Re: [Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt Commercial developers

[Tuukka Turunen]

Hi,

To me your example does not sound problematic assuming that your application is 
like a typical app - a clearly different thing than the store that sells apps 
(the store sells a lot of different apps and your is in no way relevant for 
operating the store etc).

Also, for any particular real case at hand, you can ask if something is allowed 
for you or not.

Yours,

Tuukka 


On 31.3.2020, 23.15, "Interest on behalf of Krzysztof Kawa" 
 wrote:

> The key point is: The Qt Company, just like Trolltech initially and other 
companies in between, does not want mixing open-source Qt and commercial Qt.
> Reason is simple: if mixing was allowed, many companies would use it to 
pay less for their use of Qt.
> It is unfortunate that also real open-source projects may be affected in 
some cases. Majority of users are not affected in any way.

This got me thinking about quite a simple case that doesn't seem so
simple now: Lets say I make a game using open-source licensed Qt, or
even just open-source licensed Qt Creator. After few years of
development I decide to publish the game. It just so happens that my
publisher has a storefront app using commercial Qt or even just
written in Qt Creator under commercial license. To put my app in their
store there's usually some API, config file or whatever that
technically makes it mixing the two, even if not through Qt based
interface. Does that mean I can't publish my app in that store? If
that's the case then this pretty much makes Qt dead for any sort of
game development because there's no possible way to know which
publishers are gonna use what tech and under what license by the time
you ship. Same thing goes for any app distributed through external
stores I guess and I know at least few that use Qt.
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Re: [Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt Commercial developers

[Tuukka Turunen]

Hi,

This disclaimer is because every case can be a bit special. We are trying to 
avoid a case where someone clearly violates the license and then comes with 
explanation, because N.N. said years ago that ABCDC is ok. 

The basic rules are simple:
- If you use Qt under open-source, check what LGPL and GPL (in case you use 
that) require you to do
- If you use Qt under commercial license, check what the commercial license 
agreement says, and ask in case it is not clear
- If you are involved in situation where both open-source and commercial Qt is 
used, do not mix them 

I think our licensing FAQ is quite clear, but I am naturally biased. 

Yours,

Tuukka

On 31.3.2020, 22.57, "Interest on behalf of Bernhard Lindner" 
 
wrote:

Hi Tuukka!

> I have also tried to explain these, but your tone feels rather 
aggressive. I do not
> understand what makes you say: “Even a solo developer needs to hire a 
lawyer before
> touching anything Qt-related.” 

Because this is what users hear in MLs and forums, when they ask about Qt 
licensing
issues. The recurring answer is: "don't know, don't understand, hire a 
lawer". 

And because this is written in your FAQ: "It is always recommended to 
contact a lawyer
familiar with open source licenses for a full review of your project to 
determine whether
you can fulfill all of the obligations of applicable open source licenses".

-- 
Best Regards,
Bernhard Lindner

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Re: [Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt Commercial developers

[Tuukka Turunen]

Hi,

Note that I am not a lawyer, and also note that a generic comment may not be 
applicable in a specific case. If there is a company who wants to clarify their 
usage of Qt, it is best done by directly talking about that case. Remember, 
that the restriction on mixing is only relevant when Qt is commercially 
licensed.

That said, see comments inline below. Hopefully this clarifies, and does not 
confuse more.

Yours,

Tuukka

From: Jean-Michaël Celerier 
Date: Tuesday 31. March 2020 at 22.02
To: Tuukka Turunen 
Cc: Jérôme Godbout , "interest@qt-project.org" 

Subject: Re: [Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt Commercial 
developers

Regarding 5.  :

>  Large company F is creating a product with Qt under commercial license. Part 
> of the work is subcontracted to Company G that uses Qt under commercial 
> license. Company G subcontracts some of the work further to low-cost Company 
> H, who uses Qt under open-source license. This is not allowed.

Could you clarify these cases :
1/ Is "Qt under open-source license" limited to the downloads on 
qt.io, or any software code related to Qt ?

TTT: In the case of mixing, what matters is the content of the commercial 
license agreement, i.e. what items have been licensed commercially. Typically 
Qt Creator is included, for example.

1/ a. Does this also cover people doing apt-get install qtcreator on Debian or 
brew install qtcreator on macOS

TTT: It does not matter how the open-source version of Qt (or any part of it) 
is acquired.

1/ b. Does this also cover forks of Qt ? say, company H builds a plug-in using 
Copperspice for the software ordered by company F. Does company H need to take 
a Qt license ?

TTT: To my understanding, yes as long as the fork contains parts of what has 
been commercially licensed (or their earlier versions).

1/ c. Does this also cover WebKit / Blink engines, which come from KHTML, which 
was developed at some point in the past with open-source Qt and thus every 
software using a derivative of WebKit on earth ? (electron, chrome, microsoft 
edge, etc)... eg. if I, as company H, ship an electron app in the context of 
the project of company F (say, the electron app is opened when a button is 
pressed in the app developed by company F), do I also need to get a Qt license ?

TTT: The upstream 3rd party copyright parts no, the Qt parts yes.

And, if the answer to c. is "no", how is that different from company H 
"subcontracting" by developing a library with open-source Qt, putting it on the 
Qt market place, and having company G download it and integrate it to its 
project ?

Thanks for your answers so far,
Jean-Michaël

On Tue, Mar 31, 2020 at 7:32 PM Tuukka Turunen 
mailto:tuukka.turu...@qt.io>> wrote:

Hi Jérôme et al,

This thread has long ago left the original question and become a discussion 
about Qt licensing in general and especially about the point of not mixing 
commercial Qt with open-source version of Qt.

The key point is: The Qt Company, just like Trolltech initially and other 
companies in between, does not want mixing open-source Qt and commercial Qt.

Reason is simple: if mixing was allowed, many companies would use it to pay 
less for their use of Qt.

It is unfortunate that also real open-source projects may be affected in some 
cases. Majority of users are not affected in any way.

It is also unfortunate if licensing is felt to be so complex that it is better 
to use some other technology. Commercial licensing of Qt is quite flexible and 
it is also possible to negotiate and ask for advice in case it is unclear what 
is allowed and what not.

Here are some examples that hopefully clarify the point about mixing 
open-source and commercial:

Example 1: Company A has 10 developers creating a product. 5 of them use Qt 
under commercial license and 5 do not use Qt at all. This is ok.

Example 2: Company B has 10 developers creating a product. 5 of them use Qt 
under open-source license and 5 do not use Qt at all. This is ok.

Example 3: Company C has 10 developers creating a product. 5 of them use Qt 
under commercial license and 5 use Qt under open-source license. This is not 
allowed.

Example 4: Large company D is creating a product with Qt under commercial 
license. Part of the work is subcontracted to Company E that uses Qt under 
commercial license. This is ok.

Example 5: Large company F is creating a product with Qt under commercial 
license. Part of the work is subcontracted to Company G that uses Qt under 
commercial license. Company G subcontracts some of the work further to low-cost 
Company H, who uses Qt under open-source license. This is not allowed.

Example 6: Company I is building two independent products with separate 
development teams. One development team uses Qt under commercial license to 
create product 1 and the other development team uses Qt under open-source 
license to create product 2. This is ok.

Hopefully I was able to clarify the topic 

Re: [Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt Commercial developers

[Krzysztof Kawa]

> The key point is: The Qt Company, just like Trolltech initially and other 
> companies in between, does not want mixing open-source Qt and commercial Qt.
> Reason is simple: if mixing was allowed, many companies would use it to pay 
> less for their use of Qt.
> It is unfortunate that also real open-source projects may be affected in some 
> cases. Majority of users are not affected in any way.

This got me thinking about quite a simple case that doesn't seem so
simple now: Lets say I make a game using open-source licensed Qt, or
even just open-source licensed Qt Creator. After few years of
development I decide to publish the game. It just so happens that my
publisher has a storefront app using commercial Qt or even just
written in Qt Creator under commercial license. To put my app in their
store there's usually some API, config file or whatever that
technically makes it mixing the two, even if not through Qt based
interface. Does that mean I can't publish my app in that store? If
that's the case then this pretty much makes Qt dead for any sort of
game development because there's no possible way to know which
publishers are gonna use what tech and under what license by the time
you ship. Same thing goes for any app distributed through external
stores I guess and I know at least few that use Qt.
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Re: [Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt Commercial developers

[Konstantin Tokarev]

31.03.2020, 22:57, "Bernhard Lindner" :
> Hi Tuukka!
>
>>  I have also tried to explain these, but your tone feels rather aggressive. 
>> I do not
>>  understand what makes you say: “Even a solo developer needs to hire a 
>> lawyer before
>>  touching anything Qt-related.”
>
> Because this is what users hear in MLs and forums, when they ask about Qt 
> licensing
> issues. The recurring answer is: "don't know, don't understand, hire a lawer".
>
> And because this is written in your FAQ: "It is always recommended to contact 
> a lawyer
> familiar with open source licenses for a full review of your project to 
> determine whether
> you can fulfill all of the obligations of applicable open source licenses".

Actually, situation with commercial license turns out to be even more 
complicated than
with open source. Open source licensing is at least well-understood by lawyers 
and
doesn't affect what each department or employee in the company is doing, only 
what
end products are shipped.

-- 
Regards,
Konstantin

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Re: [Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt Commercial developers

[Bernhard Lindner]

Hi Tuukka!

> I have also tried to explain these, but your tone feels rather aggressive. I 
> do not
> understand what makes you say: “Even a solo developer needs to hire a lawyer 
> before
> touching anything Qt-related.” 

Because this is what users hear in MLs and forums, when they ask about Qt 
licensing
issues. The recurring answer is: "don't know, don't understand, hire a lawer". 

And because this is written in your FAQ: "It is always recommended to contact a 
lawyer
familiar with open source licenses for a full review of your project to 
determine whether
you can fulfill all of the obligations of applicable open source licenses".

-- 
Best Regards,
Bernhard Lindner

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Re: [Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt Commercial developers

[Jean-Michaël Celerier]

Regarding 5.  :

>  Large company F is creating a product with Qt under commercial license.
Part of the work is subcontracted to Company G that uses Qt under
commercial license. Company G subcontracts some of the work further to
low-cost Company H, who uses Qt under open-source license. This is not
allowed.

Could you clarify these cases :
1/ Is "Qt under open-source license" limited to the downloads on qt.io, or
any software code related to Qt ?
1/ a. Does this also cover people doing apt-get install qtcreator on Debian
or brew install qtcreator on macOS
1/ b. Does this also cover forks of Qt ? say, company H builds a plug-in
using Copperspice for the software ordered by company F. Does company H
need to take a Qt license ?
1/ c. Does this also cover WebKit / Blink engines, which come from KHTML,
which was developed at some point in the past with open-source Qt and thus
every software using a derivative of WebKit on earth ? (electron, chrome,
microsoft edge, etc)... eg. if I, as company H, ship an electron app in the
context of the project of company F (say, the electron app is opened when a
button is pressed in the app developed by company F), do I also need to get
a Qt license ?

And, if the answer to c. is "no", how is that different from company H
"subcontracting" by developing a library with open-source Qt, putting it on
the Qt market place, and having company G download it and integrate it to
its project ?

Thanks for your answers so far,
Jean-Michaël

On Tue, Mar 31, 2020 at 7:32 PM Tuukka Turunen  wrote:

>
>
> Hi Jérôme et al,
>
>
>
> This thread has long ago left the original question and become a
> discussion about Qt licensing in general and especially about the point of
> not mixing commercial Qt with open-source version of Qt.
>
>
>
> The key point is: The Qt Company, just like Trolltech initially and other
> companies in between, does not want mixing open-source Qt and commercial
> Qt.
>
>
>
> Reason is simple: if mixing was allowed, many companies would use it to
> pay less for their use of Qt.
>
>
>
> It is unfortunate that also real open-source projects may be affected in
> some cases. Majority of users are not affected in any way.
>
>
>
> It is also unfortunate if licensing is felt to be so complex that it is
> better to use some other technology. Commercial licensing of Qt is quite
> flexible and it is also possible to negotiate and ask for advice in case it
> is unclear what is allowed and what not.
>
>
>
> Here are some examples that hopefully clarify the point about mixing
> open-source and commercial:
>
>
>
> Example 1: Company A has 10 developers creating a product. 5 of them use
> Qt under commercial license and 5 do not use Qt at all. This is ok.
>
>
>
> Example 2: Company B has 10 developers creating a product. 5 of them use
> Qt under open-source license and 5 do not use Qt at all. This is ok.
>
>
>
> Example 3: Company C has 10 developers creating a product. 5 of them use
> Qt under commercial license and 5 use Qt under open-source license. This is
> not allowed.
>
>
>
> Example 4: Large company D is creating a product with Qt under commercial
> license. Part of the work is subcontracted to Company E that uses Qt under
> commercial license. This is ok.
>
>
>
> Example 5: Large company F is creating a product with Qt under commercial
> license. Part of the work is subcontracted to Company G that uses Qt under
> commercial license. Company G subcontracts some of the work further to
> low-cost Company H, who uses Qt under open-source license. This is not
> allowed.
>
>
>
> Example 6: Company I is building two independent products with separate
> development teams. One development team uses Qt under commercial license to
> create product 1 and the other development team uses Qt under open-source
> license to create product 2. This is ok.
>
>
>
> Hopefully I was able to clarify the topic with these examples. The Qt
> Company wants to provide Qt under open-source license. There is no mega
> corporation with deep pockets behind. Development of Qt is funded with the
> revenues gained from commercial licensing.
>
>
>
> Yours,
>
>
>
> Tuukka
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From: *Jérôme Godbout 
> *Date: *Tuesday 31. March 2020 at 17.56
> *To: *Tuukka Turunen , Andy 
> *Cc: *"interest@qt-project.org" 
> *Subject: *RE: [Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt
> Commercial developers
>
>
>
> Hi,
>
> the mix is not a corner case, it’s the reality of many people around. We
> are a services compagnie, and this is really a headache to understand where
> it should fall since we do project for client but we are a single cie. The
> license of Qt have is such an ambiguity and our lawyer recommend (not even
> sure himself where we do fall) we avoid using it as much as we can given
> the context we are in. When a client have commercial license, we ask them
> to use their infrastructure and avoid having any commercial license on
> premise (we cannot take any chance). If you think 

Re: [Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt Commercial developers

[Elvis Stansvik]

Den tis 31 mars 2020 kl 20:46 skrev Elvis Stansvik :
>
> Den tis 31 mars 2020 kl 20:40 skrev Giuseppe D'Angelo via Interest
> :
> >
> > Il 31/03/20 20:34, Elvis Stansvik ha scritto:
> > > Do you see the absurdity? For me as manager at F, to be sure we're not
> > > breaking the contract with Frob, we would have to stipulate our
> > > contract with G not only that they themselves stick with paid-support
> > > Frob tools, but that they in turn must stipulate the same in their
> > > contracts with any H type subcontractors.
> > >
> > > And you think this will encourage people to pick commercial Qt?
> >
> > Without such a clause, you could easily incorporate a wholly owned
> > subsidiary, make it do all the development as "contractors" using Open
> > Source Qt, get the finished product back, slap it under Commercial Qt
> > and enjoy the benefits of the commercial terms without having paid for
> > it during the development. That's what the clause is protecting against.
>
> Sure, I understand what it's protecting against. With all the
> confusion in the thread, I don't think anyone is confused about that.
> I just think it's an absurd protection.-

And, with the risk of running my analogy into the ridiculous, this
would rather be as if F was buying say floor tiles (== Qt) from Frob,
and the jackhammer (== Qt Creator) H was using happened to be made by
Frob as well.

Elvis

>
> Elvis
>
> >
> > My 2 c,
> > --
> > Giuseppe D'Angelo | giuseppe.dang...@kdab.com | Senior Software Engineer
> > KDAB (France) S.A.S., a KDAB Group company
> > Tel. France +33 (0)4 90 84 08 53, http://www.kdab.com
> > KDAB - The Qt, C++ and OpenGL Experts
> >
> > ___
> > Interest mailing list
> > Interest@qt-project.org
> > https://lists.qt-project.org/listinfo/interest
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Re: [Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt Commercial developers

[Elvis Stansvik]

Den tis 31 mars 2020 kl 20:40 skrev Giuseppe D'Angelo via Interest
:
>
> Il 31/03/20 20:34, Elvis Stansvik ha scritto:
> > Do you see the absurdity? For me as manager at F, to be sure we're not
> > breaking the contract with Frob, we would have to stipulate our
> > contract with G not only that they themselves stick with paid-support
> > Frob tools, but that they in turn must stipulate the same in their
> > contracts with any H type subcontractors.
> >
> > And you think this will encourage people to pick commercial Qt?
>
> Without such a clause, you could easily incorporate a wholly owned
> subsidiary, make it do all the development as "contractors" using Open
> Source Qt, get the finished product back, slap it under Commercial Qt
> and enjoy the benefits of the commercial terms without having paid for
> it during the development. That's what the clause is protecting against.

Sure, I understand what it's protecting against. With all the
confusion in the thread, I don't think anyone is confused about that.
I just think it's an absurd protection.

Elvis

>
> My 2 c,
> --
> Giuseppe D'Angelo | giuseppe.dang...@kdab.com | Senior Software Engineer
> KDAB (France) S.A.S., a KDAB Group company
> Tel. France +33 (0)4 90 84 08 53, http://www.kdab.com
> KDAB - The Qt, C++ and OpenGL Experts
>
> ___
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Re: [Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt Commercial developers

[Giuseppe D'Angelo via Interest]

Il 31/03/20 20:34, Elvis Stansvik ha scritto:

Do you see the absurdity? For me as manager at F, to be sure we're not
breaking the contract with Frob, we would have to stipulate our
contract with G not only that they themselves stick with paid-support
Frob tools, but that they in turn must stipulate the same in their
contracts with any H type subcontractors.

And you think this will encourage people to pick commercial Qt?


Without such a clause, you could easily incorporate a wholly owned 
subsidiary, make it do all the development as "contractors" using Open 
Source Qt, get the finished product back, slap it under Commercial Qt 
and enjoy the benefits of the commercial terms without having paid for 
it during the development. That's what the clause is protecting against.


My 2 c,
--
Giuseppe D'Angelo | giuseppe.dang...@kdab.com | Senior Software Engineer
KDAB (France) S.A.S., a KDAB Group company
Tel. France +33 (0)4 90 84 08 53, http://www.kdab.com
KDAB - The Qt, C++ and OpenGL Experts



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Re: [Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt Commercial developers

[Elvis Stansvik]

Den tis 31 mars 2020 kl 19:32 skrev Tuukka Turunen :
>
>
>
> Hi Jérôme et al,
>
>
>
> This thread has long ago left the original question and become a discussion 
> about Qt licensing in general and especially about the point of not mixing 
> commercial Qt with open-source version of Qt.
>
>
>
> The key point is: The Qt Company, just like Trolltech initially and other 
> companies in between, does not want mixing open-source Qt and commercial Qt.
>
>
>
> Reason is simple: if mixing was allowed, many companies would use it to pay 
> less for their use of Qt.
>
>
>
> It is unfortunate that also real open-source projects may be affected in some 
> cases. Majority of users are not affected in any way.
>
>
>
> It is also unfortunate if licensing is felt to be so complex that it is 
> better to use some other technology. Commercial licensing of Qt is quite 
> flexible and it is also possible to negotiate and ask for advice in case it 
> is unclear what is allowed and what not.
>
>
>
> Here are some examples that hopefully clarify the point about mixing 
> open-source and commercial:
>
>
>
> Example 1: Company A has 10 developers creating a product. 5 of them use Qt 
> under commercial license and 5 do not use Qt at all. This is ok.
>
>
>
> Example 2: Company B has 10 developers creating a product. 5 of them use Qt 
> under open-source license and 5 do not use Qt at all. This is ok.
>
>
>
> Example 3: Company C has 10 developers creating a product. 5 of them use Qt 
> under commercial license and 5 use Qt under open-source license. This is not 
> allowed.
>
>
>
> Example 4: Large company D is creating a product with Qt under commercial 
> license. Part of the work is subcontracted to Company E that uses Qt under 
> commercial license. This is ok.
>
>
>
> Example 5: Large company F is creating a product with Qt under commercial 
> license. Part of the work is subcontracted to Company G that uses Qt under 
> commercial license. Company G subcontracts some of the work further to 
> low-cost Company H, who uses Qt under open-source license. This is not 
> allowed.

I'm sorry, but you cannot be serious.

My company F owns a mall and decide to do some renovating of the
bottom floor, using our own staff for the renovation. We use a suite
of power tools from company Frob Inc, where we've decided to go with
the more expensive option which includes support from Frob if they
fail. After a while, we decide we cannot finish the renovation in time
and subcontract some of the demolition work required to external
contractor G. They too use Frob tools with paid support. Some time
into the demolition, several people at G quit their jobs, and the
manager at G decide to hire some folks from H, who use happen to use
one single Frob tool (say a jackhammer), but have not gone with the
paid support option. Now my company F is infringing the contract with
Frob.

Do you see the absurdity? For me as manager at F, to be sure we're not
breaking the contract with Frob, we would have to stipulate our
contract with G not only that they themselves stick with paid-support
Frob tools, but that they in turn must stipulate the same in their
contracts with any H type subcontractors.

And you think this will encourage people to pick commercial Qt?

Elvis

>
>
>
> Example 6: Company I is building two independent products with separate 
> development teams. One development team uses Qt under commercial license to 
> create product 1 and the other development team uses Qt under open-source 
> license to create product 2. This is ok.
>
>
>
> Hopefully I was able to clarify the topic with these examples. The Qt Company 
> wants to provide Qt under open-source license. There is no mega corporation 
> with deep pockets behind. Development of Qt is funded with the revenues 
> gained from commercial licensing.
>
>
>
> Yours,
>
>
>
> Tuukka
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> From: Jérôme Godbout 
> Date: Tuesday 31. March 2020 at 17.56
> To: Tuukka Turunen , Andy 
> Cc: "interest@qt-project.org" 
> Subject: RE: [Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt Commercial 
> developers
>
>
>
> Hi,
>
> the mix is not a corner case, it’s the reality of many people around. We are 
> a services compagnie, and this is really a headache to understand where it 
> should fall since we do project for client but we are a single cie. The 
> license of Qt have is such an ambiguity and our lawyer recommend (not even 
> sure himself where we do fall) we avoid using it as much as we can given the 
> context we are in. When a client have commercial license, we ask them to use 
> their infrastructure and avoid having any commercial license on premise (we 
> cannot take any chance). If you think your licensing is clear and make it 
> easy, it ain’t, we do more and more Xamarin, just for license reason not 
> because we like it.  I continue Qt mostly on hobby, really like Qml and where 
> the binding in C++ is heading. But for my work job, Qt is fading out.
>
>
>
> The departure 

Re: [Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt Commercial developers

[Konstantin Tokarev]

31.03.2020, 20:34, "Tuukka Turunen" :
> Hi Jérôme et al,
>
> This thread has long ago left the original question and become a discussion 
> about Qt licensing in general and especially about the point of not mixing 
> commercial Qt with open-source version of Qt.
>
> The key point is: The Qt Company, just like Trolltech initially and other 
> companies in between, does not want mixing open-source Qt and commercial Qt.
>
> Reason is simple: if mixing was allowed, many companies would use it to pay 
> less for their use of Qt.
>
> It is unfortunate that also real open-source projects may be affected in some 
> cases. Majority of users are not affected in any way.
>
> It is also unfortunate if licensing is felt to be so complex that it is 
> better to use some other technology. Commercial licensing of Qt is quite 
> flexible and it is also possible to negotiate and ask for advice in case it 
> is unclear what is allowed and what not.
>
> Here are some examples that hopefully clarify the point about mixing 
> open-source and commercial:
>
> Example 1: Company A has 10 developers creating a product. 5 of them use Qt 
> under commercial license and 5 do not use Qt at all. This is ok.
>
> Example 2: Company B has 10 developers creating a product. 5 of them use Qt 
> under open-source license and 5 do not use Qt at all. This is ok.
>
> Example 3: Company C has 10 developers creating a product. 5 of them use Qt 
> under commercial license and 5 use Qt under open-source license. This is not 
> allowed.
>
> Example 4: Large company D is creating a product with Qt under commercial 
> license. Part of the work is subcontracted to Company E that uses Qt under 
> commercial license. This is ok.
>
> Example 5: Large company F is creating a product with Qt under commercial 
> license. Part of the work is subcontracted to Company G that uses Qt under 
> commercial license. Company G subcontracts some of the work further to 
> low-cost Company H, who uses Qt under open-source license. This is not 
> allowed.
>
> Example 6: Company I is building two independent products with separate 
> development teams. One development team uses Qt under commercial license to 
> create product 1 and the other development team uses Qt under open-source 
> license to create product 2. This is ok.
>
> Hopefully I was able to clarify the topic with these examples. The Qt Company 
> wants to provide Qt under open-source license. There is no mega corporation 
> with deep pockets behind. Development of Qt is funded with the revenues 
> gained from commercial licensing.

Hi,

I think this is a kind of explanation which deserves to be in official FAQ.

You should also consider adding flowchart or interactive questionary which 
would show people if their use cases are ok or not after they answer a series 
of questions about their conditions. Otherwise some people might still end up 
with impression that licensing terms are unclear (or even intentionally vague).

-- 
Regards,
Konstantin
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Re: [Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt Commercial developers

[Francis Herne]

> ...
>
> Example 6: Company I is building two independent products with separate
> development teams. One development team uses Qt under commercial license to
> create product 1 and the other development team uses Qt under open-source
> license to create product 2. This is ok.
 
> Hopefully I was able to clarify the topic with these examples. The Qt
> Company wants to provide Qt under open-source license. There is no mega
> corporation with deep pockets behind. Development of Qt is funded with the
> revenues gained from commercial licensing.
 
> Yours,
> 
> Tuukka

Dear Tuukka,

Thank you for the clear examples.

If I'd seen this email before writing my previous one, it would have been less 
grouchy!

That said, could you explain how Example 6 is permitted under the licensing 
terms, given the section I quoted in the other email which appears to prohibit 
this without allowance for separate projects?

Thanks again,
 - Francis H


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Re: [Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt, Commercial developers

[Francis Herne]

On Tuesday, 31 March 2020 18:02:15 BST Tuukka Turunen wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I apologise, if I have been unclear with words 'company' and project'. If
> you read the license agreement and faq behind the links I have posted
> multiple times, it should be rather clear what is meant. 
 
> Yours,
> 
>   Tuukka

Dear Tukka,

Frankly, I think you're arguing in bad faith here. It's patently obvious from 
every response in this thread that the Qt Company's position is *not* clear to 
anyone outside the company.

The FAQ doesn't address the project/company distinction at all, and linking 
20,000 words of legalese in "answer" to a boolean question is just a refusal 
to give a straight answer.

Having looked through said document, the relevant sections seem to be:

> 1. ... “Prohibited Combination” shall mean any means to (i) use, combine, 
incorporate, link or integrate Licensed Software with any software created 
with or incorporating Open Source Qt, (ii) use Licensed Software for creation 
of any software created with or incorporating Open Source Qt, or (iii) 
incorporate or integrate Applications into a hardware device or product other 
than a Device. ...

Can't use licensed Qt Creator to develop open-source Qt apps; ok.

> 3.4 [viii]: Licensee shall not and shall cause that its Affiliates or 
Contractors shall not use Licensed Software in any Prohibited Combination, 
unless Licensee has received an advance written permission from The Qt Company 
to do so.

Can't use licensed and GPL Qt in the same project; ok.

> Absent such written permission, any and all distribution by the Licensee 
during the Term of a hardware device or product a) which incorporate or 
integrate any part of Licensed Software or Open Source Qt; or b) where the 
main user interface or substantial functionality is provided by software built 
with Licensed Software or Open Source Qt or otherwise depends on the Licensed 
Software or Open Source Qt, shall be considered to be Device distribution 
under this Agreement and shall be dependent on Licensee’s compliance thereof 
(including but not limited to obligation to pay applicable License Fees for 
such distribution).

It's unclear here whether this should be read as "hardware (device or 
product)" or "(hardware device) or product". Could you please clarify the 
intent?

Taking the latter, more pessimistic reading there's no project/company 
distinction; any entity licensing Qt can't distribute the GPL version in any 
'product' which I believe would include open-source projects. Hard luck Thiago 
et al!

> Notwithstanding what is provided above in this sub-section (viii), Licensee 
is entitled to use and combine Qt 3D Studio and/or Qt Design Studio with Open 
Source Qt (“Permitted Combination”) for its internal evaluation purposes, 
provided that Licensee shall in no way transfer, publish, disclose, display or 
otherwise make available any software or work resulting from such Permitted 
Combination;

This exception doesn't cover Qt Creator, and would be in the opposite 
direction to the original question anyway.


So the answer is "no".

In general, the only "clear" policy is that The Qt Company deliberately 
obfuscates the conditions under which the GPL version can be used, to put 
people off exercising the rights that do exist.

This goes along with the general downplaying of, and FUD about, the GPL option 
on the website, and the bizarre retrospective licensing.

It's disrespectful to the outside contributors who've built so much of Qt and 
its ecosystem in exchange for those rights, and doesn't bode well for the 
future of Qt in the free software community.

Yours,
-Francis H


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Re: [Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt Commercial developers

[Tuukka Turunen]

Hi Jérôme et al,

This thread has long ago left the original question and become a discussion 
about Qt licensing in general and especially about the point of not mixing 
commercial Qt with open-source version of Qt.

The key point is: The Qt Company, just like Trolltech initially and other 
companies in between, does not want mixing open-source Qt and commercial Qt.

Reason is simple: if mixing was allowed, many companies would use it to pay 
less for their use of Qt.

It is unfortunate that also real open-source projects may be affected in some 
cases. Majority of users are not affected in any way.

It is also unfortunate if licensing is felt to be so complex that it is better 
to use some other technology. Commercial licensing of Qt is quite flexible and 
it is also possible to negotiate and ask for advice in case it is unclear what 
is allowed and what not.

Here are some examples that hopefully clarify the point about mixing 
open-source and commercial:

Example 1: Company A has 10 developers creating a product. 5 of them use Qt 
under commercial license and 5 do not use Qt at all. This is ok.

Example 2: Company B has 10 developers creating a product. 5 of them use Qt 
under open-source license and 5 do not use Qt at all. This is ok.

Example 3: Company C has 10 developers creating a product. 5 of them use Qt 
under commercial license and 5 use Qt under open-source license. This is not 
allowed.

Example 4: Large company D is creating a product with Qt under commercial 
license. Part of the work is subcontracted to Company E that uses Qt under 
commercial license. This is ok.

Example 5: Large company F is creating a product with Qt under commercial 
license. Part of the work is subcontracted to Company G that uses Qt under 
commercial license. Company G subcontracts some of the work further to low-cost 
Company H, who uses Qt under open-source license. This is not allowed.

Example 6: Company I is building two independent products with separate 
development teams. One development team uses Qt under commercial license to 
create product 1 and the other development team uses Qt under open-source 
license to create product 2. This is ok.

Hopefully I was able to clarify the topic with these examples. The Qt Company 
wants to provide Qt under open-source license. There is no mega corporation 
with deep pockets behind. Development of Qt is funded with the revenues gained 
from commercial licensing.

Yours,

Tuukka



From: Jérôme Godbout 
Date: Tuesday 31. March 2020 at 17.56
To: Tuukka Turunen , Andy 
Cc: "interest@qt-project.org" 
Subject: RE: [Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt Commercial 
developers

Hi,
the mix is not a corner case, it’s the reality of many people around. We are a 
services compagnie, and this is really a headache to understand where it should 
fall since we do project for client but we are a single cie. The license of Qt 
have is such an ambiguity and our lawyer recommend (not even sure himself where 
we do fall) we avoid using it as much as we can given the context we are in. 
When a client have commercial license, we ask them to use their infrastructure 
and avoid having any commercial license on premise (we cannot take any chance). 
If you think your licensing is clear and make it easy, it ain’t, we do more and 
more Xamarin, just for license reason not because we like it.  I continue Qt 
mostly on hobby, really like Qml and where the binding in C++ is heading. But 
for my work job, Qt is fading out.

The departure between mixing LGPL and Commercial one is such a gray area, 
nobody want to venture anywhere there.

Note: I don’t speak in the name of my cie, but my own opinion here. Just 
stating the fact that the Qt license is the main reason we often ditch Qt for 
some application.


From: Interest  On Behalf Of Tuukka Turunen
Sent: March 31, 2020 10:33 AM
To: Andy 
Cc: interest@qt-project.org
Subject: Re: [Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt Commercial 
developers

Hi Andy,

You are asking to explicitly define terms like project, company, product. These 
are rarely possible to define outside of the generic use of the term and each 
individual contract. I assume you understand that it is not possible to take 
any stand of those in an email. We have these listed in the FAQ and contracts 
in as clear way as we have been able to list these.

I have also tried to explain these, but your tone feels rather aggressive. I do 
not understand what makes you say: “Even a solo developer needs to hire a 
lawyer before touching anything Qt-related.” For most of the situation the 
licensing of Qt is really simple and also very permissive. Yes, there are 
certain complex corner cases, like mixing of commercial on open-source versions 
of the Qt framework/tools. But how often do you need to mix these? Most of the 
Qt users are using either the commercial or the open-source version.

Yours,

Tuukka

From: Andy 

Re: [Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt, Commercial developers

[Tuukka Turunen]

Hi,

I apologise, if I have been unclear with words 'company' and project'. If you 
read the license agreement and faq behind the links I have posted multiple 
times, it should be rather clear what is meant. 

Yours,

Tuukka 

On 31.3.2020, 18.50, "Roland Hughes"  wrote:


I sent this the other day but it hasn't made it into the list yet. At 
least I haven't seen it. Forwarding because it is pertinent

 Forwarded Message 
Subject:Re: [Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt, 
Commercial developers
Date:   Mon, 30 Mar 2020 14:09:42 -0500
From:   Roland Hughes 
To: interest@qt-project.org, asmalo...@gmail.com




On 3/30/20 1:03 PM, Andy wrote:
> That makes no sense. Your license prevents a company from using an
> open-source tool? It says "if you license our stuff you cannot use the
> open-source tool X"?
>
> This whole thread is yet another great example of where the Qt Company is
> totally tone-deaf.
>
> Nobody understands your licensing. You have fewer people using Qt and
> Qt-based things because of this.

I've honestly been expecting KDE to kick Qt to the curb any day now if 
they are reading this.

Medical device companies have been running screaming away from Qt over 
the past year. Many moving to Rust. Some are even moving to Zinc which 
really kind of surprised me.

Some companies in other markets are abandoning embedded Linux for 
embedded DOS so they can use other GUI tools. Before you Guffaw at that, 
AGCO uses a lot of embedded DOS and they make an awful lot of Ag heavy 
equipment. Last I heard they were moving away from Qt as well.

What is impressive is how "company" and "project" get thrown around 
interchangeably. So, if one tiny little project in GE in some remote 
location is using a commercial license, from what was stated, every 
person in every GE location around the world __must__ have a commercial 
Qt license to use QtCreator even if they are just using C++. I guess 
everyone has to move to Emacs, CodeLite, KDevelop, and VSCodium.

https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/

https://codelite.org/

https://www.kdevelop.org/

https://vscodium.com/

I suppose if they didn't want free they could pay $299 for SlickEdit.

https://www.slickedit.com/

or a $100/yr annual subscription to UltraEdit.

Just be aware that UltraEdit like many other PC originating editors gets 
tabs wrong. When you set tabs to spaces and set their width to 4, 
hitting  when cursor is in first column of the line has to put the 
cursor in column 4, not 5 like far too many PC editors.


https://www.logikalsolutions.com/wordpress/information-technology/most-text-editors-get-tabs-wrong/

Having followed this "discussion" for a bit now I have a relevant question.

Assuming Intel, given all of the locations it has around the globe, owns 
a single commercial Qt license at any one of them, by what has been said 
here, Thiago not only has to have a commercial license to work on Qt, he 
technically can't work on the OpenSource version. He has to commit his 
code to the commercial version where it may or may not ever find its way 
into the OpenSource version, if there ever is to be an OpenSource 
version again.

Cause that's what I've been hearing in this conversation. The new new 
new new licensing "strategy" is once anyone in an organization has 
touched a commercial version they must perpetually pay forever and ever 
for everyone. It almost sounds like a person couldn't even leave a 
company and go work on OpenSource.

I went back tot he archive.

Vyacheslav Lanovets actually asked:

=

A company has a few developers with Qt Commercial subscription who
write applications in Qt for iOS.
There are many other developers, who work on other projects and don't
use Qt libraries.
They talk to each other and sometimes even work on the same code.

Is it still possible for the developers who don't use Qt libraries in
any way, use Qt Creator IDE for editing and debugging?
To be on the safe side, company plans to prohibit usage of Qt Creator
IDE for all employees.
I reckon this is a popular solution.
If I understand correctly, Qt even sells a special option to ban all
company IP addresses for open-source installer.

=

The question clearly states the second group just like the IDE for C++. 
They aren't using Qt at all. That was the question asked.

What this conversation is really starting to sound like is "The 
OpenSource version has ceased to exist."

Please clarify explicitly while I dust off my Zinc books.

Re: [Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt Commercial developers

[Jérôme Godbout]

Hi,
the mix is not a corner case, it’s the reality of many people around. We are a 
services compagnie, and this is really a headache to understand where it should 
fall since we do project for client but we are a single cie. The license of Qt 
have is such an ambiguity and our lawyer recommend (not even sure himself where 
we do fall) we avoid using it as much as we can given the context we are in. 
When a client have commercial license, we ask them to use their infrastructure 
and avoid having any commercial license on premise (we cannot take any chance). 
If you think your licensing is clear and make it easy, it ain’t, we do more and 
more Xamarin, just for license reason not because we like it.  I continue Qt 
mostly on hobby, really like Qml and where the binding in C++ is heading. But 
for my work job, Qt is fading out.

The departure between mixing LGPL and Commercial one is such a gray area, 
nobody want to venture anywhere there.

Note: I don’t speak in the name of my cie, but my own opinion here. Just 
stating the fact that the Qt license is the main reason we often ditch Qt for 
some application.


From: Interest  On Behalf Of Tuukka Turunen
Sent: March 31, 2020 10:33 AM
To: Andy 
Cc: interest@qt-project.org
Subject: Re: [Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt Commercial 
developers

Hi Andy,

You are asking to explicitly define terms like project, company, product. These 
are rarely possible to define outside of the generic use of the term and each 
individual contract. I assume you understand that it is not possible to take 
any stand of those in an email. We have these listed in the FAQ and contracts 
in as clear way as we have been able to list these.

I have also tried to explain these, but your tone feels rather aggressive. I do 
not understand what makes you say: “Even a solo developer needs to hire a 
lawyer before touching anything Qt-related.” For most of the situation the 
licensing of Qt is really simple and also very permissive. Yes, there are 
certain complex corner cases, like mixing of commercial on open-source versions 
of the Qt framework/tools. But how often do you need to mix these? Most of the 
Qt users are using either the commercial or the open-source version.

Yours,

Tuukka

From: Andy mailto:asmalo...@gmail.com>>
Date: Tuesday 31. March 2020 at 16.47
To: Tuukka Turunen mailto:tuukka.turu...@qt.io>>
Cc: Giuseppe D'Angelo 
mailto:giuseppe.dang...@kdab.com>>, 
"interest@qt-project.org" 
mailto:interest@qt-project.org>>
Subject: Re: [Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt Commercial 
developers

> "This is at the moment not listed as an allowed case..."

And this again is here the Qt company is digging it's own grave.

What constitutes a "product"? If a company has one team working on an open 
source library and another team using it in a proprietary application - what 
then? What if an internal tool uses some code or a library from proprietary 
application? What if...

Even a solo developer needs to hire a lawyer before touching anything 
Qt-related.

Once you start trying to codify all the different scenarios in your licensing, 
it becomes toxic and people will avoid it

---
Andy Maloney  //  https://asmaloney.com
twitter ~ @asmaloney



On Tue, Mar 31, 2020 at 9:36 AM Tuukka Turunen 
mailto:tuukka.turu...@qt.io>> wrote:

Hi,

The point of the "Prohibited combination" is to prevent a company or a chain of 
companies (like in a typical subcontracting scenario) from making part of the 
product with non-paid Qt and part with paid. Qt being as defined in the 
commercial license agreement, i.e. including tools and framework. This was what 
the person initiating this mail thread asked about. I do agree that it gets 
complex when one starts including items created by an independent third party. 
This is at the moment not listed as an allowed case, even though it is not 
something we specifically aimed to prevent.

Yours,

Tuukka

On 31.3.2020, 15.03, "Interest on behalf of Giuseppe D'Angelo via Interest" 
mailto:interest-boun...@qt-project.org> on 
behalf of interest@qt-project.org> wrote:

On 3/31/20 1:22 PM, Tuukka Turunen wrote:
> For completely independent projects/products this is fine. Note that 
these really should not be same or in practice the same - or in any way 
depending, relating, using etc each other as defined in the license agreement.
>
> See licensing FAQ question 2.7 
athttps://www.qt.io/faq/  and License agreement 
athttps://www.qt.io/terms-conditions/

It is still unclear if the usage of Qt _Creator_ for developing some
code would cause such code to fall under the restrictions of commercial
licensing.


Here's a few scenarios:

1) I have a Qt commercial license. In my project using commercial Qt I
want to use a 

Re: [Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt Commercial developers

[Tuukka Turunen]

Hi Andy,

You are asking to explicitly define terms like project, company, product. These 
are rarely possible to define outside of the generic use of the term and each 
individual contract. I assume you understand that it is not possible to take 
any stand of those in an email. We have these listed in the FAQ and contracts 
in as clear way as we have been able to list these.

I have also tried to explain these, but your tone feels rather aggressive. I do 
not understand what makes you say: “Even a solo developer needs to hire a 
lawyer before touching anything Qt-related.” For most of the situation the 
licensing of Qt is really simple and also very permissive. Yes, there are 
certain complex corner cases, like mixing of commercial on open-source versions 
of the Qt framework/tools. But how often do you need to mix these? Most of the 
Qt users are using either the commercial or the open-source version.

Yours,

Tuukka

From: Andy 
Date: Tuesday 31. March 2020 at 16.47
To: Tuukka Turunen 
Cc: Giuseppe D'Angelo , "interest@qt-project.org" 

Subject: Re: [Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt Commercial 
developers

> "This is at the moment not listed as an allowed case..."

And this again is here the Qt company is digging it's own grave.

What constitutes a "product"? If a company has one team working on an open 
source library and another team using it in a proprietary application - what 
then? What if an internal tool uses some code or a library from proprietary 
application? What if...

Even a solo developer needs to hire a lawyer before touching anything 
Qt-related.

Once you start trying to codify all the different scenarios in your licensing, 
it becomes toxic and people will avoid it

---
Andy Maloney  //  https://asmaloney.com
twitter ~ @asmaloney



On Tue, Mar 31, 2020 at 9:36 AM Tuukka Turunen 
mailto:tuukka.turu...@qt.io>> wrote:

Hi,

The point of the "Prohibited combination" is to prevent a company or a chain of 
companies (like in a typical subcontracting scenario) from making part of the 
product with non-paid Qt and part with paid. Qt being as defined in the 
commercial license agreement, i.e. including tools and framework. This was what 
the person initiating this mail thread asked about. I do agree that it gets 
complex when one starts including items created by an independent third party. 
This is at the moment not listed as an allowed case, even though it is not 
something we specifically aimed to prevent.

Yours,

Tuukka

On 31.3.2020, 15.03, "Interest on behalf of Giuseppe D'Angelo via Interest" 
mailto:interest-boun...@qt-project.org> on 
behalf of interest@qt-project.org> wrote:

On 3/31/20 1:22 PM, Tuukka Turunen wrote:
> For completely independent projects/products this is fine. Note that 
these really should not be same or in practice the same - or in any way 
depending, relating, using etc each other as defined in the license agreement.
>
> See licensing FAQ question 2.7 
athttps://www.qt.io/faq/  and License agreement 
athttps://www.qt.io/terms-conditions/

It is still unclear if the usage of Qt _Creator_ for developing some
code would cause such code to fall under the restrictions of commercial
licensing.


Here's a few scenarios:

1) I have a Qt commercial license. In my project using commercial Qt I
want to use a library developed by

1a) some other team in my company;
1b) someone else.

This other library is under a liberal license; does NOT use Qt itself in
any way; but has been developed using Qt Creator (GPL). Can I use it in
my product under the commercial license? Or would it fall under the
"Prohibited Combination":

> “Prohibited Combination” shall mean any means to (i) use, combine, 
incorporate, link or integrate Licensed Software with any software created with 
or incorporating Open Source Qt, (ii) use Licensed Software for creation of any 
software created with or incorporating Open Source Qt

Does "created with" here extend to GPL Creator?



2) Same as 1, but this time with the library using Qt (as in: using
headers, linking against it). Example: a Qt-based library coming from
KDE Frameworks, developed using Creator.


Thanks,
--
Giuseppe D'Angelo | 
giuseppe.dang...@kdab.com | Senior Software 
Engineer
KDAB (France) S.A.S., a KDAB Group company
Tel. France +33 (0)4 90 84 08 53, http://www.kdab.com
KDAB - The Qt, C++ and OpenGL Experts



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Re: [Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt Commercial developers

[Giuseppe D'Angelo via Interest]

Il 31/03/20 15:35, Tuukka Turunen ha scritto:

The point of the "Prohibited combination" is to prevent a company or a chain of 
companies (like in a typical subcontracting scenario) from making part of the product 
with non-paid Qt and part with paid. Qt being as defined in the commercial license 
agreement, i.e. including tools and framework. This was what the person initiating this 
mail thread asked about. I do agree that it gets complex when one starts including items 
created by an independent third party. This is at the moment not listed as an allowed 
case, even though it is not something we specifically aimed to prevent.


I understand the underlying reasoning 100%, but clarity is important 
here, and the ones I brought forward aren't some "far fetched" 
hypothetical scenarios.


In a product developed with Qt commercial, anyone is going to using a 
bunch of non-Qt libraries, for instance coming with any basic Linux 
installation (e.g. glibc, libstdc++, ICU, whatever). Maybe some ad-hoc 
ones, e.g. Boost. How can one be sure that none of those has been 
developed using GPL Qt Creator? Should one just "live with" the 
possibility of infringing the commercial license, because TQC is just 
not interested at chasing this case down?



Thakns,
--
Giuseppe D'Angelo | giuseppe.dang...@kdab.com | Senior Software Engineer
KDAB (France) S.A.S., a KDAB Group company
Tel. France +33 (0)4 90 84 08 53, http://www.kdab.com
KDAB - The Qt, C++ and OpenGL Experts



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Re: [Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt Commercial developers

[Andy]

> "This is at the moment not listed as an allowed case..."

And this again is here the Qt company is digging it's own grave.

What constitutes a "product"? If a company has one team working on an open
source library and another team using it in a proprietary application -
what then? What if an internal tool uses some code or a library from
proprietary application? What if...

Even a solo developer needs to hire a lawyer before touching anything
Qt-related.

Once you start trying to codify all the different scenarios in your
licensing, it becomes toxic and people will avoid it

---
Andy Maloney  //  https://asmaloney.com
twitter ~ @asmaloney 



On Tue, Mar 31, 2020 at 9:36 AM Tuukka Turunen  wrote:

>
> Hi,
>
> The point of the "Prohibited combination" is to prevent a company or a
> chain of companies (like in a typical subcontracting scenario) from making
> part of the product with non-paid Qt and part with paid. Qt being as
> defined in the commercial license agreement, i.e. including tools and
> framework. This was what the person initiating this mail thread asked
> about. I do agree that it gets complex when one starts including items
> created by an independent third party. This is at the moment not listed as
> an allowed case, even though it is not something we specifically aimed to
> prevent.
>
> Yours,
>
> Tuukka
>
> On 31.3.2020, 15.03, "Interest on behalf of Giuseppe D'Angelo via
> Interest"  interest@qt-project.org> wrote:
>
> On 3/31/20 1:22 PM, Tuukka Turunen wrote:
> > For completely independent projects/products this is fine. Note that
> these really should not be same or in practice the same - or in any way
> depending, relating, using etc each other as defined in the license
> agreement.
> >
> > See licensing FAQ question 2.7 athttps://www.qt.io/faq/  and
> License agreement athttps://www.qt.io/terms-conditions/
>
> It is still unclear if the usage of Qt _Creator_ for developing some
> code would cause such code to fall under the restrictions of
> commercial
> licensing.
>
>
> Here's a few scenarios:
>
> 1) I have a Qt commercial license. In my project using commercial Qt I
> want to use a library developed by
>
> 1a) some other team in my company;
> 1b) someone else.
>
> This other library is under a liberal license; does NOT use Qt itself
> in
> any way; but has been developed using Qt Creator (GPL). Can I use it
> in
> my product under the commercial license? Or would it fall under the
> "Prohibited Combination":
>
> > “Prohibited Combination” shall mean any means to (i) use, combine,
> incorporate, link or integrate Licensed Software with any software created
> with or incorporating Open Source Qt, (ii) use Licensed Software for
> creation of any software created with or incorporating Open Source Qt
>
> Does "created with" here extend to GPL Creator?
>
>
>
> 2) Same as 1, but this time with the library using Qt (as in: using
> headers, linking against it). Example: a Qt-based library coming from
> KDE Frameworks, developed using Creator.
>
>
> Thanks,
> --
> Giuseppe D'Angelo | giuseppe.dang...@kdab.com | Senior Software
> Engineer
> KDAB (France) S.A.S., a KDAB Group company
> Tel. France +33 (0)4 90 84 08 53, http://www.kdab.com
> KDAB - The Qt, C++ and OpenGL Experts
>
>
>
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Re: [Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt Commercial developers

[Tuukka Turunen]

Hi,

The point of the "Prohibited combination" is to prevent a company or a chain of 
companies (like in a typical subcontracting scenario) from making part of the 
product with non-paid Qt and part with paid. Qt being as defined in the 
commercial license agreement, i.e. including tools and framework. This was what 
the person initiating this mail thread asked about. I do agree that it gets 
complex when one starts including items created by an independent third party. 
This is at the moment not listed as an allowed case, even though it is not 
something we specifically aimed to prevent.

Yours,

Tuukka

On 31.3.2020, 15.03, "Interest on behalf of Giuseppe D'Angelo via Interest" 
 wrote:

On 3/31/20 1:22 PM, Tuukka Turunen wrote:
> For completely independent projects/products this is fine. Note that 
these really should not be same or in practice the same - or in any way 
depending, relating, using etc each other as defined in the license agreement.
> 
> See licensing FAQ question 2.7 athttps://www.qt.io/faq/  and License 
agreement athttps://www.qt.io/terms-conditions/  

It is still unclear if the usage of Qt _Creator_ for developing some 
code would cause such code to fall under the restrictions of commercial 
licensing.


Here's a few scenarios:

1) I have a Qt commercial license. In my project using commercial Qt I 
want to use a library developed by

1a) some other team in my company;
1b) someone else.

This other library is under a liberal license; does NOT use Qt itself in 
any way; but has been developed using Qt Creator (GPL). Can I use it in 
my product under the commercial license? Or would it fall under the 
"Prohibited Combination":

> “Prohibited Combination” shall mean any means to (i) use, combine, 
incorporate, link or integrate Licensed Software with any software created with 
or incorporating Open Source Qt, (ii) use Licensed Software for creation of any 
software created with or incorporating Open Source Qt

Does "created with" here extend to GPL Creator?



2) Same as 1, but this time with the library using Qt (as in: using 
headers, linking against it). Example: a Qt-based library coming from 
KDE Frameworks, developed using Creator.


Thanks,
-- 
Giuseppe D'Angelo | giuseppe.dang...@kdab.com | Senior Software Engineer
KDAB (France) S.A.S., a KDAB Group company
Tel. France +33 (0)4 90 84 08 53, http://www.kdab.com
KDAB - The Qt, C++ and OpenGL Experts



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Re: [Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt Commercial developers

[dbeancoltd--- via Interest]

??




-Original Message-
From: Tuukka Turunen 
To: Thiago Macieira ; interest 

Sent: Tue, Mar 31, 2020 01:03 PM
Subject: Re: [Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt Commercial 
developers



Hi Thiago,

As I wrote a bit earlier, for completely independent projects/products it is 
fine that one is using commercial and one open-source. This is much more 
likely to happen in a big corporation than a small company, but possible 
scenario in both.

Note that these really should not be same or in practice the same - or in 
any way depending, relating, using etc each other as defined in the license 
agreement.

See licensing FAQ question 2.7 at https://www.qt.io/faq/ and License 
agreement at https://www.qt.io/terms-conditions/

Yours,

        Tuukka

On 31.3.2020, 14.33, "Interest on behalf of Thiago Macieira" 
 
wrote:

    On Monday, 30 March 2020 16:59:11 -03 Elvis Stansvik wrote:
    > > Please read the commercial license agreement and the licensing FAQ. 
The
    > > restriction has nothing to do with open-source licensing. It is 
about a
    > > company, who is using a commercially licensed Qt not to use parts of 
the
    > > same licensed Qt product under open-source license. If there was no 
such
    > > restriction, a company could have a team of 10 developers, but only 
1 or
    > > 2 commercial license for Qt.
    > Up until now, you've said "same project". Now you are switching to
    > "company". Please clarify.

    And don't think of a 10-developer company. Think of a company with 2
    developers, with offices all over the world. If *any* of them buy a 
commercial
    licence, does it mean everyone else must stop using the open source Qt? 
And Qt
    Creator?

    How about contributing to Qt open source? Do they have to stop too?

    -- 
    Thiago Macieira - thiago.macieira (AT) intel.com
      Software Architect - Intel System Software Products



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Re: [Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt Commercial developers

[Tuukka Turunen]

Hi Thiago,

As I wrote a bit earlier, for completely independent projects/products it is 
fine that one is using commercial and one open-source. This is much more likely 
to happen in a big corporation than a small company, but possible scenario in 
both. 

Note that these really should not be same or in practice the same - or in any 
way depending, relating, using etc each other as defined in the license 
agreement.

See licensing FAQ question 2.7 at https://www.qt.io/faq/ and License agreement 
at https://www.qt.io/terms-conditions/

Yours,

Tuukka

On 31.3.2020, 14.33, "Interest on behalf of Thiago Macieira" 
 wrote:

On Monday, 30 March 2020 16:59:11 -03 Elvis Stansvik wrote:
> > Please read the commercial license agreement and the licensing FAQ. The
> > restriction has nothing to do with open-source licensing. It is about a
> > company, who is using a commercially licensed Qt not to use parts of the
> > same licensed Qt product under open-source license. If there was no such
> > restriction, a company could have a team of 10 developers, but only 1 or
> > 2 commercial license for Qt.
> Up until now, you've said "same project". Now you are switching to
> "company". Please clarify.

And don't think of a 10-developer company. Think of a company with 2 
developers, with offices all over the world. If *any* of them buy a 
commercial 
licence, does it mean everyone else must stop using the open source Qt? And 
Qt 
Creator?

How about contributing to Qt open source? Do they have to stop too?

-- 
Thiago Macieira - thiago.macieira (AT) intel.com
  Software Architect - Intel System Software Products



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Re: [Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt Commercial developers

[Giuseppe D'Angelo via Interest]

On 3/31/20 1:22 PM, Tuukka Turunen wrote:

For completely independent projects/products this is fine. Note that these 
really should not be same or in practice the same - or in any way depending, 
relating, using etc each other as defined in the license agreement.

See licensing FAQ question 2.7 athttps://www.qt.io/faq/  and License agreement athttps://www.qt.io/terms-conditions/  


It is still unclear if the usage of Qt _Creator_ for developing some 
code would cause such code to fall under the restrictions of commercial 
licensing.



Here's a few scenarios:

1) I have a Qt commercial license. In my project using commercial Qt I 
want to use a library developed by


1a) some other team in my company;
1b) someone else.

This other library is under a liberal license; does NOT use Qt itself in 
any way; but has been developed using Qt Creator (GPL). Can I use it in 
my product under the commercial license? Or would it fall under the 
"Prohibited Combination":



“Prohibited Combination” shall mean any means to (i) use, combine, incorporate, 
link or integrate Licensed Software with any software created with or 
incorporating Open Source Qt, (ii) use Licensed Software for creation of any 
software created with or incorporating Open Source Qt


Does "created with" here extend to GPL Creator?



2) Same as 1, but this time with the library using Qt (as in: using 
headers, linking against it). Example: a Qt-based library coming from 
KDE Frameworks, developed using Creator.



Thanks,
--
Giuseppe D'Angelo | giuseppe.dang...@kdab.com | Senior Software Engineer
KDAB (France) S.A.S., a KDAB Group company
Tel. France +33 (0)4 90 84 08 53, http://www.kdab.com
KDAB - The Qt, C++ and OpenGL Experts



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Re: [Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt Commercial developers

[Thiago Macieira]

On Monday, 30 March 2020 16:59:11 -03 Elvis Stansvik wrote:
> > Please read the commercial license agreement and the licensing FAQ. The
> > restriction has nothing to do with open-source licensing. It is about a
> > company, who is using a commercially licensed Qt not to use parts of the
> > same licensed Qt product under open-source license. If there was no such
> > restriction, a company could have a team of 10 developers, but only 1 or
> > 2 commercial license for Qt.
> Up until now, you've said "same project". Now you are switching to
> "company". Please clarify.

And don't think of a 10-developer company. Think of a company with 2 
developers, with offices all over the world. If *any* of them buy a commercial 
licence, does it mean everyone else must stop using the open source Qt? And Qt 
Creator?

How about contributing to Qt open source? Do they have to stop too?

-- 
Thiago Macieira - thiago.macieira (AT) intel.com
  Software Architect - Intel System Software Products



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Re: [Interest] Reg Supported Qt version

[Thiago Macieira]

On Tuesday, 31 March 2020 02:49:25 -03 praveen illa wrote:
> Thanks for your email.
> 
> The linux kernel security issues are in control for our board. We will
> change it if required.

I didn't say security. I simply said "support". Are you getting updates from 
your vendor?

And now that you mentioned security, how quickly do you get fixes? 3.14 is 
full of issues, can you tell us how recently you've got a fix? If the answer 
isn't "March 2020", it's late and you should use your board as a doorstop.

I'm serious.

> So, can you please tell me which version of Qt suits best for our board? If
> there are specific dependencies from QT end on linux kernel please bring it
> out now

Need a bit more information. Do you require SSL/TLS support? If so, you need 
at least Qt 5.12.

What do you plan on doing with just 64 MB of RAM, 64 MB of storage, and no HW 
acceleration of graphics?

-- 
Thiago Macieira - thiago.macieira (AT) intel.com
  Software Architect - Intel System Software Products



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Re: [Interest] Qt Creator licensing for companies with Qt Commercial developers

[Tuukka Turunen]

Hi,

For completely independent projects/products this is fine. Note that these 
really should not be same or in practice the same - or in any way depending, 
relating, using etc each other as defined in the license agreement. 

See licensing FAQ question 2.7 at https://www.qt.io/faq/ and License agreement 
at https://www.qt.io/terms-conditions/ 

Yours,

Tuukka

On 30.3.2020, 23.25, "Michael Jackson"  wrote:

Dear Tuukka,
   Let us take a concrete example of a hypothetical company. The company 
has 10 software engineers and 2 projects.

Engineers 1,2,3,4,5 work on proprietary project A that uses Qt commercial 
license. Each engineer (1,2,3,4,5) has a commercial Qt license assigned to that 
engineer. They use QtCreator from the commercial package to develop such a 
software. The proprietary software being developed is for a Desktop application 
and uses Qt5 as part of its development.

Now, Engineers 6,7,8,9,10 all work on an open source project B that does 
not use Qt libraries at all. Those engineers (6,7,8,9,10) all really like 
QtCreator and want to use it to develop that open source library. I, as the 
company owner, instruct those engineers to download the open source version of 
QtCreator and use that open source version of QtCreator to develop their open 
source software.

There is *no* cross over between the 2 engineering groups.

Is this situation allowed by the Qt Commercial license? If it is *not* 
allowed consider me a lost supporter of Qt anything.

--
Michael Jackson | Owner, President
  BlueQuartz Software
[e] mike.jack...@bluequartz.net
[w] www.bluequartz.net 


On 3/30/20, 1:54 PM, "Tuukka Turunen"  wrote:

Hi Michael,

Please read the commercial license agreement and the licensing FAQ. The 
restriction has nothing to do with open-source licensing. It is about a 
company, who is using a commercially licensed Qt not to use parts of the same 
licensed Qt product under open-source license. If there was no such 
restriction, a company could have a team of 10 developers, but only 1 or 2 
commercial license for Qt.

I do understand that it can feel off to have such a restriction for 
using "Qt Creator" when others are using "Qt libraries". The important point is 
that both these are included in the Qt for Application Development product. So 
both need to be used with same type of license: open-source or commercial. 
 
Yours,
 
Tuukka

On 27.3.2020, 20.54, "Interest on behalf of Michael Jackson" 
 
wrote:

OK, Here goes the explanations of how to interoperate with Qt 
Software packages. IANAL. We will start from the easy and work our way towards 
difficult.

QtCreator: QtCreator is free. You, as a developer of software, can 
use QtCreator as your IDE to develop your own software. The GPL license of 
QtCreator will NOT infect your software. Use QtCreator to create open or closed 
software. Free or commercial. Your choice.

QtCreator as Part of a Commercial Qt License: The only thing this 
gets you is the ability to get some "commercial" support versus just posting on 
the qt-creator mailing list.

Modifying QtCreator: If you are actually modifying QtCreator 
yourself to create a distribution outside of your organization then ANY codes 
you write or modify are subject to the QtCreator license. This has 
ramifications if you happen to have a Qt commercial license.

Using Qt5 in your software project: If you use Qt in your project 
ANYBODY contributing to that same project MUST have the same kind of Qt 
license. Period. Full Stop.

For the original question;
"Is it still possible for the developers who don't use Qt libraries 
in
any way, use Qt Creator IDE for editing and debugging?"

The answer is YES, but the devil is in the details. They *should* 
be able to just download the free version of QtCreator from 
http://download.qt.io and use that version. They can't use the "commercial" 
version of QtCreator unless they have a commercial license for Qt. But if their 
projects are *not* using Qt, then why do they have a commercial license for Qt?


Again, IANAL, but I believe this to be a reasonable summary of the 
licensing of QtCreator and Qt.
--
Mike Jackson 



On 3/27/20, 12:21 PM, "Interest on behalf of alexander golks" 
 wrote:

Am Fri, 27 Mar 2020 17:11:16 +0100
schrieb Jean-Michaël Celerier :

> It is also the license of the binaries that you can download 
there :
> 

Re: [Interest] QtWebkit error while building Qt5.12.7 sources

[Konstantin Tokarev]

31.03.2020, 11:54, "Ramakanth Kesireddy" :
> Since the old compiler doesn't supports c++11, we got to use Qt WebKit 5.6.3 
> only. However, we shall move to the latest 5.12 LTS once the compiler is 
> upgraded.
>
> So ICS 59.2 would be compatible with Qt WebKit 5.6.3?

No, necessary patch wasn't backported there. Try 58.x

-- 
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Konstantin
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Re: [Interest] QtWebkit error while building Qt5.12.7 sources

[Ramakanth Kesireddy]

Since the old compiler doesn't supports c++11, we got to use Qt WebKit
5.6.3 only. However, we shall move to the latest 5.12 LTS once the compiler
is upgraded.

So ICS 59.2 would be compatible with Qt WebKit 5.6.3?

On Tue, 31 Mar, 2020, 12:50 Konstantin Tokarev,  wrote:

>
>
> 31.03.2020, 05:32, "Ramakanth Kesireddy" :
> > Thanks for your mail.
> > Can you let me know any specific version of ICU that shall be compatible
> with Qt WebKit 5.6.3?
>
> If you use 5.9 branch (which you really have no reason not to use,
> AFAICS), it's 59.2
>
>
> --
> Regards,
> Konstantin
>
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Re: [Interest] QtWebkit error while building Qt5.12.7 sources

[Konstantin Tokarev]

31.03.2020, 05:32, "Ramakanth Kesireddy" :
> Thanks for your mail.
> Can you let me know any specific version of ICU that shall be compatible with 
> Qt WebKit 5.6.3?

If you use 5.9 branch (which you really have no reason not to use, AFAICS), 
it's 59.2


-- 
Regards,
Konstantin
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