[Qgis-psc] Position on Qt wrt The QT Company announcements

[Andreas Neumann]

Hi Paolo,

I am afraid that the contacts between KDAB and myself are mainly of 
administrative nature. I don't know any influential persons there and I 
doubt that the accountant would help us much in this respect. I also 
vaguely know a "Business Development Manager" there, named Michael 
Freer. He might be a useful contact. But again: KDAB is not the culprit 
here. They are probably also "victims" like us, but likely with a closer 
involvement with QT and the QT Company than us.

However, before starting to send out uncoordinated e-mails here and 
there, I'd prefer if the PSC, together with selected core developers who 
know something about the issue take the time to work on a collaborative 
document where we cite statements from the QT company that are of 
concern to us and summarize a statement from us including ideas how to 
solve the conflict.

Can we schedule an extraordinary PSC meeting with invited other experts 
for this next week?

Thanks and greetings,

Andreas

Am 10.04.20 um 11:29 schrieb Paolo Cavallini:
> Hi all,
> thanks for the extensive and well documented feedback.
> So apparently we agree this is time to act. I'd suggest to:
> * first write/call privately to our contacts in major players (Andreas >
> KDAB, Nyall > KDE^, etc.; of course I'm available in case there is a
> need for an "official" talk with representatives) to check what are
> their plans, and what are the opportunities for coordinating the efforts
> * once the situation is more clear, write an official QGIS.ORG
> statement, possibly as a blog post; Nyall seems the most documented, so
> I'd ask him to take the lead on this; of course I'm available to do my part.
> How does it sound?
> Cheers.
>
> Il 10/04/20 09:41, Vincent Picavet (ml) ha scritto:
>> Hi,
>>
>> On 09/04/2020 22:39, Even Rouault wrote:
>> [..]
>>> But whatever the outcome of the apparently cool discussions within the board of
>>> the KDE Free Qt foundation between the KDE e.v and QT Company representatives, I
>>> don't think a statement of support from QGIS.org to the open source side of the
>>> QT project would hurt.
>> +1 to this too
>>
>>> As far as which body to officially support, this is a bit difficult. As the
>>> board of the KDE Free Qt foundation is made of 2 representatives from KDE e.V
>>> and 2 from The QT Company, it seems difficult to imagine that it would continue
>>> to exist as such, or be still relevant, in the event The QT company would
>>> execute their 12-month-delay plan. And before financially supporting the KDE
>>> Free Qt foundation or whatever other body would represent best the interests of
>>> a FOSS QT (I guess a new body gathering together KDE, KDAB and all other parties
>>> would be more relevant in the event a FOSS QT fork would be needed), we should
>>> probably have a look at its current finances/budget (from a quick search,
>>> couldn't find one regarding KDE Free Qt foundation, apart from the 200 000 KRO
>>> founding capital mentionned in their status [1])
>> Thanks for raising this point, this would indeed be something to look at
>> carefully. I agree in case of a fork, the governance model would be transformed,
>> and I hope the new organization and related awaited transparency would make the
>> financing choice easy to do.
>>
>> But we are not there yet.
>>
>> I also agree with Nyall that technically, impacts on QGIS would not necessarily
>> be big. Having a more open Qt project, with easier contributions and bugfixing
>> could help QGIS though.
>> But generally speaking QGIS, as a big and successful opensource project, now
>> also has the responsibility to voice opinions and defend Opensource / libre
>> software models of organization whenever they are at stake in its ecosystem.
>>
>> It seems like this is a good time to do it.
>>
>> Best regards,
>>
>> Vincent
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