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Comment by w-m | Hacker News Reader

> From February onward, everyone, including open-source Qt users, will require valid Qt accounts to download Qt binary packages. We changed this because we think that a Qt account lets you make the best use of our services and contribute to Qt as an open-source user.

It is quite annoying to get these thinly-veiled pseudo-reasons for forcing people to login to get the download. Surely they just want to know names and affiliations of who downloads their open source versions.

That's understandable from a business perspective, but then please don't put some bullshit there about needing to register at download time to do code reviews and contribution.

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I initially scoffed at your comment, but I played it out in my head. "We changed this because we aim in the next few years to shift to a subscription-based model, and this is the first step required in the transition" really does sound a lot less condescending and makes sense.

What shift?

It's my understanding that Qt had subscription based model for a long time. Commercial Licenses are sold for time and developer seat.

That quote was just as an example. I don't really know what the business reasoning behind this change is.

It does explicitly state this in the blog:

"It also allows us to initiate a dialogue with commercial companies who mostly work with open-source versions of Qt."

Open source is free lunch. You pay for it by engaging with the community. So requiring nothing except a login for binaries, which does come at an actual cost for the company providing them, is a pretty fair deal.

Or put another way, we want relationships with our users. There's lots of ways that could play out, including money, but it's not surprising at all that a business wants to know who its customers and potential customers are. Next.

You are absolutely right, but in the light of how these "register to download" changes played out in almost every case we have every reason to be cynical IMO...

You want money. Next.

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