5 ms·

Qt licensing is its own mess. For commercial software, the pricing is 350-500$ per developer, per month. Seriously [1]. The company that now owns the framework

by injuly 2y ago

Qt licensing is its own mess. For commercial software, the pricing is 350-500$ per developer, per month. Seriously [1]. The company that now owns the framework doesn't seem to acknowledge the gap between big enterprises and solo developers/smaller teams. [1] Yes, one can use Qt for commercial software without buying a license (as long as it is dynamically linked), but their marketing does everything it can to hide that fact. Also, the newer additions to Qt do not fall in this category – for those, you have to pay.

pjmlp 2y ago
Imagine that, having to pay for the tools one has to use for their work, what an abuse.
- Maxatar 2y ago
  Having to pay a monthly fee in perpetuity in order to distribute an application is absolutely egregious.
  - readyman 2y ago
    The fee is for selling someone else's software. I personally despise capitalism, but your complaint about it is among the least convincing ones I have ever heard.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
turrini 2y ago
Mess? Here are the most commonly used options: - Go LGPL. Sure, you will need to ship binaries and libs, but there are tools within the SDK that do this automatically for you (windeployqt, macdeployqt, etc.). And as others have stated, it is a problem that was solved years ago. - Go Commercial to link statically. If you are a single developer, there is an annual license available for $499 (up to $100k yearly revenue).
- dexwiz 2y ago
  It always shocks me developers complain so much about QT licensing. For any other business, an expense that small for so much value seems trivial. Without a decent UI software is a terrible for experience for most users.
Veserv 2y ago
That is 4,200-6,000 $/yr. In the US, a junior developer in a software company costs (all-inclusive, not just salary) around 150,000-200,000 $/yr. That is 2-4% of yearly cost on tooling. That is not very much. It might not be worth the price, but that is hardly ridiculous. It is quite believable to get a 4% productivity improvement from appropriate tooling. You need to do a cost-benefit analysis to determine the answer to that question.
- guappa 2y ago
  No they'd rather spend weeks to reimplement scrolling.
  - mardifoufs 2y ago
    Lol scrolling on qt is worse than on the web. I mean, you can use normal scrolling super easily on both (you don't have to do anything, and it just works). But truly custom scrolling is much harder on qt than web. In a way that's a good thing, but again, the default is just as easy on the web as it is on QT. Plus you don't have to deal with the qtquick/qtwidgets/etc thing and the non open source parts of qt
    - rini17 2y ago
      Because subverting users' expectations about scrolling is the step 0 of efficient software. /s
      - mardifoufs 2y ago
        That's why I said it might be a good thing. My main point was that it's just as easy on the web for standard scrolling. But even if you don't want standard scroll behavior, it's still easier. There's nothing easier to do on qt than on web. Compare a qtgraphicsview or qt3dcanvas to a webgl canvas and again, it's fighting against the framework versus stuff just working. Now sure qt is much better for tons of other stuff, but I just found it weird that the comment I was replying to mentioned wasting time on customizing stuff as being the downside of web apps, as if it's not a much more difficult task to do in qt.

by injuly 2y ago

pjmlp 2y ago

Imagine that, having to pay for the tools one has to use for their work, what an abuse.

Maxatar 2y ago
Having to pay a monthly fee in perpetuity in order to distribute an application is absolutely egregious.
- readyman 2y ago
  The fee is for selling someone else's software. I personally despise capitalism, but your complaint about it is among the least convincing ones I have ever heard.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

turrini 2y ago

Mess? Here are the most commonly used options: - Go LGPL. Sure, you will need to ship binaries and libs, but there are tools within the SDK that do this automatically for you (windeployqt, macdeployqt, etc.). And as others have stated, it is a problem that was solved years ago. - Go Commercial to link statically. If you are a single developer, there is an annual license available for $499 (up to $100k yearly revenue).

dexwiz 2y ago
It always shocks me developers complain so much about QT licensing. For any other business, an expense that small for so much value seems trivial. Without a decent UI software is a terrible for experience for most users.

Veserv 2y ago

That is 4,200-6,000 $/yr. In the US, a junior developer in a software company costs (all-inclusive, not just salary) around 150,000-200,000 $/yr. That is 2-4% of yearly cost on tooling. That is not very much. It might not be worth the price, but that is hardly ridiculous. It is quite believable to get a 4% productivity improvement from appropriate tooling. You need to do a cost-benefit analysis to determine the answer to that question.

guappa 2y ago
No they'd rather spend weeks to reimplement scrolling.
- mardifoufs 2y ago
  Lol scrolling on qt is worse than on the web. I mean, you can use normal scrolling super easily on both (you don't have to do anything, and it just works). But truly custom scrolling is much harder on qt than web. In a way that's a good thing, but again, the default is just as easy on the web as it is on QT. Plus you don't have to deal with the qtquick/qtwidgets/etc thing and the non open source parts of qt
  - rini17 2y ago
    Because subverting users' expectations about scrolling is the step 0 of efficient software. /s
    - mardifoufs 2y ago
      That's why I said it might be a good thing. My main point was that it's just as easy on the web for standard scrolling. But even if you don't want standard scroll behavior, it's still easier. There's nothing easier to do on qt than on web. Compare a qtgraphicsview or qt3dcanvas to a webgl canvas and again, it's fighting against the framework versus stuff just working. Now sure qt is much better for tons of other stuff, but I just found it weird that the comment I was replying to mentioned wasting time on customizing stuff as being the downside of web apps, as if it's not a much more difficult task to do in qt.