I want to be excited because Qt 5 was and is my favourite cross-platform GUI framework… but with the licensing and the change to ‘need account and login’ I’m not sure I should actually continue bothering to update my toy projects, it’s getting more and more convoluted and I don’t know if I want to find out anymore if and how I can use it. I am so glad I don’t have to have business decisions around this at least.
The “need account and login” part is… particularly annoying. I used Qt on Linux since early 3.x versions – I briefly developed Windows applications with 4 dot… something, years ago, but I’ve mostly used it under Linux. It’s always been a matter of $packagemanager $installcommand qt for me.
Fast forward to 2022 and I want to use it under macOS and… I have to dig through the website for the download button, which is buried under a ton of “no no you don’t want the open source version” copy that’s so bland it makes oatmeel feel spicy, download some installer (which looks like someone went back in time to when Matrix was fresh, handed out Electron to a fifteen year old and said here, go wild), make an account, log in through the installer which will then download the whole thing for me, and wants me to maybe send data back to the mothership.
Is this what people who tried to use Qt on other OS went through all this time? What in the actual fsck, no wonder no one wants to touch it.
Edit: I mean I get that Qt’s owners need to make some money and they haven’t figured a better way for that than charging for the commercial version. No problem. But does anyone actually imagine that making it hard for people who already know that it exists to download the open version will somehow make the same people pay for the commercial package? What do they think the sales funnel looks like here? Does it really end with hmm, yes, I am a very busy person, I will gladly pay four grand a year to write hobby programs, instead of spending thirty seconds looking for the download button, and feeding the installer my spam email address which gets checked like once a year, for entertainment purposes, just to see what the Nigerian princes are up to this year.
I don’t use Qt so forgive me if this is a silly question, but if I look for Qt in the package manager of my OS, I see qt-base 6.3 and many other qt-things version 6.3.
that is fair, but I’m usually on Ubuntu LTS + Windows, so I often build Qt myself. And because I don’t use it very often, every few months I go back and need to check which versions are now actually what I want.
I’m quoting Wikipedia here:
Starting with 5.15 LTS, LTS releases are available only to the commercial license holders. For open source users, such LTS releases are available as regular releases only. Qt 5.12 LTS is the last Qt version to offer an offline installer and the standard support ends in December 2021.
So for me (and only for me) this means:
on Ubuntu 18.04 I am stuck with 5.9 as I can’t use a non-commercial version of 5.x that is still supported
on Windows I am still building with 5.12 or whatever I had installed originally. Could have upgraded to 5.15 but that is also not supported anymore
I have not yet tested 6.x - I suppose there’s some work to be done
the 6.3 you mentioned will only have support for 6 months
6.2 has support until (30 Sep 2024)
I am not really complaining, but I thought they stopped LTS (and their blog seems to agree “Qt 6.2 is also the first release of Qt 6 that will be long-term supported by The Qt Company for Qt commercial customers.” - so it’s a bit of a churn for people who have a development team of 1, don’t make any money, etc.pp
And the upcoming Ubuntu 22.04 seems to have 5.15, so I guess my safe bet on depending on that version falls flat if I want Windows support (EOL, see above)..
This is kind of a big mess, just trying to summarize it :P
Small addendum, I just installed Qt 6.3.0 and QtCreator 7 on Windows 10 and both my GUI apps actually could be built with a (different) one-line change each, I’m impressed.
I want to be excited because Qt 5 was and is my favourite cross-platform GUI framework… but with the licensing and the change to ‘need account and login’ I’m not sure I should actually continue bothering to update my toy projects, it’s getting more and more convoluted and I don’t know if I want to find out anymore if and how I can use it. I am so glad I don’t have to have business decisions around this at least.
The “need account and login” part is… particularly annoying. I used Qt on Linux since early 3.x versions – I briefly developed Windows applications with 4 dot… something, years ago, but I’ve mostly used it under Linux. It’s always been a matter of
$packagemanager $installcommand qtfor me.Fast forward to 2022 and I want to use it under macOS and… I have to dig through the website for the download button, which is buried under a ton of “no no you don’t want the open source version” copy that’s so bland it makes oatmeel feel spicy, download some installer (which looks like someone went back in time to when Matrix was fresh, handed out Electron to a fifteen year old and said here, go wild), make an account, log in through the installer which will then download the whole thing for me, and wants me to maybe send data back to the mothership.
Is this what people who tried to use Qt on other OS went through all this time? What in the actual fsck, no wonder no one wants to touch it.
Edit: I mean I get that Qt’s owners need to make some money and they haven’t figured a better way for that than charging for the commercial version. No problem. But does anyone actually imagine that making it hard for people who already know that it exists to download the open version will somehow make the same people pay for the commercial package? What do they think the sales funnel looks like here? Does it really end with hmm, yes, I am a very busy person, I will gladly pay four grand a year to write hobby programs, instead of spending thirty seconds looking for the download button, and feeding the installer my spam email address which gets checked like once a year, for entertainment purposes, just to see what the Nigerian princes are up to this year.
I don’t use Qt so forgive me if this is a silly question, but if I look for Qt in the package manager of my OS, I see qt-base 6.3 and many other qt-things version 6.3.
Is this not the same as in the article?
that is fair, but I’m usually on Ubuntu LTS + Windows, so I often build Qt myself. And because I don’t use it very often, every few months I go back and need to check which versions are now actually what I want.
I’m quoting Wikipedia here:
So for me (and only for me) this means:
I am not really complaining, but I thought they stopped LTS (and their blog seems to agree “Qt 6.2 is also the first release of Qt 6 that will be long-term supported by The Qt Company for Qt commercial customers.” - so it’s a bit of a churn for people who have a development team of 1, don’t make any money, etc.pp
And the upcoming Ubuntu 22.04 seems to have 5.15, so I guess my safe bet on depending on that version falls flat if I want Windows support (EOL, see above)..
This is kind of a big mess, just trying to summarize it :P
Small addendum, I just installed Qt 6.3.0 and QtCreator 7 on Windows 10 and both my GUI apps actually could be built with a (different) one-line change each, I’m impressed.