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

Paolo Cavallini cavallini at faunalia.it
Thu Apr 9 10:27:44 PDT 2020


Hi Vincent,

Il 09/04/20 18:25, Vincent Picavet (ml) ha scritto:

> 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.

thanks a lot for the detailed report. As you descripe it the situation
is surely concerning us. Please those who had already contacts with Qt
and who follows the situation closely give their opinion.
Cheers.
-- 
Paolo Cavallini - QGIS.ORG Chair
www.faunalia.eu:
training, support, development on QGIS, PostGIS and more


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