[QGIS-Developer] Position on Qt wrt The QT Company announcements

[Vincent Picavet (ml)]

Hi all, PSC,

Olaf Schmidt-Wishhöfer from KDE project has made a statement yesterday about a
really concerning situation regarding the OpenSource state of Qt.

https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-community/2020q2/006098.html

TL;DR : using the argument of COVID-19 crisis, The Qt Company wants to restrict
a lot the opensource version of Qt, with a 12 months publishing delay even for
security patches.


Relations between The Qt Company and the OpenSource community degraded vastly
over the last month, and what was a balanced governance and economical situation
tends towards a stuck situation, with all OpenSource Qt users at risk of being
deeply affected.

The KDE Free Qt foundation is currently the organization defending free and
opensource access to Qt.

https://kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php

Given that QGIS is probably one of the most distributed Qt-based software
solution in the world, I think that we should take position in this situation.

My Opinion is that QGIS.org should clearly express a full support to the KDE
Free Qt Foundation, and send them an official public message.

I also think that if the situation evolves to a point where a Qt Fork becomes
the only viable solution to continue to have a free and opensource Qt project
with a balanced and open governance, then QGIS.org should also contribute to
financing the KDE Free Qt foundation yearly, so that they are able to hire
maintainers for the library.

I think that these points are decisions to be made by the PSC, and that there is
a certain urgency to do it.

Best regards,
Vincent Picavet