[maemo-developers] Qt to be available under the terms of the LGPL

[From: Andrew Flegg]

On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 10:12 PM, Bruce Stephens
<bruce.r.stephens at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 8:55 PM, Andrew Flegg <andrew at bleb.org> wrote:
>
>> Am I missing something big? Please say I am :-)
>
> You're only missing that sometimes even for proprietary software, "no cost"
> vs "reasonable cost" matters.  Sometimes the GUI doesn't matter much, and
> the license change means developers can consider Qt more easily than before.

Absolutely, and - as had been pointed out elsewhere - it may make it
easier to write apps which are cross-platform between S60/Maemo where
one is chargeable and one isn't (I consider this to be highly
unlikely, TBH - but wait to be pleasantly surprised ;-))

> (That's probably less the case for Maemo, but generally it seems
> likely to be so.)

Agreed, I think it's less the case for Maemo. So I'm surprised Dave's
surprised it hasn't made more of a splash here. Of course, it could've
just been a figure of speech :-)

> A more interesting (but likely speculative) question is why Nokia made
> the change.
> My guess is that internally they regard Qt commercial licensing as a
> distraction from their main business, and (though it may be at some level
> irrational) they prefer to exchange the income (and distraction) for the
> positive publicity.

Agreed. I can't believe that Qt licencing was sufficiently noticeable
on Nokia's bottom line (even in these economic circumstances) to
warrant it:

  a) being a factor in the purchasing decision;
  b) being worth a barrier to greater Qt usage.

Cheers,

andrew

-- 
Andrew Flegg -- mailto:andrew at bleb.org  |  http://www.bleb.org/
Maemo Community Council member