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Comment by dark-star | Hacker News Reader

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dark-star·

> it's licensing automatically takes it out of the table of most of all potential projects.

maybe consider licensing that "potential project" under a license that allows you to use the OpenSource Qt version?

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Seriously! That licensing is a feature for the public, not a bug. Make your project open source.

Or... comply with the LGPL with regard to dynamic linking and the other LGPL requirements and don't use any GPL'd components.

> Seriously! That licensing is a feature for the public, not a bug. Make your project open source.

It's ok for activists to feel that free software is the solution to every problem in the world, but back in the real world there are projects for which open source is not an option and parroting activist mantras is not helpful.

So why expect the library for free then? Saying open source is not an option but not being willing to pay for the licencing cost of the "commercial" Version is quite hypocritical no?

Not at all hypocritical. The people who authored the code release most of it under LGPL, the intention of which is to allow closed-source dynamic linking against the LGPL'd library. I didn't decide this. The users didn't decide this. The people who actually wrote the code decided this.

But people still complain that using it for free is too restrictive and want static linking and freedom to modify the sources and not share the changes, all for free.

So in the real world, you don't get to have that nice gui library for free if you aren't willing to reciprocate and offer your own source for free as well. How terrible.

What you're describing is obligations under GPL'd code, not LGPL'd code. Qt is mostly LGPL'd code.

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