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SubCore is offline SubCore
2009-12-11 , 12:23
Posts: 850 | Thanked: 626 times | Joined on Sep 2009 @ Vienna, Austria
#11
this table from the link VDVsx provided sums it up nicely:
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kaz911 is offline kaz911
2009-12-11 , 14:31
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#12
it still leaves me lukewarm to which option is the right one. Once you start on one track - you can't change.

I would still vote for a $99 or $199,- commercial license that covers the mobile platforms. :-) I would rather go that way - than end up finding out we start something on LGPL - and then need to something that only the commercial license can provide for. You might not even know before you have really learned QT - if it is the "right" platform or not.
 

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christexaport is offline christexaport
2009-12-11 , 14:43
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#13
Glad you guys stepped in. I'm new to all this legalese, and not a developer. I do work with alot of developers, and had this question asked for a project that sounds perfect for Qt.

If I'm hearing right, as long as I'm using the standard libraries of Qt embedded into the supported platforms, it is free, but if you add new libraries or edit any of those present, and don't want to share it, it costs?

Am I getting the right idea, basically? Trying to understand this so I can explain to my collegue. Many developers are confused about this very thing, and so am I.
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attila77 is offline attila77
2009-12-11 , 14:43
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#14
In what way is this less clear than forking out $199, investing time & effort and then discovering your application is not 'acceptable' for the Appstore ? The delineation between LGPL and commercial licenses is VERY clear. It's not the LGPL limiting your options, but the commercial extending them. With the Apple SDK you basically got what you roughly have (from a commercial viewpoint) with the LGPL, except you have to pay for it and don't get the source With the commercial license you actually adapt the framework to your needs - good luck with that in the Apple world
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Rob1n is offline Rob1n
2009-12-11 , 14:44
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#15
I'm not sure what the issue is here - yes, the commercial license is more expensive than Xcode for the iPhone. But with Xcode do you actually get the full Xcode source and the ability to change and redistribute it? If not, you're paying that cost for exactly the same rights as you get for free with the LGPL Qt library.
 

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qgil is offline qgil
2009-12-11 , 14:46
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#16
You keep missing concepts, I'm afraid. Qt libraries are and will be available in Maemo licensed as LGPL.

Then you develop your application on top of Qt that is yours and only yours, and you decide whether it has a proprietary license or an open one. Qt is not conditioning in any way.

It would condition you only if you would be shipping a huge binary with Qt libraries inside, statically linked. But I can't come up with any good reason why an application developer would like to do that in Maemo.

Said that, if you really want to pay Nokia some money for developing a Qt application... well, be my guest.
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SubCore is offline SubCore
2009-12-11 , 14:47
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#17
Originally Posted by kaz911 View Post
I would still vote for a $99 or $199,- commercial license that covers the mobile platforms. :-) I would rather go that way - than end up finding out we start something on LGPL - and then need to something that only the commercial license can provide for.
and what might that be?

the only "something" a commercial license is needed for is redistributing Qt changes without source code.

this should never be needed by most developers (or do you regularly modify the frameworks you're building upon? )


by the way:
as far as i understand it, the commercial XCode IDE for 99$ (which actually is the "iPhone Developer Program fee") is comparable to the LGPL licensing scheme offered by Qt. you can create commercial applications and link dynamically to the system libraries.

but: Apple doesn't offer anything similar to the commercial Qt license, because Apple doesn't give you the possibility to change the underlying frameworks.


edit:
i take too long writing, others have already pointed all that out -.-
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Rob1n is offline Rob1n
2009-12-11 , 14:48
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#18
Originally Posted by christexaport View Post
Glad you guys stepped in. I'm new to all this legalese, and not a developer. I do work with alot of developers, and had this question asked for a project that sounds perfect for Qt.

If I'm hearing right, as long as I'm using the standard libraries of Qt embedded into the supported platforms, it is free, but if you add new libraries or edit any of those present, and don't want to share it, it costs?

Am I getting the right idea, basically? Trying to understand this so I can explain to my collegue. Many developers are confused about this very thing, and so am I.
You should be able to add your own libraries without any issue - as long as you're not statically linking Qt in (and there's really no reason to do this), or modifying the Qt source (which you're unlikely to need to do - and are unable to do with most commercial toolkits), then the LGPL license will be fine. You can add your own subclasses of Qt objects, etc. within your own library/program without any problem.
 

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christexaport is offline christexaport
2009-12-11 , 16:41
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#19
OOoooooh! OK.

So in layman's terms, all of the Qt goodness is present in the supported OS. You can write code that runs on those rails free of charge via LGPL, which to me means license to use, not distribute the framework, basically. If I want to edit the rails or ship them with my app, I need to pay for a commercial license. Which is cool since no one lets you edit the rails on any other OS anyway.

Dude, why on earth don't the iPhone developers run as fast as possible towards this opportunity? Looks like you could start a nice software company using Qt alone...
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TA-t3 is offline TA-t3
2009-12-11 , 16:52
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#20
If you by 'rails' mean QT, then, no, you don't need a commercial license to edit QT and/or ship them with the application. You only need a commercial license if you add to QT or edit QT (because you can, you get the source), to support your application's special needs, and for some reason you don't want to share those QT changes with the folks you sell or give your application to. If you're perfectly fine with sharing your QT changes, and you just want to keep secret the source of your own, QT-using application, then you don't need the commercial license. This is what the LGPL is for, so you just choose that one.
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