Official statement from Qt Project
To support the continued growth needed to keep Qt relevant as a development platform, Qt Company feels it is necessary to make some changes:
- Installing the Qt binaries will require a Qt account
- Long Term Support (LTS) releases and the offline installer will only be available to commercial licensees
- New Qt Offering for Startups and Small Businesses Coming for $499/Year
These changes will not have any effect on existing commercial licenses.
About the account
Since the introduction of the Qt account, the number of registered Qt users has grown steadily, and today reaches almost a million.
Starting in February, everyone, including Qt users using open source versions, will need Qt accounts to download binary Qt packages. This is to be able to make the best use of the various services, as well as to enable open source users to help improve Qt in one way or another, whether through bug reports, forums, code reviews, or the like. Currently, all of this is only available from a Qt account, so it will become mandatory.
The Qt account also grants users access to Qt Marketplace, which offers the ability to acquire and distribute plugins for the entire Qt ecosystem from one centralized platform.
This will also allow the Qt Company to connect with commercial companies that mainly work with open-source versions of Qt.
Note that the sources will still be available without a Qt account!
LTS versions and offline installer will become commercial
Starting with Qt 5.15, Long Term Support (LTS) will only be available for commercial versions. This means that open-source users will continue to receive fix versions 5.15 until the next minor release becomes available.
Qt Company is making this change to encourage open-source users to adopt new versions quickly. This helps improve the feedback that Qt Company can get from the community and improve support for LTS versions.
LTS releases are supported and run for a longer period of time to ensure stability. This makes LTS releases an ideal choice for companies that rely on a particular release for a long time and rely on it to meet expectations. Additional benefits include top-notch support, exclusive development tools, useful components and build tools that reduce time to market.
Major releases outside of LTS versions, including new features, technical reviews, and so on, will be available to all users.
The offline installer will also become commercial only. This feature has been found to be very useful for companies, making commercial licenses more attractive to businesses without significant inconvenience to open-source users.
Conclusion
Qt Company is committed to Open Source now and into the future, with more investment now than ever. The Qt Company believes that these changes are necessary for their business model and for the Qt ecosystem as a whole. The role of the community is still very important, and Qt Company wants to make sure it can still invest in it. Qt Company intends to make the paid version of Qt more attractive for business, while at the same time not taking away the main functionality from users of the free version. The income from commercial licenses goes to improve Qt for everyone, including users with open-source versions. So while you may or may not lose a little convenience in the short term, Qt Company wants everyone to gain in the long term!
Addition
On the open net voiced the following issue related to the fact that LTS releases will no longer be present in the open-source version, as well as its possible solution:
Developers of distributions with long support periods (RHEL, Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, SUSE) will either be forced to ship outdated, officially unsupported releases by porting bug fixes and vulnerabilities themselves, or to constantly update to new major versions of Qt, which is unlikely, since can lead to unforeseen problems in Qt applications supplied with the distribution. Perhaps the community will jointly organize support for their own LTS branches of Qt, which do not depend on the Qt Company.
Source: linux.org.ru