Qt introduces the start-up and small business licence
In 2019, many innovations were introduced into the Qt world: the Qt Marketplace was born, a new offer for MCU development was introduced, Qt 5.14 was released and Design Studio began to develop rapidly.
As we speak, The Qt Company is publishing an important novelty relating to its commercial proposal, aimed at making the paid version of Qt more attractive for companies, especially small ones, without taking away the main features from users of the free version.
The main changes, effective from February 2020, are:
- Installation of the Qt binaries will require a Qt account
- The LTS (Long-Term Support) versions and the offline installer will be available only for those persons who purchase commercial licences
- A new Qt offer for start-ups and small businesses for $499 a year
These changes will have no effect on the commercial licences or service agreements in place today.
General requirements for the Qt account
To download the Qt binary packages all users, including those interested in the open source version, will have to access the site through their Qt account.
According to the company, developers will have numerous benefits in creating a Qt account, such as:
- maximising the services offered;
- contributing to Qt as an open source user, to improve Qt through bug reports, forums, code reviews or similar;
- accessing the Qt Marketplace and, consequently, having the opportunity to acquire and distribute plugins in the entire Qt ecosystem from a single centralised platform.
All sources of the open-source versions will remain available even without a Qt account.
LTS and offline installer only available to commercial customers
Starting in Qt 5.15, long term support or LTS will only be available to commercial customers. This means that open source users will receive version 5.15 patch releases until the next minor is available; the company will therefore manage Qt 5.15 as was the case for example with Qt 5.13 or 5.14 regarding open source users.
The Qt Company believes this change will encourage open source users to rapidly adopt new versions, in order to maximise feedback from the community and to emphasise the commercial support available for those with longer product life cycles based on a specific Qt version.
LTS releases will be supported and managed for a longer period of time, with the aim of offering greater stability and to make them the ideal choice for companies that use a specific release and rely on it in the long term. Additional benefits offered by the company are premium support, exclusive development tools and useful components and construction tools that reduce time-to-market.
Finally, the offline installer will also become commercial-only.
New Qt start-up / small business offer
So what will change? The Qt Company says that Qt enthusiasts who use the open-source version will still receive the latest updates and features for free. Commercial licences will mainly be aimed at companies that make use of all the exclusive services mentioned above, in particular start-ups and small companies.
The focus now shifts to start-ups and independent developers, who “are at the centre of innovation just like Qt almost 25 years ago“. The main novelty is that the start-up / small business edition of Qt will be brought back into production, containing all the advantages of a commercial licence, but at the price of $499 per year. This includes use of the full Qt for Device Creation product but not the distribution licences which must be agreed separately. It also only includes installation support, while a regular commercial licence comes with full support.
This offer will be available on the Qt Marketplace in the first quarter of 2020 and will be limited to companies with annual sales of less than $100,000 and fewer than five employees.
For more information, read the full article.
Any changes for you?
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