to relicense the Qt code under any open license and continue development on its own in the event of a tightening of licensing policies, bankruptcy of the owner, or termination of the project's development.
The current agreement between the KDE Free Qt Foundation and the Qt Company also obliges all changes to Qt to be published under an open license, but allows for a publication delay of 12 months, which the Qt Company intends to take advantage of to increase its income.
They intended to exclude this time lag in the new version of the agreement, but a new agreement could not be agreed upon. For its part, KDE was willing to provide the Qt Company with additional opportunities to increase revenue, such as the ability to ship Qt kits with additional software and the ability to integrate with third-party proprietary applications. At the same time, KDE sought to eliminate the incompatibility between the paid Qt licenses and on using/developing Qt as an open source product. Also in the updated agreement it was planned to solve the problem of licensing compatibility of Qt Design Studio and include Qt components for Wayland in the agreement.
Additionally, it can be noted corrective update Qt 5.12.8 and Qt development plans for 2020. In May, it is planned to release Qt 5.15, which will be LTS for commercial users, but will be supported in open form only until the next significant release is formed, i.e. about six months. Release expected at the end of the year .
Source: opennet.ru