Looks like the #Qt devs are using COVID-19 as an excuse to effectively make Qt proprietary software.
"last week, the company suddenly informed both the #KDE e.V. board and the KDE Free QT Foundation that the economic outlook caused by the Corona virus puts more pressure on them to increase short-term revenue. As a result, they are thinking about restricting ALL Qt releases to paid license holders for the first 12 months"
A year in the software world is eternity, may as well not release it.
@MatejLach Maybe, as an open, huge community, it would be good to consider options how to help the Qt devs (doing this kind of work full-time for a living) survive economically and still provide their work both "libre" and "gratis"?
@MatejLach I wonder which problems they might see or anticipate at the moment, I only still see a big problem here in funding FLOSS at a point where professional developers (that need to earn a living this way) are involved. Knowing this is funded by the same company selling proprietary licenses to proprietary customers is pretty painful - FLOSS financially depending upon non-free revenue? That's odd.
@z428 I agree. FLOSS sustainability is a problem that needs serious solutions. Maybe a "Silver"/"Gold"/"Platinum" etc. sponsorship model as employed by the likes of #Blender could work.
I'd imagine there's commercial customers that are concerned about this, since FLOSS is a major testing ground for new Qt features before they make it to the LTS releases commercial businesses tend to use.
I'd like this to be funded entirely by the community, but that's probably a much longer-term goal.
@z428
I'd agree except I don't necessity believe the Qt Company is as cash strapped as they claim to be.
Their stock, (QTCOM), is actually up massively over the past month, as software companies are generally one of the least affected when it comes to the fallout from COVID-19.
Their revenue for last year is also massively up, (up 51.8%).
Most importantly, the FLOSS community contributes about half of the changes that make it to Qt.
Why should only the Qt Company benefit?
@ajuvo