At the time the KDE Free Qt Foundation was founded, Qt was developed by Trolltech–the company that originally developed the framework. The Foundation has supported Qt through its transitions, first to Nokia, then to Digia, and finally to The Qt Company. It has the right to release Qt, if necessary to ensure that Qt remains open source. This remarkable legal guarantee protects the free software community and creates trust among developers, contributors, and customers.
This special deal is well-known, but it’s also kind of unique. It’s great that KDE has such a solid guarantee in its back pocket in case of an emergency.
The KDE community had begun to develop FreeQt, a Qt clone without the restrictions of the old license. Just as LessTif was a Motif reimplementation (that worked). Trolltech saw that as a menace to its business model.
Anybody remember the Harmony Project?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmony_(toolkit)