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Comment by deng | Hacker News Reader

Heads up for anyone on a commercial license (this does not affect the LGPL-Version): Qt6 does not offer a perpetual license anymore, you need to switch to a subscription license. The catch is that you need a subscription license not only for development but also for distribution, meaning: you need to have a subscription for as long as you distribute your software with Qt6 under the commercial license!

Again: This only affects the commercial version! Nothing changes if you're using the LGPL version.

(Google translate/English): https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=https:/...

https://www.qt.io/faq/tag/subscription

EDIT: You also need a license if you only use your software with the commercial Qt6 license.

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I don't see a problem with a subscription model for development, but requiring a perpetual license as long as you distribute your Qt-reliant software is insane in my mind. The software is built. It's not getting any benefit from future Qt improvements or bug fixes.

It's amazing how many people in this thread are not only defending this, but talking about how great this licensing model is.

I'm guessing all these people have startups (or ideas for startups) that rely on gouging customers with never-ending subscription models.

I personally think subscription licensing models is the worst thing to happen to the software industry. I miss being able to purchase and own copies of software. I recently stopped using any Adobe apps and moved my entire workflow over to the Affinity suite. I prefer to support developers who don't rip-off their consumers

but requiring a perpetual license as long as you distribute your Qt-reliant software is insane in my mind

I'm an embedded Qt licensee. I don't get any of this at all and now I need to spend hours I don't have with my legal team understanding what the impact is. I suppose we're staying on 5.15 for the lifetime of the product I haven't even launched yet.

I mean, it's a given every time Qt pops up on HN a good 50% of the thread is sucked up with licensing questions and information/misinformation. Getting kind of tired of it all.

I don't think this is necessarily new with Qt 6.0. The details and pricing may have changed, but as far as I know, the commercial Qt Embedded product has always required a distribution license. This means you have to pay a royalty fee for each product that you sell that uses Qt. This is on top of the license you pay per developer to develop the software. If development is "done" but you are still distributing the product, presumably you would have had to pay the distribution license but could let the development license lapse. Has this changed with Qt 6?

I don't know yet, I'm putting in a call to my account rep.

What I do recall is that if you let the development license lapse, you're locked into whatever version was latest at the time. So I can't upgrade Qt on any in-field device updates which is usually just fine, especially if you managed to get to a decent LTS version, but any Qt bugfixes after that are off limits.

> as far as I know, the commercial Qt Embedded product has always required a distribution license

That is correct. These distribution licenses for shipping Qt with devices were never perpetual in the sense that you can ship as many devices with Qt as you want. But this was a separate license, which AFAIK you also could buy in bulk, which is totally OK. As far as I understand it, you now need a full subscription for distribution with the danger that prices may change any time.

I agree with the first paragraph of your post, but not the last. Software requires maintenance, it's not a one and done thing unless the application is trivial, or embedded in say a microwave oven. Subscription models reality better a majority of the time. Qt seems to have taken that a bit too far, however.

This. I shake my head every time Qt shows up in HN as an upvoted thread. Its licensing model is so antithetical to smart planning I find it unusable for any project.

I gave up ongoing fees for software components I use to develop with Borland Turbo C++. I am not going back now.

Any reason you can't use the LGPL license?

A fair question.

My interpretation is that I could switch to LGPL Qt for client software and keep my source code if I dynamically link to Qt.

I may be too strident as a commercial developer in my anti-LGPL 3 rhetoric, but my cloud-apps have been avoiding it assiduously. Client side, I should look for this kind of flexibility.

Even the GPL should not be a problem for you in the cloud, since you're not distributing the software, just provide a network interface to it. And the LGPL is even more forgiving. This web service use case is the reason for the AGPL, which does prescribe that even web services should open their code, should they use AGPL dependencies.

What are some good alternatives for native, cross-platform GUI applications? Qt used to be my preferred solution.

Flutter isn’t there yet (desktop support still in Alpha), but it might get there: https://flutter.dev/desktop

There is no alternative. No one other than Qt will expend the massive amount of effort to maintain such a thing. Everyone sees the writing on the wall with the new ARM Macs if it wasn't already apparent. Desktop applications are on their last leg. You will just write a mobile app and that will be backwards compatible with desktop automatically.

> You will just write a mobile app and that will be backwards compatible with desktop automatically.

A PWA? Sure. But a native app with seamless integration? No way.

Instead of Windows, macOS, and various Linux flavors, now you've got Windows, iOS, still macOS (for now), various Android versions, and various Linux flavors (including Chrome OS). Good luck!

(Depending on the type of app, you might also want or need to support various embedded devices or game consoles. I guess QT doesn't help there though.)

> But a native app with seamless integration? No way.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/apple_silicon/runn...

>>Desktop applications are on their last leg. You will just write a mobile app and that will be backwards compatible with desktop automatically.

I don't understand your point. In your opinion what's a mobile app that's "backwards compatible with desktop", and what makes that app not a desktop app?

A mobile app written in portable code that runs without emulation on a desktop.

The desktop OS would expose the same platform SDK as the mobile OS. (Needless to say, apps depending on the accelerometer, selfie cam, etc. for major functionality would not work.)

This is already the case with the latest generation of Macs. No speculation necessary. It's possible and has been done. Also Chromebooks can run Android apps.

What remains to be seen is when (not if) Windows would mimic what Apple did, as they have been doing for the past decades. I suppose the easiest way would be to run Android (and Google Play) on WSL. Android and Google Play can run on x86–no need for emulation. How clunky this turns out is how willing MS and Google are to work together.

In the end there will just be two platforms you would have to support as a GUI applications developer: iOS and Android.

I think the idea is that developers will forgo tradition desktop development when then can just create an ipad app that works incidentally on the desktop and iOS. Personally not convinced when Windows still owns the desktop.

Developers have already foregone traditional desktop development since webapps and Electron took over. Webapps are as incidental of a substitute for desktop applications as mobile apps that run on desktop would be. Companies don't volunteer for expen$$$ive development work just out of a sense of purity when it doesn't bring in any more money.

Windows still owns the desktop but they mimic Apple. Also since ca. 2008 the population under 30 has been mostly on Apple. Those people will get older and replace the generation that was brought up on Windows.

Things are changing but I,d argue not as much as you might think. Also Apple has little or no presence in many countries.

We phased out QT after hostile licensing e-mails.

Care to elaborate?

Qt has been changing hands a lot. I assume it’s a money black hole at this point. The future is Electron. I don’t like it either but this is the nail in the coffin of Qt.

You're right, Electron app. are ok... If there is only one in RAM !

On my 8 GB computer, I used to run in the same time :

- VsCode (700 MB)

- Teams (600 MB),

- PostMan (350 MB !? WTF)

- WhatsApp (consumes almost 600 MB after 1 hour !)

I had to switch to the web version for the last 3...

In contrast, running 25 torrents with qBitTorrent: ~25 mb.

Yeah, the Silly Valley bubble doesn't realize how the rest of the world lives. In my third world country they're still selling _new_ (straight from the factory, this year's models) laptops with 4 GBs of RAM. Most models still come with 8 GBs of RAM (and most of them cost above of what I make in a month, and I pull a relatively decent paycheck). You get the idea.

> In my third world country they're still selling _new_ (straight from the factory, this year's models) laptops with 4 GBs of RAM

I live in France and there are 4GB here too: https://www.ldlc.com/informatique/ordinateur-portable/pc-por...

hell, in one of the biggest online retailers, the second biggest category is 2 gigabytes (number in parentheses is the number of laptop models available with that ram amount)

https://imgur.com/a/LL8H7aP

If I run more than two "browsers" my laptop slows to a crawl (I am in the USA, but I don't have the money for fancy stuff), so I have to decide to run Firefox (main browser), Chromium (test browser), VSCODE (IDE "browser"), or one of the other 50 "browsers" I have installed. Usually I have to run all of the above 3 when working, so I end up using OS tools to "freeze" the process of whichever "browser" I am not using at the time, but it causes problems.

I would be super happy if I could run several similar engines under one main process, I don't care as much about security concerns when I'm developing my own software, and would not mind some "intraprocess security holes" if I could reduce my memory footprint like that and then turn it off when I want the "security holes" to be closed again.

It’s not as bad these days with SSDs

Actually it is, SSD does help a little bit with swapping for disk I/O if RAM gets full but in general keeping the app in RAM is much much faster than even SSD. Electron absolutely chews up RAM like crazy compared to just about every c++ based GUI I've ever used. I just thought I'd let you know that.

Yes, and stuff like pyside2 are pretty cool too (for people who don't like C++)

You could run WhatsApp on a browser instead of having another seperate chromium instance.

Yes, that's what I've done... (and not only it)

It is just to illustrate the fact that Electron, after all, might be a real problem for native app.

Whether one at a time is okay still depends on the app...

https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/22900

Hate to tell you, but 16Gb is a pretty much minimum now.

Running with 32 and looking for 64Gb laptop

2GB laptop here, I can run several qt5 applications, with Electron I would bring to its knees with just three.

Ripcord instead of Discord and Slack.

Or a bitlbee gateway + IRSSI.

Yeah if all text works for you doing a bridge through IRC is the way to go. I think weechat also has some add on for discord, slack, and element

Any of these is suffice but I thought it was nice adding a mention of a lightweight Qt application.

I can do this but cannot do that at the same time.

Having 2Gb is pretty limited

Yes it is true, but in terms of CPU, there is an issue too... (Lots of sub-processes by apps, means higher context switching, etc.)

And If I need 32GB and 16-CPU to run 5 or 6 apps...

Asimov was right after all :)

Why is it the minimum though? Have we ever thought of that? I have 8 GB and it is increasingly becoming a problem and I will have to upgrade just because I want to have a browser and IntelliJ open.

Yes, It reminds me when Java has been released for the first time.

The mantra was : "Yes, pretty slow but don't panic, in a couple of months better hardware will fix that" !!

Hate to tell you, but 8GB is quite common across IT departments in 2020.

Then people with 8Gb laptops are limited to what they could do.

Hardware matters more than people

Do you really wants to limit your folks in such way for something like $150?

$150 is one month salary in quite a few countries actually.

My personal laptop has 8 GB, is 10 years old by now, I am not limited in anything I care about.

In what world? In many parts of the world, the only machine people can afford have 4-8Gb RAM, And those machines cost a month pay.

So what? This is a business decision. You’re not likely to be a customer so why bother spending the effort?

Lol Electron? Yes the whole world wants ALL programs to be as shitty as the average webpage/webapp.

> you need to have a subscription for as long as you distribute your software with Qt6 under the commercial license!

Seems reasonable? As long as you're getting benefit from Qt by distributing software using it you need to keep paying for it?

If I buy a frying pan and open up a restaurant with it I don't have to keep paying the frying pan company so long as I use my pan to create meals. Subscriptions for software libraries and components weird me out much more than subscriptions for services and end-products (with recurring costs for the service providers) do.

But does that frying pan evolve new features or fixes while you have it and use it in your restaurant? Do you make requests to the manufacturer to make the handle bigger/smaller on the frying pan you own and use? Aren't there recurring costs in providing incremental updates to the software or support. Analogy sometimes seem perfect until you actually dissect them.

I feel like this is trivially resolved by selling a subscription to those additional services (e.g. for product updates or support agreements).

I'm just imagining a scenario where I build something with a subscription library and then 5 years down the line they get acquired by some private equity firm and increase the subscription cost by a factor of ten. Now I'm faced with a choice of either paying license ransom or losing the ability to use all of my own original software and creative effort.

Your approach doesn't allow the vendor to reach the critical mass required to keep a product updated and evolving. I for one appreciate products that evolve and improve.

Something like Qt or Photoshop does not need to “reach critical mass” - they actually did already do that while using a simpler licensing model. Which proves the “everything is SaaS” model is not necessary, but rather another way to extract more money from customers.

This is true, but I think people have forgotten just how expensive software was a generation ago. Photoshop in the pre-Cloud days was a $600+ program depending on where you got it, with upgrade pricing in the $150–200 range. Today, you can get a "Photography" Creative Cloud subscription with Photoshop and Lightroom for $120/year.

I'm not in love with "everything is SaaS," but I recognize that a lot of software businesses really want recurring revenue rather than a rush of orders -- many of which are lower-priced upgrades -- when new releases come out, then a trickle until the next for-pay release (which a subset of your existing customers won't upgrade to). And, in an era where a lot of people have come to see upfront prices of $99+ for applications as outrageously high -- and worse, have been trained by app stores to expect free upgrades indefinitely -- the old model may just not be sustainable.

> rather another way to extract more money from customers

This is just cynical!

The fact that numerous software projects with different pricing or licensing models exist that have reached critical mass and evolve and improve over time proves your point is factually incorrect.

Products grew and evolved perfectly fine under the old regime of perpetual licensing and paying for a new release

> I for one appreciate products that evolve and improve.

And I do not. Software updates are a huge pain in the ass for almost no benefit to me

A problem I see as an outsider is that perpetual licenses where one pays when upgrading encourages companies to stay on the older version (which may have exploitable bugs) to avoid shelling out again. It has to be added to the budget when needed. Subscriptions don’t have that problem as the company can update without paying anything new and can keep the payments in the budget as a recurring expense.

Both sides have their benefits, so to say one is worse than the other seems not right. It’d be nice if there was an option on which model you chose (for example, $5k/seat for perpetual single version or $300/month/seat for subscription), but alas, that’s not available.

> And I do not. Software updates are a huge pain in the ass for almost no benefit to me

Ah, but there is a benefit that you just don’t see: bug and security fixes. Your boss isn’t going to be happy if your company is hacked because your IT department didn’t want to spend effort updating (assuming that’s in the budget).

This obviously ignores 0-days, but there’s not much a downstream user can do there.

My problem is that subscriptions have crossed over into the consumer space to become a tax on whatever it is you use the software for.

Take photoshop... I'm not a professional graphic artist, and I have need for PS maybe once a year at most. Depending on the importance of that need and my desire to own the software it might justify a onetime purchase. But with their subscription model it just isn't worth it.

One of the things I liked about the old model was it put professional tools into the hands of amateurs if they were willing to save up their money. Now, instead, you pay a yearly tax that is not insignificant for no real gain

Oh absolutely. If one didn’t need the fancy new features of Adobe CS6, they could stay on CS5 as long as they wanted. But with CC, it’s a monthly fee regardless of if you use it at all that month.

But the flipside is that $10/month is a lot easier to stomach for most of the general public than a one time cost of $300+.

It’s why there’s monthly payment plans for everything expensive. $40/month for a (24 month) lease-to-own phone is a lot easier to budget for than a one time $900+tax purchase. But when I go to BestBuy or wherever, I have the option to choose the payment plan or upfront. Not with software.

Problem is Adobe's minimum contract length is a year. The monthly price quote is that price divided into months. After a year or two you could have afforded to outright buy it under the old regime.

They do have a monthly version which is a bit more expensive than the yearly-pay-monthly one they show. It’s hidden behind a click or two, but it’s there on the plan page. I know, because I considered it before choosing the yearly contract.

But yes, with subscriptions, it would be cheaper to buy it outright, but not everyone has that luxury. We can argue all day about whether people need Photoshop or whatever, but the best option (IMO) is to allow subscription and purchasing and let the user choose. Then those who can afford the $300+ up front can spend that while those with little disposable income can spend $10/month.

If there is no development, then the distributed software isn't using any of those new features and fixes.

They might come up with new features but I would need to reforge my pan in order to get them. If I don't need those features (wouldn't have bought the pan in the first place if I needed the features) then there's no need to do all that.

Judging by the FAQ, there's no commitment to 'evolve new features' or even 'receive fixes' in the licence. So the frying pan analogy is more accurate - one could end up paying again and again for no service at all.

While the FAQ says 'Maintenance is included', they phrase that as 'access to the latest version' and 'support'. That doesn't place any legal obligation on Qt to fix bugs.

Qt can leave Qt6 to rot, never update, and still get money from subscriptions. Or Qt could be busy with Qt7, and in order to receive said fixes one has to significantly invest and port the application.

Access to support means even less - they could automatically close all tickets and still techinically comply.

> But does that frying pan evolve new features or fixes while you have it and use it in your restaurant? Do you make requests to the manufacturer to make the handle bigger/smaller on the frying pan you own and use?

No, but neither does the version of Qt in the already compiled and being distributed software, and yet even if no more development is done and no new version of Qt is used, it sounds like the licensing fee still applies.

Does the frying pan go back and time and re-cook all the food using the new-fangled super important features? I don't see why the cost of new features must be borne by existing applications that don't necessarily benefit from it. Just imagine a product that is largely in maintenance mode, that QT license is just sucking money without value.

You're welcome to argue QT saves more time than its license costs, but I didn't find that to be the case. Also cmake sucks, no bazel support, lame. I have found the QT value proposition questionable at best and have largely abandoned it. YMMV.

Well, if the frying pan has bugs, customers are entitled to bug fixes, for free, from a legal PoV. After all, these are bugs ie. problems in the program.

New features, sure, ask money for that, fair enough.

Which is why I would be OK with Qt 6 having a new license model, as long as all bugs fixed in 6 are backported to previous stable (at least) ie. 5.x, without 5.x getting relicensed.

What country are you from where bug fixes are guaranteed to be free forever? I am not aware of any country in the Americas or Europe that guarantees that unless said company enters a contractual agreement to provide you with bug fixes for free forever?

Security and reliability fixes should be free for consumers in EU. Else the product is not compliant to law (warranty lasts longer than 2 years contrary to popular belief). That law does not get enforced is unfortunate.

Then when not offer a perpetual fallback license? If you want to ship your product with version 6.1 and don't want to pay more for 6.2, so long as you paid for 6 months of 6.1 you should be able to use it (without support) for as long as you want.

Works for JetBrains.

They only offered that as an olive branch to all the people that disliked the perpetual licensing scheme. I don't hold a lot of hope for more widespread adoption as the beancounters most likely perceive it as leaving money on the table.

As it should. Our industry seems to have normalized rent-seeking as status quo

A frying pan is owned property.

Software is copyright literature under licence.

Fair point. I'm personally not convinced that distinction is intrinsically meaningful rather than just legally and commercially convenient - especially in the case of libraries or programming languages. Qt is valueless as literature absent independent creative art that uses it to build a program - like screws in a piece of furniture. Charging people to use the component is fine by me, but making their own creative work contingent on third party approval that can be modified or revoked at any time seems unreasonable/immoral even if it's permitted by law.

You are conflating the IP of a company with the product people buy.

Let the authors enjoy reading their own creation. I'll pass.

Subscriptions are a perpetual source of revenue. They take your money for as long you use your product. There is nothing wrong with that.

Just because it's legal doesn't mean it's not a hug turnoff to potential customers. I'll pass and stick with other alternatives. I'd be happy to pay a large sum for the traditional "buy it, get free updates for a while, pay again for new updates after x months" but this "we own your software and you will pay forever", no thanks.

Subscriptions are much safer pricing models. You want apps, software etc. to be sold by subscription.

Why? Most businesses are not MS/etc. which have resilient multiple income streams. Many single-app companies either go under, or stop selling that app and so no longer update or support it.

A subscription model ensures that the developer always has a reliable app-specific income stream to justify investment & support.

A subscription model also flips ownership. You're only ever renting and the owner can take it back at any time (often at their discretion).

Jetbrain's model is a good middle ground - you get perpetual access to versions released while your sub was active.

This was the “old” subscription model for desktop software. It’s the model most software with yearly updates was sold under (MS Office, Jira, etc, etc) and was basically a yearly subscription (to get access to new versions) except that it guaranteed the developer would be creating yearly releases to make it worth adopting newer versions, while the “current” subscription model doesn’t particularly encourage a company to continue innovating and developing to ensure their products don’t stagnate. The only problem with the old “yearly release w/ lifetime per-version” licensing is that it didn’t encourage refactoring, under-the-hood improvements, etc and encouraged needless churn with UI, etc as “progress for the sake of progress” to make it more appealing to upgrade on a yearly basis.

Yep, I’ve served my years as a dev under that model too :)

Correction: You get perpetual access to the oldest version released during your 1 year subscription period.

My JB subscriptions expire at the end of this month, if I don't re-up, I have to downgrade to 2020.1 versions and forego all the improvements and bugfixes in 2020.2 and 2020.3 (2020.3 is the latest release, which I'm currently using).

Thanks, I didn’t realise that. They say you get 2020.2.x releases, so you’d hope fixes for show stopping bugs would be back ported. Probably nothing smaller though, which is a shame.

It's such a weird system. The common logic for subscriptions is that you are paying for ongoing maintenance and updates (which is absolutely fair vs a one-off purchase). But if my active subscription helped fund those improvements, I think I should be entitled to continue using them after my sub expires.

It's a good thing their products are top notch.

I guess they do it to discourage on/off subscriptions, which I get. Would be better if they gave a bonus for unbroken subscription instead.

The ownership relationship doesn't change. Non- subscription licenses can be revoked/terminated too.

How?

Through legal means.

That seems very rare/special case and unlikely. Also it doesn't seem like it would hold water in court.

Qt is also licensed via LGPL

But for how much longer will new versions be released? Since they own all copyrights to the software, it's relatively easy to drop LGPL at any point on newer releases.

Sure, if they don’t mind Qt automatically being relicensing under BSD

“The little known KDE Free Qt Foundation makes sure that Qt stays free and open-source. It guarantees that all Qt modules currently licensed under LGPLv3 must continue to be available under LGPLv3 in the future. This covers all modules from Qt Essentials and many add-on modules. If The Qt Company discontinued the FOSS version of Qt, the Foundation would have the right to make Qt available under the BSD license. This is a very powerful protection of free and open-source Qt.“

https://www.embeddeduse.com/2019/12/21/safe-guarding-the-lgp...

https://dot.kde.org/2016/01/13/qt-guaranteed-stay-free-and-o...

> You want apps, software etc. to be sold by subscription.

I want options. Don't tell me what I want.

There's a difference between "telling you what you want", and the sense here. In this case it just means, "it's in your interest"; as in, "you want to see this!".

In any case, "options" sounds good, but it is precisely this short-term economic logic I am claiming many misperceive as being in their interest.

There are many instances of apps (, libraries, etc.) simply disappearing and being frozen in old versions because of no revenue stream against them.

You may "want" something quite different 2yr after you've invested a massive amount in using Qt, only for there to be no future versions and your app becomes uncompetitive with others which are using increasingly modern libraries.

It's not in my interest if it costs me more and makes future planning more difficult.

The software subscription business is essentially a huge price hike masked by paying in installments.

>simply disappearing and being frozen in old versions because of no revenue stream against them.

It means that the new features in version X were not good enough to entice new buys or upgrades.

Subscription model is great - for the software companies. It's not a good model for consumers.

The current subscription model will end up being just like Fifa or Madden games, the same thing every year with minor changes because consumers are locked-in and have no alternative.

Yes, you really want to be at the mercy of some set of third parties, each one capable of bringing your business down. The more, the better.

None of them will ever abuse that dependency to take all of your profit. No, sir.

Safer for investors that is. Which are as likely to bring the business o an end by optimizations and acquisitions as running out of money is.

That's insane. Back in the day you bought Photoshop (a tool) and could use it forever. You bought a tool you could use.

Now you need a subscription to keep using your tool? You need permanent Internet access, to keep using your tool? You need t keep paying to access you files?

This is why Affinity Photo will probably end up taking more and more market share away from Adobe's products.

Personally I switched to the GIMP. I'm kind of proud I haven't felt the need to reinstall PS yet

It's taken like 15 years too long, but GIMP finally has 16-bit and 32-bit linear light color channel support. GIMP is pretty sweet.

You never bought Photoshop. You licensed it. They're changing the way the licence works, is all.

If you don't like it, keep using your old version under the old licence.

This is false. You are a victim of a propaganda campaign that seeks to undermine the correct legal definitions.

In most jurisdictions, buying a copy of Photoshop is the purchase of a good.

> In most jurisdictions, buying a copy of Photoshop is the purchase of a good.

This may be how you wish things were, but not how they actually are.

Read any software licence and see what you are actually getting for your money.

Old version of Photoshop (3.0, 4.0, ... CS5 up to CS6) gave you a license key you could sell. It didn't include a time limit. It was yours and you could sell it or use it forever. That's gone.

You can try to find old licenses for CS6, sure, but at some point, but it's a very different purchase and licensing system from what they have now.

Exactly a licence key - which you could transfer to someone else. You didn't own the software. You owned a licence to use it.

That's false. When one purchases a copy of a (book|software|video), one then owns that good.

A typical proprietary software licence text is irrelevant when it comes to terms of ownership, transfer of ownership, use of the good etc. as the law applies and determines "how [things] actually are". A contract, let alone a unilaterally dictated licence text, is legally unable to take away certain rights the consumer enjoys.

> Seems reasonable? As long as you're getting benefit from Qt by distributing software using it you need to keep paying for it?

No, the reasonable model (as someone how's shipped commercial libraries and researched the market) is that subscription gates support and future updates. So as long as the subscription is active you get updates, patches and support. Once it passes you're kept on old version. It's fair to the seller (keeps a steady revenue stream and most customers will want to keep the subscription for updates anyway) and fair to the customer (they can't be easily extorted with price hikes and their software doesn't get sabotaged by external subscription pricing).

The reasonable model is that the Qt company cannot be allowed to mess with the software their customers have developed and released, by requiring unexpectedly high fees or just terminating the license.

Why expect good faith and dependability with the precedent of their decision to screw KDE?

The problem is that you have no idea what they'll think is a reasonable license fee in 3 years (and that's not theoretical, Qt does change their mind on terms and fees regularly when there's another random sales target to meet). With the previous model, you only have that issue when you want to update, and know you can always ship what you currently have to your customers in the future at known cost.

I wonder if "cost lock-in" for 6.0 would make sense in this case? 7.0 is a new version with a new price? (or 6.1?)

This allows price increases with major changes.

"Free support for life" isn't sustainable, and striking the balance here is hard.

Change for support. If I am happy with the version I have and don't need support I gain nothing in a subscription model based licensing.

If they had anything valuable with actual recurring costs then they wouldn't be this desperate to force you into their subscription model.

> "Free support for life" isn't sustainable, and striking the balance here is hard.

Image-Line (makers of FLStudio) have been pulling it off for a couple of decades now...

"Celebrating Lifetime Free Updates for over 20 years" -- right on their front page

When I worked with Qt we built a product on top of Qt 4.8.4. Not 4.8.3, not 4.8.5. This was due to some very technical details, and the product was standalone and offline so updating wasn't a concern.

Why would we have to pay multiple times for the exact same piece of software, lines of code?

Also given that software is by default sold with defects (as it is "impossible" to write perfect software), it makes sense that the selling price includes, at least, future minor patches. I would consider them as the vendor covering for its own manufacturing defects (because that's what bugs are).

I agree however with charging for new features. That's fine and makes sense.

> Seems reasonable? As long as you're getting benefit from Qt by distributing software using it you need to keep paying for it?

Development, distribution and usage are different things. I don't have much of a problem with selling a subscription for the development environment, but for distribution and usage you should only need a (perpetual) runtime license, which you usually buy in bulk. AFAIK that's how QNX does it, for instance.

>"Seems reasonable?"

Maybe to you. To me it reads like: do not ever touch this tool to do anything that has even remote chance to go commercial.

Ironically, it’s easier if you don’t pay Qt and just use it as LGPL: ship it unmodified, distribuite Qt sources unmodified on request, and go your merry way.

This is theoretical for me. I am small company and have no time/desire/money for lawyers to decipher all those intricacies of LGPL (also they say that some stuff there is GPL). I prefer to pay reasonable one time fee for permanent license and upgrade when I feel it is needed.

These perpetual licenses are capitalism run amok. No one has an issue with subscriptions these days, but you should be able still compile and distribute your software without paying them into perpetuity if you're not worried about their latest and greatest. I'm just waiting for them to end LGPL in the next few years and why I don't use it any more. I use wxwidgets. Which I don't like as much but it gets the job done and I'm not doing anything fancy.

>Seems reasonable?

Yes. I dont quite understand what's the fuss here. So someone please explain to me like I am five.

QT 6 decide to charge money, in this case a commercial license for commercial usage. i.e If your software is making some money using QT6, you will have to pay. Otherwise you can happy use the LGPL License. Seems fair. You might disagree with its pricing, depending on your business model, And may be that business model would not be a good match / fit for using QT6.

But so far all the comments seems to be against the company charging anything. Why?

The root comment explicitly is about a change in the commercial (paid) licensing model, so no, the subthread is not about "charging anything".

> If your software is making some money using QT6, you will have to pay. Otherwise you can happy use the LGPL License

Nope, you can make a commercial closed-source application that links against LGPL-licensed library. Also, the source code model has nothing to do with "making money". For example, Qt is certainly "making money" with their source code, but did you know that the WebView component in Qt is actually COPIED from Apple's Safari WebKit source code? Yes! So they are STEALING Apple LGPL source code and making money with it! And what more, Apple Safari certainly runs on iPhones and Apple if someone is certainly making some big $$$!

You seem to have misunderstood what changed. No, Qt did not change the licensing terms to charge for "making money" with Qt. They just made more of their previously free support functions exclusive to paying licensees.

> Nope, you can make a commercial closed-source application that links against LGPL-licensed library.

So in this case, you'd have to package the software so it doesn't include Qt (in an RPM/deb) so it pulls in the system Qt? Or on Windows, provide them a link so they can download that component manually?

Almost every comment in this thread against the subscription licensing model is addressing a legitimate issue. This comment is not—it's misinformation/FUD. That's not how the LGPL works. The cavalier attitude of people who just utterly make up bullshit, like what's in the comment above, is something that we should have a lot less tolerance for.

I always forget exactly what is permissible with the LGPL, but isn’t it the case that the whole point is that using a LGPL library doesn’t “infect” your program?

Generally it means you can't (in this case) mess with the Qt Libraries, you use them as is, and link to them dynamically. You do NOT have to release your source code, however you do have to provide Qt source (libraries) to anyone who requests them from you to whom you "have distributed" your software to (paid or unpaid), whether you provided a download link or DVD or usb drive, etc. If you someone received your software outside of your distribution channel you can tell them to go pound sand though since you didn't distribute to them directly and they got a copy through some other means.

No. It just means you have to ship Qt unmodified and provide sources to Qt on request.

oh .... well then what's the point of a commercial license? You'd only need it if you customize the original Qt source code and don't use it as-is, right? Or if you want support beyond forums/mailing lists?

Yes, but customizing and patching is not that uncommon for commercial software (Qt is used a lot in the embedded space, for example, where patching and shaving away is common).

Also, businesses do pay for support as insurance; say tomorrow Windows patches something that screws up a bit of Qt your product depends on, what are you going to do? Waiting for a reply on a random mailing list and hoping someone has time to fix it, is not going to cut it.

As usual support and there are some libraries in the Qt Umbrella of source code that ARE NOT LGPL and you can't use those for distribution unless you pay for the commercial license.

Like 5 year old? Well, I have consulting business and sell solutions based on QT5. I can not use QT6, because it is impossible to buy a license for QT6.

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