And why not JollyBoys buying a Qt license for SailfishOS and get a supported framework? This means no more free version for SailfishOS but this might be easier to get a future for SFOS.
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Out of interest asking stupid questions as someone non tech person. Is Jolla currently paying for Qt license? If not what would it actually mean if they started to pay for Qt license? I am not familiar what are the key differences between Qt5 and Qt6 (or what Qt even means, I have thought it to be kind of programming language?) but could Jolla instantly transfer to Qt6 by buying the license?
Just for reference, here’s some info on what commercial licensing would mean:
IANAL but it looks like it would force SFOS to become much less open than even today, among other things.
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Definitely not:
- This is not just my personal “interpretation”, it is what the licence text states. Consequently most others understand it the same way.
- The licence texts of the *GPL3 licences solely uses the term “user”, not “owner” and not “licensee”.
- The FSF has been notified during the GPL3 consultations (in the mid-2000s) that this wording (“user”) will have effects which go far beyond the goals stated in the GPL3 FAQ, and “owner” and / or “licensee” have been suggested.
- The FSF deliberately chose to ignore this input (just as they seem to have done with basically all feedback from the GPL3 consultation process; nobody outside the FSF knows exactly, because the process was not transparent).
I cannot see any ambiguity in the license text. If you can, please explain your considerations with quotes from the license text. (This is a point in such discussions, where I never read any reply based on the license text.)
The only thing open to “interpretation” is if the FSF intended the far reaching scope of effects or not.
- That was not exactly the finding: IIRC, the statement was, “the Qt Wayland Compositor was the first Qt component used by Jolla for SailfishOS, for which the Qt company changed the licence to {GPL3 (x)or proprietary} in Qt 5.7.”
IIRC, meanwhile many more Qt components were relicensed in the same manner. - That was not my finding, IIRC it was
@rinigus’s. I retraced the content of the statement from the preceding bullet point for Qt’s side (yes, definitely true) but not for the “used by Jolla”. As I trust his technical assessments (he and@piggzported Qt 5.15 and then Qt 6 to SailfishOS), I stated it as a fact, without having explicitly checked for myself, also because it technically made sense to me looking at the Qt architecture diagrams.
BTW, for others reading this to be able to follow: @Keeper-of-the-Keys basically continues this TMO discussion thread here at FSO. Actually, I would rather continue at TMO in order to keep this topic in a single thread on one platform; provided you bring forth points based on reasoning, not on belief.
WRT your real issue
… it turns out that Sailsync ownCloud which uses the official oc/nc clients needs newer Qt to be able to update the client and the old client no longer works with new nextcloud (at least 31), …
Qt 5.15 is available in the SailfishOS:Chum community repository, and Qt 6 is available in SailfishOS:Chum:Testing (and should be submitted to SailfishOS:Chum “soon™”). Any software published there can simply depend on these components in their spec file.
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MDM -
Canonical has landscape, Red Hat has satellite or whatever they call it these days, Google has an MDM for Android, other vendors have other solutions for full blown Linux distributions/Android containing tons of GPL3 code I just don’t buy it that all these players are violating the GPL and therefore the interpretation offered must be wrong.
And yes I am fully aware the license has major issues I was around when it dropped and projects that worded their licenses as “GPL 2 or newer” suddenly were screwed while the smart ones like the Linux kernel had a choice, GPL3 is also not my first choice, all of that being said the current situation of SFOS is slowly but steadily becoming untenable.
As for the Chum solution - that is up to Erin, if it were my app I would not be happy to go that route unless Jolla could show me that 100% or a significant majority of users use it, in general while I like and use these solutions for myself I have always disliked making them mandatory in my apps for users (I hated it when I was maintaining a Store and a OpenRepos version), “normal/non-power” users will mostly not even get OpenRepos let alone Chum.
- Sorry, you are interpreting, I am pointing to the licence text.
- Nobody stated “that all these players are violating the GPL” (except for you). Actually these companies (plus SUSE and many more) understand Open Source Software licensing and Open Source Software business models very well: Their basic software stacks are fully OSS, hence “worth nothing” (monetarily, i.e. the market value of their products is zero), they earn their money with services (support contracts etc.) revolving around the software they distribute. In short: They do not sell a proprietary software product based on (i.e. comprising) Qt components.
Jolla, on the contrary, insists on selling software licenses to us private users and hopes to acquire “big, commercial licensees” as they once did with Intex and OMP. Therefore Jolla proprietarised the basic SailfishOS by bundling their proprietary components (IIRC “Silica” etc.) into it (I am not addressing the proprietary, non-core components here, as AlienDalvik aka AAS, EAS (Exchange Active Sync), the T9 word scrambling software etc.). - But most importantly, the classic Linux distributors and Google’s AOSP team have no “users” who could insist on executing their rights according to GPL3! It is the companies running the software these provide, which may have to face such claims by their “users”. E.g. I had to sign a “Do and Don’t” list when I received IT from my employer (or the IT would not have been handed out to me), adding a section to waiver certain “user” rights the GPL3 provides (i.e. not to execute those rights) would be simple.
But Jolla seems to be afraid that such a legal requirement makes SailfishOS less attractive for “big, commercial licensees”, and they may be right, as Google had exactly this consideration when they decided to keep the basic AOSP *GPL3 free right from the start.
If Jolla would only arrive where other Linux distributors have arrived at long ago: It bears advantages to make the basic SailfishOS fully OSS licensed (plus access to OSS EU funding etc.), to develop in the open (not in a walled garden with infrequent code drops), to primarily work with a public bug tracker (instead of maintaining bug descriptions, bug status, etc. principally in Jolla’s JB database; likely a non-public Bugzilla instance) etc.
But Jolla stubbornly insists on staying a proprietary software company which utilises lots of OSS, instead of becoming a real OSS company with a truly OSS-based business model (i.e. generating revenue with services, not by selling licences for software products).
As I had the feeling when writing this that I rephrased things I had written years ago in aforementioned TMO thread, I really do not want to continue this here, expect somebody really has a new insight. Actually, even then the original TMO thread for this topic appears to be the more appropriate location, and only if somebody has a new insight I would be keen on continuing this topic there (at TMO).
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Thank you for this, it was good read. Have I understood correctly that for now Jolla has only used the open source version of Qt?
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As far as we know, yes.
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Ah this makes it much more easier to follow the conversation. Thank you for helping noobie! So it sounds like they would need finances to buy the licenses for Qt6 and help from Qt to move the code under the commercial license.
I hope that Jolla can tap some serious financial support from Eu or Finland which could give them ability to do so. Some, even vague, road map would be nice as other people have pointed out to know what will happens next.
Or they can just stop relying on Qt for really basic stuff like the compositor. And spend the lisence money funding the development of a new one written in something toolkit agnostic.
this other toolkit would be as powerful as future proof as QT, while being free to boot!
sounds like a winner, tell me more…?
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Its not about changing the toolkit.
An updated WL compositor will let us use apps from all toolkits. And i get that this is not optimal from a “looks” perspective but i’d prefer having firefox running than having to deal with the browser we have now.
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Is it possible for the user to install QT6 above an existing system?
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Yes, in a similar (but slightly less complicated) way like Qt 5.15 can be installed from chum.
It won’t do anything though unless you also build apps to use it. Which again can be done on Chum, like with the 5.15 based Angelfish browser.
See here:
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Thanks for info @nephros , so i’ll better leave the device as it is now because at the moment i have a full working device with a lot of whistles and bells and am happy with it!
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Thanks for the discussion and let’s see what thé future will be.
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I totally agree with you about Jolla and OSS, my only point of contention was their reason for being wrong headed.
As I said before I can’t imagine them being so apprehensive about OSS because of the MDM, maybe I’m naive but I’d like to think they are smarter than that even if their stance on OSS can probably also be classified as stupid and harmful to them.
I have been trying to understand the Qt conversation better. As I have understood Jolla want to keep some parts of Sailfish behind walled garden they are using very old Qt version which allows them to use it free(?). As Jolla is using the free version which is licensed as open source they can’t easily make the jump and upgrade to Qt 5.15 or Qt6. Below I have tried to better understand the possible costs included in the upgrade.
Behind this link there is one section seen below. From this I understand that it should be possible to move from open source license to commercial Qt license → Qt6 at this point(?). This would need probably close coordination between Qt and Jolla and I get a feeling that there would be some kind hour based fee from Qt side included. I don’t have real glue how much SW companies charge based on hour but in our company I know one SW provider is charging 170€/h so I will use this as a reference.
On top of that all of Jolla’s developers would need license for the Qt if I am not mistaken. Checked from here Qt Pricing & Plans for Each Stage of Software Development and as I have no glue what kind of license would be necessary lets assume that the 4110€/year is the necessary one.
So if we assume that Qt would charge for 300h of work (random number as I have no knowledge of this kind work. Might be that I am optimistic that only two persons month work would be sufficient) and if they charge 170€/h that would be 51k€. On top of that would be yearly license fees and to my understanding Jolla has around 20 developers currently. So that would be ~82k€ yearly. And of course probably a lot of work by Jolla’s devs. We come to ~135k€ + Jolla’s in-house work.
That is a lot of money and resources in Jolla’s book but shouldn’t be impossible. From the Qt FAQ section I noticed that companies would need to get written permission from Qt. Can it be that Qt won’t allow for reason or other Jolla’s transition to commercial licensing? Can there be any other pumps hindering the transition that is not related to Jolla? I am just trying to understand the current situation better and I am not tech person or understand much of SW so my questions might be stupid and my numbers wrong…
And as I looked more information I pumped to the Qt6 available for developer preview post which seemed great if community can start to build apps on top of Qt6 even if Jolla don’t make the transition. I don’t really know if this is the case but it sounded like it. Thank you and apologies for long post 
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