Qt lincensing

[runtimee]

Hi all,

I'm sure that this question was asked a lot of times however I was able to find many different answers all over the net so want to ask it one more time:

Can I create commercial applications using open source Qt?

When you go to the Qt site it tells you that with lgpl version of qt libs you can create only open-source and proprietary applications (doesn't matter for symbian, windows or other OS). Here, on discussions board, I found a thread where it was told that one CAN sell apps written using qt open source, however app should link to qt dynamically. Anyway there are lot of discussions if the dynamic linking violates lgpl or not. I'm an individual developer so paying about 4000$ for qt license is a bit harder than for a company. Anyway i cannot publish my apps through ovi because of that, however there are other stores on the net which work with ISVs, just want to be sure I won't violate any license.

Can anyone clarify the issue?

Note that I know that you can always sell your application which is even under the gpl license provided that you open your source for people (like they sell linux cd's)

Thanks!

[danhicksbyron]

It is a bit of a muddle. But the word we got (verbally) from the Nokia folks is that they now own whatever rights to Qt aren't public domain, and they're not about to pursue licensing fees, et al from folks developing apps for their phones. I believe they expect to come up with new licenses when they finally get the Ovi Store working.

Not something you can take to the bank, but it satisfied my bosses.

[tamhanna]

One can, dynamic linking is no problem.

[Fernan82]

Hi all,
Note that I know that you can always sell your application which is even under the gpl license provided that you open your source for people (like they sell linux cd's)

Not true, the LGPL covers only Qt and it's libraries, not whatever your make with it. It protects the end-user rights to modify the Qt libraries, so if you use dynamic linking linking and you want to distribute the Qt libraries with your app all that you need to do is include the LGPL in your distribution along with a separate license for your software where it specifies that the Qt libraries are covered by the GPL license, since the user can still replace the Qt libraries with a modified version you're not violating their rights.

If you use static linking you still don't need to make your application open-source, but you need to make the compiled object files available so that the user can still re-link with a modified version of the library. I believe (not sure about it) that you can charge extra for the object files if you wish.