Well in 2015 there was the Independent Dev License for $25/month which disappeared and was replaced with the $350/month one and last year they changed prices over night to $460/month (all prices seen from a mobile-only dev perspective). That's about $2000 more per year for a single developer! Also the perpetual license disappeared, so you're now forced to the subscription model. The startup license prices were removed from the website, also you have to get a coupon from the sales team now to get it. If you've got a Qt license in your business plan, you're screwed since there's no way to estimate the costs for new developers.

Not only that, they also changed 2.9 in the FAQ in January 2017: If you distribute your mobile app with a commercial license to an app store, it seems you have to remove it from the moment you stop paying your Qt license. Before, this was allowed (https://web.archive.org/web/20170118212739/https://www1.qt.io/faq/). The FAQ is not really clear about whether "distribute" means in fact "upload to the app store" or "distribute through the app store".

From my point of view the 2.9 line silently forces you to switch to LGPL or another framework especially if you're not using Qt for all of your projects, so smaller agencies and independent developers are out. Prices can change randomly and you're forced to pay or refactor years of work.

I'm a Qt fan and user for over 10 years now but I really think they're never gaining traction on mobile with this licensing model. It's absolutely worth $99/month but not $460/month or more in the future (still speaking about mobile-only here) :(


On 06.08.18 15:44, ekke wrote:
Am 04.08.18 um 19:23 schrieb Sylvain Pointeau:
On Tue, 20 Feb 2018 at 12:58, René Hansen <ren...@gmail.com <mailto:ren...@gmail.com>> wrote:


    Taxing big corporate use, while exempting smalltime adoption,
    even commercial, might be the way to go. This is just speculation
    on my part though, I have no idea how a licensing scheme like
    this would work in practice.


This was exactly my issue. I have an idea for a phone / tablet app and I really wanted to go with Qt but ~500 euros per month was a no go (for all people involved)

I'm doing all my mobile Apps (Android, iOS) with Qt (QtQuickControls2) and really like Qt. (compared with Flutter, ReactNative, Xamarin, etc)

As a single developer (Freelancer) I'm using the Start-Up License (99$/Month)

the info about the startup license is something hidden on the web sites: https://www1.qt.io/start-up-plan/


presenting my apps to other devs at conferences or so there's always a "wow" effect, because of UI/UX and performance of even very complex apps.

the problem is the license.

developers looking at Qt site always think they must pay ~500 EUR as independent devs which is too much compared with other frameworks

even the Startup License isn't easy to do


this is frustrating: knowing that Qt is great for mobile apps, but there's a license cost barriere


I'm really waiting for a 30 EUR or so Indiependent Dev License.

I know from discussions that in the past there already was such kind of license with less success.

But in the past there were no QtQuickControls2 and HighDPI support. (Both was the reason why I started developing mobile Apps with Qt)


--

ekke (ekkehard gentz)

independent software architect
international development native mobile business apps
Qt Mobile (Android, iOS)
workshops - trainings - bootcamps

*Qt Champion
BlackBerry Elite Developer
*



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