> Can we agree to keep the bashing out of this channel? You raise important questions. First, what is "bashing", and where is it appropriate? Or, as I see my behavior, where is being critical of Digia appropriate?
As a long-time Qt user (first commercial license was for 3.3.3) I've seen it go through many phases. Nokia LGPL Qt was so great, but I've watched erosion of that openness. I formulate my opinions based on ecosystems that I participate in, like Arduino, React, Node, etc. I see IMHO criticism of Digia is on the rise (https://www.qt.io/blog/commercial-lts-qt-5.15.3-released). I also get a lot of emails privately in agreement with my criticisms. So where is the proper feedback channel? I think the situation is exacerbated because of the confluence of two decisions on how the Qt 5.15/Qt 6 transition: 1. Qt 6 does not contain all the modules Qt 5.15 did. 2. Qt 5.15 was a LTS, but the releases after 5.15.2 are commercial only. If Qt 6 had contained all the modules that 5.15 did, OpenSource users would be able to switch to 6. From https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/whatsnew60.html#removed-modules-in-qt-6-0 the following modules are not in Qt6: Qt Android Extras androidextras Qt Bluetooth bluetooth Qt Charts charts Qt Data Visualization datavisualization Qt Graphical Effects only QML types Qt Location location Qt Mac Extras macextras Qt Multimedia multimedia Qt Multimedia Widgets multimediawidgets Qt NFC nfc Qt Positioning positioning Qt Purchasing purchasing Qt Remote Objects remoteobjects Qt Script qtscript Qt SCXML scxml Qt Script Tools scripttools Qt Sensors sensors Qt Serial Bus serialbus Qt Serial Port serialport Qt Speech texttospeech Qt WebChannel webchannel Qt WebEngine webenginecore Qt WebSockets websockets Qt WebView webview Qt Windows Extras winextras Qt X11 Extras x11extras Qt XML Patterns xmlpatterns Qt 6.1 then adds back (though some modules got rolled into other modules): Qt Charts Qt DataVis Qt Lottie Qt SCXML and StateMachine Qt VirtualKeyboard This leaves open source users of the Qt6 missing modules in a bind. I decline to attribute this to malice, but one way to fix the situation is to provide the 5.15 non-commercial updates until Qt6 is complete (6.2? allegedly includes Serial and WebSockets, but plenty aren't yet included, also: https://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/development/2020-November/040704.html) and then just have Qt 6 LTS as commercial only. I had also thought that the 5.15 LTS was only going to be limited by commerical-only offline packages, that online 5.15 LTS would still be fine. I would even be fine with there being only one LTS as opposed to how it is done now with multiple overlapping LTSs. (Currently 5.12 and 5.15 are LTS) I don't know how to square Digia's behavior with Qt's Open Governance model (https://wiki.qt.io/Qt_Project_Open_Governance) ? I'm trying to where in the open source/governance stuff it was decided that making LTS commercial only was 1) approved by the Open Governance Model 2) exhibits the principals talked about in the Open Governance Model. Let me be clear: I still think Qt (the library) is really great amazing stuff and want to thank every single contributor for it. But this shenanigans with the licensing is well, shenanigans. Show me another "open source" project that goes commerical-only in the LTS branch? The criticism is warranted. By that alone, not to mention having a not-yet-viable-next-version. _______________________________________________ Development mailing list Development@qt-project.org https://lists.qt-project.org/listinfo/development
