On 12/11/2017 06:44 AM, [email protected] wrote:
Sales are there to sale stuff. Not to provide you free consultations about
Open Source software, its licensing, etc. For these things you should
use different communication channels: mailing lists and IRC.
Your first statement would be correct if and only if Digia/Qt were
strictly a commercial software company, but they are not. They are
selling commercial versions of an OpenSource project. Thus, when one
contacts them the burden is on them to explain what is and isn't covered
by the OpenSource license. They do not do this. They simply tell you
__everything__ needs a commercial license. At least until you get a
really big and nasty group of lawyers involved then suddenly almost
nothing needs a license. Funny how that works out, eh?
(Also, if someone has little experience with open source, but is not
limited in money, bying commercial license is indeed might be an
adequate solution)
If one is not limited in money they do what pretty much every company
I've run into, sans one, has done. They take an abandoned version of Qt
OpenSource (if the version you need hasn't been abandoned, just wait 15
minutes and it will be) and maintain it themselves. The cost is far
cheaper than a license. These companies don't give a rat's rotted behind
about what the latest idiot phone can or cannot do. They are building
user interfaces for medical, industrial and defense industry devices. Qt
seems to only care about phones these days.
The problem with the licensing is they've adopted the model which put
nearly every late 1980s through mid-1990s software company out of
business. Royalties. You cannot spend $500-$1000 for a single seat
license and churn out whatever you want for whatever client royalty
free. There is a per unit royalty fee on everything you make. According
to some I've spoken with, it is everything you make whether it sells or not.
Maintaining your own local fork becomes extremely cost effective when
you partner with an unrelated or complimentary business. None of these
companies use QML or will they ever. It's a worthless resource hog. None
of these companies need whatever Apple does this week or even last decade.
If you follow this list you will note that I have posted about getting
emails every 12-18 months from this Harman whatever "consulting" firm
about doing Qt 3 and OS/2 work for a medical device. Why? Because minor
changes go through a much shorter and far less costly FDA approval
process. Major changes go through new product testing which requires, in
many cases, up to 7 years of double blind clinical trials. Same is true
on the defense side. Minor tweaks requested by the DOD have a much
shorter test and approval path than a major change which requires full
field testing and quite literally blowing hundreds, sometimes thousands
of units up.
So, having two or more employees share the duties of maintaining a code
base which will get only minor enhancements is a far better and more
cost effective option.
While it is true these firms will never upgrade the Qt version of any
particular product line, it is also true they would almost all pay a one
time $500-$1000 per floating seat license IF AND ONLY IF, the one
selling them that license would agree to make whatever tweaks they
needed to that particular version in a timely manner.
The commercial side of Qt appears only interested in chasing the fruit
flies. Those phones which seem to live for 7 days and die. Businesses
which make things that are actually worth having need a minimum of 12
years stability, not constantly shifting sand.
Oddly enough the sand is about to shift under Qt. Google is abandoning
Android and Ubuntu is abandoning Linux. Both are pursuing their own
forks of Fuchsia (sp?). Microsoft is even abandoning Windows,
buying/acquiring/whatever the Linux formerly known as Ubuntu. A very
near future release will be like Apple, just a front end on an
OpenSource OS. Microsoft is doing it for legal reasons. All of those
companies making headlines with data breaches and identity theft are
going to start suing commercial software vendors to recoup damages and
possibly make some money. If all of the weak security parts are
OpenSource, they can't be successfully sued.
--
Roland Hughes, President
Logikal Solutions
(630)-205-1593
http://www.theminimumyouneedtoknow.com
http://www.infiniteexposure.net
http://www.johnsmith-book.com
http://www.logikalblog.com
http://www.interestingauthors.com/blog
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