QT considering keeping new releases closed for 12 months

[Dave Yeo]

Seems we're in danger of losing one of the benefits that the new web browser will bring, namely timely security updates. KDE is considering forking the project but realistically this would likely be untenable.
KDE discussion, https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-community/2020q2/006098.html?print=cGh4
Discussion from the Qute (a QTWebEngine browser) take on it. https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-community/2020q2/006121.html
And Qt's response, https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Qt-Open-Source-Statement

[Martin Iturbide]

Hi

I read that the issue is that "the Qt Company" (TQtC) is in discussions to turn Qt under paid subscription
(Source: New Qt releases possibly restricted to paying customers for 12 months, KDE not particularly happy). KDE seems to be heavily using Qt these days and maybe that is why they want to fork it.

I don't think this harm the ongoing project of porting the browser to OS/2 now, but we need to have an eye on what is going to happen with the Qt project in the future, and if it turns into payware possible it will be needed to evaluate the KDE fork. But that depends on how everything turns out.

Regards

[Olafur Gunnlaugsson]

KDE seems to be heavily using Qt these days and maybe that is why they want to fork it.

KDE was based on QT even before QT became an open source project back in the 90's as it was the only generic OO C/C++ library available for Linux at the time, in fact the availability of QT was the inspiration for KDE. There is no realistic alternative for them, the whole shebang relies on QT and needs to be re-written from scratch if they want to get off it. A fork is also not a good idea long term.

This makes no difference to the OS/2 port, open source projects will continue to use the open source version of QT and commercial vendors are unlikely to target OS/2.

[Joop]

If you are looking around with several software vendors then you see everywhere this kind of structure popping up. The problem is that everything is already written, there is not really completely new software. Sounds may be strange, but it ends all in a few models which are around from the beginning. So the earn-model is drying up, people and business buy once a program, register it and that's it. You could see that with Windows. So now the next thing is that you can't buy it anymore, but you have to register and pay every year some kind of fee, like it was a magazine. Its already done with Windows, Office in different forms, Java, only OpenJDK is still free, but for how long? Next QT and after that the next firm which see its income going down. The question will be if this is a bad thing?

[David Graser]

It always appeared to me that they were making changes to programs and not getting any benefits out of it.  They primarily change the layout which was intuitive to non intuitive and then I must relearn where the menus are located.  Microsoft is one of the worlds worst.  In an earlier version, I might have to make one, possibly two mouse clicks to do what I needed to do.  With the new layout I might be making 3 or more mouse mouse clicks to do what I need to do stating it was more user friendly.  They are notorious for changing the last extension.