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Trolltech to Extend Dual-License to Qt/Windows

Posted by Hemos on from the excellent-moves dept.

scc writes " Trolltech announced today that Qt 4 will be available on Windows under the GPL. While Trolltech has long dual-licensed Qt on X11 (Linux, various Unixes), Mac, and embedded, Windows developers have had no options other than a commercial license."

5 of 436 comments (clear)

  1. Is TrollTech trolling? by geoffspear · · Score: 4, Insightful
    They claim that to use their software in a commercial setting (or to develop proprietary software from their code, which isn't an issue), you need to buy a commercial license rather than using the GPL. By releasing their software under the GPL, aren't they making it impossible to require a commercial license for use in any setting?

    Can't I just download their software under the GPL, and redistribute it to anyone to be used under any setting at all?

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    1. Re:Is TrollTech trolling? by TheRaven64 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Except that (unless they've changed it recently) they specifically prohibit you from doing this. If you develop non-GPL code you must do it on the commercial version. The non-GPL version is licensed on a per-seat basis, so you can't have all of your developers using the GPL version and a single build machine running the commercial version.

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      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  2. Ahhh, such excellent news by Progoth · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Goodbye, MFC.

  3. Just what the doctor ordered! by osho_gg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is exactly what has been requested by many Qt/KDE developers over many years. This will bring about a flourish of new applications being ported from linux to windows (whether you like that or not). This will heat up the Gtk vs. Qt arguments as a major argument against Qt no longer holds. This will also help push KDE Enterprise efforts as many enterprise concerns will be resolved by this move. Good move Trolltech!

  4. This is both GREAT and FRUSTRATING by Qwavel · · Score: 4, Insightful


    As a Windows C++ developer, Qt4 is now open-source for my purposes. Since Qt4 is obviously much better than MFC this is very significant.

    But it is very frustrating since Qt could have been a very significant C++ framework on windows if it had done this years ago. Now it is a bit late for most of us.

    The other frustrating thing is that TT, in the best tradition, is pursuing lock-in (vs. standards) in QT4. By deciding to embrace templated containers in their own proprietary way, vs. the standard, STL, way, they make it much harder for a programmer like me to convert to QT, both practically and morally.

    I know they will have all the usual excuses for breaking the standard (I've heard them from MS in the past). It's kind of ironic that, just when MS stops playing games and finally puts out a truly standards compliant compiler (VC7.1) with a great standard library, TT decides to imitate the old MS.