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Comment by dekerta | Hacker News Reader

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

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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.

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