What is the license of Qt platform (Qt libraries, QT Creator, Designer, Linguist etc) after Digia bought it from Nokia?
Is it still LGPL? Are they planning to enforce their own commercial license? Or will there be three versions of it (GPL/LGPL/Commercial)?
Taken from the Digia's Qt Commercial Blog
Committed to both commercial and open-source licensing
Since we
acquired the commercial licensing business of Qt a bit more than a
year ago the Digia Qt R&D team has been hard at work developing and
releasing not only new and updated features and functions for Qt
Commercial customers, but also working together with the Qt Project
building and releasing both the commercial and LGPL releases,
contributing documentation, bug fixes and improvements mainly to the
desktop and embedded platforms.
...
With this acquisition Digia will have an increasing responsibility to
the global Qt community, not just the commercial licensing business.
We believe in the power of the Qt dual license. It is a great value
for Qt that it can be used under an open source and commercial
license, since customers have different needs and the licenses have
different purposes. Digia wants to continue the good co-operation with
different individual contributors and companies working together in
the Qt Project. We also are committed to continuing the special
relationship Qt has with the KDE community via the KDE Free Qt
Foundation. We believe that this symbiosis is valuable for everyone
involved.
...
We want to work with the entire Qt ecosystem through
the Qt Project to make sure that Qt will continue to thrive both under
commercial and open-source licenses.
Sounds like they want to keep things running the way they are and focus on making the commercial and open source communities even stronger.
Related
My question is interesting. I'm learning QT Framework with C++ but I wonder a topic. I'm writing a project and want to publish it under the GPL license. In this case, do I have to pay a fee for my QT?
Please answer me. Thanks..
I'm writing a project and want to publish it under the GPL license. In this case, do I have to pay a fee for my QT?
No.
Qt is triply-licensed (details) under GPLv2/GPLv3, LGPLv3 (free) and a commercial license (paid); as long as you use the GPL version, you are in the clear even if you distribute your application as a "derived work".
That being said, you can always use the LGPLv3 version of Qt for free in an application with pretty much any other license (including commercial ones) as long as you link dynamically against it or provide the means to the user to re-link your application with his own version of Qt and your application's license doesn't place requirements incompatible with the LGPLv3 (which apparently is the case for GPLv2).
I have a questions with regards to using Webkit as a component in a Windows application. I know there are options for embedding a browser, but they are overkill for my needs.
Looking at the WebKit licensing page, it seems that the licenses are permissible; the traditional BSD license and the Library GPL license, the latter of which allows me to distribute my application as "work that uses the library". This is also stated here. However, I've found several posts (including on Stackoverflow, such as this one) that say that Apple has some proprietary code in there which doesn't allow its redistribution. Is this an inconsistency, or am I missing something?
There are two WebKit Windows ports at the moment:
AppleWin port
WinCairo port
WebKit itself is licensed under LGPL and BSDL.
But, AppleWin port uses Apple's proprietary WebKit Support Library.
This can't be redistributed.
https://developer.apple.com/opensource/internet/webkit_sptlib_agree.html
I found a few websites to download the Qt SDK:
Nokia.com
Qt-Project.org
Digia.com
I can't guess which one is the official SDK. The one from Nokia is even above 1GB, but the one from Qt-Project is only a few hundred MB. And the last one from Digia requires a purchase.
Nokia used to own Qt, so that was the official place to get it.
qt-project.org is where you will find the open source licensed versions and source code.
The commercial part was sold to Digia. If you want a commercial license, that would be your location.
Basically ignore the Nokia stuff now, and choose the appropriate package for your needs, whether it is just the libraries, or the complete SDK including Qt Creator and the extra dev tools.
The Qt SDK delivers a complete toolset for Symbian, MeeGo, and desktop apps. It's a bundle package for various platforms. Old versions from Nokia.
This is the open source version. Each platform in a different package.
This is the commercial version from Digia.com.
If you are using open source, (2) is the official version.
I would start using C++ and develop commercials application with GUI. I found Qt libraries and seem that are good for my software.
I saw that Qt has LGPL license, I read that the license allow the developer to create an application and release it with different license, but I don't understand if at the moment I can develop a commercial C++ windows application (closed source) with Qt WITHOUT pay for the Commercial license.
Could someone clarify this point?
Thank you!
The LGPL licence means you can use Qt in a commercial application if, and only if, you dynamically link to it. That means using a DLL (or equivalent for your platform) rather than a static library. As long as you do this you can apply whatever licence you like to your actual application.
Look at the Wikipedia article for more information on the LGPL.
if you do so, you have to provide a way to get the source of the libraries under lgpl you are using.
I want to make a nice simple gui using c++. which have drag and drop capabilities, must be light weight. Im thinking of a gui like utorrent client gui.Its light weight and simple.
please give me information about most easy to use libraries / ide /plugin (on windows platform may be good).
Either use QT or wxWidgets. Both are free to use, but QT uses more advanced features of C++ and is used slightly more than wxWidgets (From what I have seen) and has the backing of Nokia.
Both have various gui editors. QT has a QT Creator and there is a list of tools on the wxWiki, which includes a lot of open source RAD gui designers.
I have experience of using wxWidgets in both C++ and Python, and would recommend wxFormBuilder as a GUI designer.
The downside to both is they feel the need to use their own string classes etc which duplicates the functionality of the stl. From what I understand is that this is because when the projects were started there wasn't a standard.
Qt seems to be the most natural choice for your requirements. It has a complete SDK which includes a GUI builder (Qt Designer), an IDE (Qt Creator), internationalization tools and comprehensive documentation. It can also be integrated with such IDEs as Eclipse and MSVS.
In addition to GUI libraries, it has lots of utility classes including containers, facilities for working with file system, processes, XML-data and databases, etc. So you can write the code only once and it will work on every platform supported by Qt, you'll just need to recompile it.
If it seems a little too stodgy at first glance, you may rebuild the Qt libraries from source to include only those modules you actually need.
P.S. I wouldn't suggest using MFC. It's just doesn't worth the effort when you have a more friendly and easy-to-grasp choice.
I would go with QT.
Some of the PROs:
Free as in "free beer"
Free as in "free speech"
Multiplatform (Windows, Linux, Mac OS)
Natively written in C++
Easy to use
In my opinion, some of the CONs:
If you are only targeting Windows platform, you might get better looking (and faster?) UIs with MFC (Microsoft Foundation Classes)
Yet another vote for Qt. I am using it since about 8 years for now (EDA branch) and it works out very good.