Official Statement from Qt Project
To support continuous growth necessary for maintaining Qt's relevance as a development platform, Qt Company believes it is essential to make some changes:
- A Qt account will be required to install Qt binary files
- Long-term support (LTS) releases and offline installers will only be available for commercial licensees
- A new Qt offering for startups and small businesses will be available for $499 per year
These changes will not affect existing commercial licenses.
About the Qt Account
Since the introduction of the Qt account, the number of registered Qt users has been steadily growing and now nearly reaches a million.
Starting in February, everyone, including Qt users utilizing open-source versions, will need Qt accounts to download Qt binary packages. This is required to maximize the use of various services, and also to allow open-source users to help improve Qt in some way, whether through bug reports, forums, code reviews, or similar means. Currently, all of this is only accessible from the Qt account, so having one will become mandatory.
The Qt account also provides users access to Qt Marketplace, which offers the ability to purchase and distribute plugins for the entire Qt ecosystem from a centralized platform.
This will also allow Qt Company to establish connections with commercial companies that primarily work with open-source versions of Qt.
Note that the source code will still be available without a Qt account!
LTS versions and offline installers will become commercial
Starting with Qt 5.15, long-term support (LTS) will only be available for commercial versions. This means that users with the open-source version will receive patch versions 5.15 until the next additional release is available.
Qt Company is making this change to encourage users with the open-source version to quickly adopt new versions. This helps establish the feedback that Qt Company can receive from the community and improves support for LTS versions.
LTS releases are supported and operate for a longer period of time to ensure stability. This makes LTS releases an ideal choice for companies whose operations are based on a specific release and rely on it for an extended duration in accordance with expectations. Additional advantages include top-notch support, exclusive development tools, useful components, and build tools that reduce time to market.
Major releases outside of LTS versions, which include new features, technical reviews, and so on, will be available to all users.
The offline installer will also become exclusively commercial. It has been established that this feature is quite beneficial for companies, making commercial licenses more attractive for businesses without significantly inconveniencing users of the open-source version.
Conclusion
Qt Company is committed to Open Source now and in the future, investing more in it than ever before. Qt Company believes that these changes are necessary for their business model and the Qt ecosystem as a whole. The role of the community is still very important, and Qt Company wants to ensure that it can continue to invest in it. Qt Company intends to make the paid version of Qt more appealing for businesses, while not depriving users of the free version of essential functionalities. Revenue from commercial licenses goes towards enhancing Qt for everyone, including users of the open-source versions. So, while you may or may not lose some convenience in the short term, Qt Company wants everyone to benefit in the long run!
Supplement
At OpenNet raised the following issue regarding the fact that LTS releases will no longer be present in the open-source version, as well as its possible solution:
Distributors with long-term support (RHEL, Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint, SUSE) will be forced to either deliver outdated officially unsupported releases, manually porting bug fixes and vulnerabilities, or continuously upgrade to new major versions of Qt, which is unlikely as it could lead to unforeseen issues in Qt applications delivered with the distribution. The community may possibly organize support for its own LTS branches of Qt, independent from Qt Company.
Source: linux.org.ru
