samjh
January 15th, 2009, 08:56 AM
Official media release:
http://www.qtsoftware.com/about/news/lgpl-license-option-added-to-qt
FAQ's and other resources about the new licensing plan:
http://www.qtsoftware.com/about/licensing
Most of us have already read the news, I think.
This has got to be one of the - if not the - biggest development in FOSS this year. There has been a lot of scepticism about Nokia's commitment toward Qt's open source edition, but this news has definitely cemented their commitment.
So what will be the repercussions?
It has been said that the reason for commercial adoption of Gnome as the corporate desktop of choice is because of GTK's liberal license. Now that Qt will be released under a equally liberal license, will KDE be recognised as a corporate desktop of choice too?
How will Qt's LGPL licensing affect independent developers who have been forced to use alternative toolkits because of Qt's expensive commercial license fees? Will there be a flood of new closed-source Qt apps, or will the market remain fairly steady?
What will be the future landscape in mobile device applications? Will Nokia's competitors feel more comfortable about using Qt, thanks to the LPGL, or will they continue to be wary of Nokia's influence on Qt's development?
How will the FOSS community at large react? Will there be more FOSS projects developed using Qt? FOSS projects would not have been affected by Qt's commercial licensing fees, so how much difference - if any - will the LGPL make?
And finally, Nokia will be introducing a more open development process with greater involvement by external contributors than before. How quickly will the FOSS community embrace the new development model? How long will it take until the FOSS community at large feel comfortable enough with Qt's codebase to begin making substantial improvements?
Let the analysis, discussions, and purely speculative rants begin! :)
http://www.qtsoftware.com/about/news/lgpl-license-option-added-to-qt
FAQ's and other resources about the new licensing plan:
http://www.qtsoftware.com/about/licensing
Most of us have already read the news, I think.
This has got to be one of the - if not the - biggest development in FOSS this year. There has been a lot of scepticism about Nokia's commitment toward Qt's open source edition, but this news has definitely cemented their commitment.
So what will be the repercussions?
It has been said that the reason for commercial adoption of Gnome as the corporate desktop of choice is because of GTK's liberal license. Now that Qt will be released under a equally liberal license, will KDE be recognised as a corporate desktop of choice too?
How will Qt's LGPL licensing affect independent developers who have been forced to use alternative toolkits because of Qt's expensive commercial license fees? Will there be a flood of new closed-source Qt apps, or will the market remain fairly steady?
What will be the future landscape in mobile device applications? Will Nokia's competitors feel more comfortable about using Qt, thanks to the LPGL, or will they continue to be wary of Nokia's influence on Qt's development?
How will the FOSS community at large react? Will there be more FOSS projects developed using Qt? FOSS projects would not have been affected by Qt's commercial licensing fees, so how much difference - if any - will the LGPL make?
And finally, Nokia will be introducing a more open development process with greater involvement by external contributors than before. How quickly will the FOSS community embrace the new development model? How long will it take until the FOSS community at large feel comfortable enough with Qt's codebase to begin making substantial improvements?
Let the analysis, discussions, and purely speculative rants begin! :)