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Yes, you are right. Anything else but GPL app requires you to buy commercial development license.
And prices are insane. Insane high, I mean.
http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/pricing.html
Not everyone writes GPL software, there is much more shareware than freeware, and how can one afford to even think about proffit if he has to pay 2630EUR for one workstation development desktop license? Well, in case of buying some comercial product you get cheaper license, but that doesn't mean that you can use newer Qt if any.
For example Kylix is still at Qt 2.0 (ok, there is a FreeCLX project that will support newer, but... read forward to know why but exists here) and owners of older licenses will be able to write commercial apps with 2.0 only where it doesn't matter if 4.0 is out. But on the other hand these same people will be able to write GPL software with 4? Wow, that is a real deal for anybody who bought Kylix, basically he can stick FreeCLX somewhere where the sun doesn't shine if he would like to write closed applications.
Life sucks, doesn't it?
There are no royalties involved if you code with Qt. To quote the KDE myths page:
There are no per-product or per-sale fees associated with Qt development on X11, Windows or MacOS X, open or closed source.
You do have to pay a per-developer license fee, however horrible it is to have to pay for service and support. It must really suck having to spend money to make money...




Member since:
"I don't think the majority of KDE users are aware that developers making commercial applications have to pay a royalty if they use the QT toolkit. For me this is a good enough reason to avoid KDE."
Correct me if i'm wrong, but I believe there is an option to avoid royaltoes IF and only IF you release your program under the GPL. In that cae I fully agree and understand that commercial distros move away from KDE.
/Lennart Fridén