I like developing with the kit, but the licensing has been a nightmare. I work in an industry that produces code that is halfway between commercial and free. It’s closed source during development, but will eventually become open source. In this case, TrollTech gets a free ride–I have to buy licenses for all the developers first, then give the code away later, by law!

The licensing issues with this toolkit have really slowed down the advance of Linux adoption in government software development. Prior to Qt there were not too many issues. Now the spectre of every .so and every header file in the LSB requiring some type of payment to some entity somewhere rasies it’s ugly head….and it’s MY responsibility to go examine all the files and send all the payments.

Having a single company, like Microsoft, setting the rules up front is a lot easier, and can even be a lot cheaper for a small software house (like ours).

Do the math (from amazon, full editions, no upgrades):

Windows Xp Professional (OEM) : $280.00
Windows Visual Studio .NET Professional: $700.00
(Note : these are one-time fees, NO YEARLY RENEWAL required for continued use)

From TrollTech’s website, converted to USD :
LSB Qualifed Development System using Qt : $3350 with enterprise features (openGL and database connectivity)–and this is for ONE YEAR.

Yep…Linux with a TrollTech license costs more than 3x the Microsoft solution. Without the baggage of being called a “Linux Zealot”, and all the advantages of commonality with 90% of the desktops in use worldwide.

If the free software community lets this kind of thing continue, where one .so changes the entire legal status of my devemopment chain, and the end user/developer has no idea it’s even dual licensed, then linux is utterly doomed.

If it gets to the point where I have to pay Sun to use Java, TrollTech to use Qt, Oracle to use God knows what, well, then Linux just isn’t free anymore, and there will be no reason to use or recommend it.

—
A Tired and Frustrated Developer.