The short answer to that latter question is easy: Yes, you really need a License. As about what License you need, I can even make a shorter answer: it depends. This takes the form of a contract, both parties has to agree with. Nowadays, the acceptation is rather implicit: just by using some Work, you are reputed to agree with its usage License.
Just to make thinks clear, when releasing your own work, the Licensor is you. And the Licensee, anyone using your code. Broadly speaking, this includes two main categories: developers and end users. And to fix few more vocabulary terms, by modifying your Work, a Licensee is creating what is called a Derivative Work.
Not all licenses agree though if the use of your Work in a larger work will qualify that latter as a Derivative Work or not. As you will see below, some licenses specifically address those issues.
Basically, the License is a way for the Licensor and the Licensee to agree on the rights and obligations of both of them. For example, a Licensor might require the Licensee to quote her name when using her work.
Or can authorize to copy her work, but not to modify it in any way. Or even require Derivative Work to be released under the same terms as the original Work. On the other hand, the License is a way to protect the Licensee too. By clearly stating how he can use your Work, he is not at risk of seeing you unexpectedly asking for royalties or another form of compensation for having used your work.
Something that is critical for your Work adoption. So, the License will protect your work. Will protect the Licensor. But will protect you too. I mean you, personally. But always remember a License governs rights and obligations. This is to protect the owner of the work against implicit guarantees or user assumptions. The last thing you want is to be sued as a consequence of releasing your work open-source! Being a contract, a License cannot in most jurisdictions?
Hence the difficulty enforcing the licensing rights in a globalized world. In fact, such cases have already been defended in several jurisdictions and may be cited as precedent. In additions, Custom Licenses sometimes nicknamed Vanity Licenses may create incompatibilities with other licenses, resulting in a poor compatibility of your Work legally speaking.
Multi-licensing — notably Dual-licensing — is not that uncommon. This is especially true when you want to build a business around your free Work. In that case, your project will probably be released both under some FOSS license and a commercial license. Another use of multi-licensing is to increase compatibility, by allowing your Work to be combined with works published under different terms or to satisfy different user needs or requirements.
This is a reason why some project are released under several FOSS licenses. But be warned: not all licenses are compatible together! Once again, I would discourage you from reinventing the wheel by staying with well-known compatible licenses if you want to go that way. The copyright holder is responsible for the licensing terms. It is rather easy to change the License as long as you are the only contributor.
But to take an extreme example, if Linus Torvald would want to release the Linux Kernel under a different license, he would probably need first the agreement of the thousands of contributors to that project.
Something impossible in practice. For a more reasonably sized project, it can be done. And in fact, it was as you will see in some examples below. But Which one to choose? The final choice is up to you.
And there are very well made comparators available on the web to help you in your choice. Just to quote my favorites:. Grow Discounts are available for small business start-ups with embedded and desktop software development projects. Have your financial documentation ready? Buy now. Teach This free Educational Programs plan license allows full use of all aspects of Qt development. Available for: Educational institutions with non-commercial development projects.
Are you an Educator? Choose Package Choose Bundle. Explore the Qt Marketplace. Development environments. Target operating systems. Learn More. Learn more. No hidden costs.
Faster time-to-market. Qt stack Commercial licensing of the Qt framework and development tools. License compatibility totally risk-free Interoperability between libraries guaranteed High-quality development and design tooling included Commercial professional support Known hardware requirements for product budgeting Lower development and maintenance costs with cross-platform libraries VS. Managing license compatibility can be complex, risky and time-intensive Adds development testing time for guaranteeing library interoperability Cost for leveling up development and design tooling Varying quality of support resources Volatility of dependencies across multiple code bases Unpredictable BoM.
Save big with Qt Estimate the economic impact that choosing Qt for Device Creation will have on your project. Calculate ROI. Try Qt Start a free 10 day trial — no credit card required, no commitment. Try Qt. Qt comes loaded with resources. Learn what you can achieve with Qt Resource Center. Qt Documentation Here you'll find documentation for Qt, a cross-platform software development framework Dive In.
Built with Qt. Frequently Asked Questions. If you create a device, you need Qt for Device Creation License. The Qt for Application Development license is sufficient to create applications that run on desktop PCs, mobile phones, or tablets. These kinds of computers are typically used also for reading email, browsing the Internet and so on. A Qt-based application is only one of many applications on these computers.
The main use case of these computers is not dedicated to the use of your Qt-based application. Contact us to learn more. You are not permitted to further distribute your applications. I am referring here to both commercial as well open-source users, and it would not be complete without thanking the open-source community. Without open-source contributors, Qt would not be what it is today, irrespective of whether we are looking at Qt 5 or Qt 6.
Update: The status of the Qt WebGL module has changed and the blog post has been updated accordingly on the 7th of September. Download the latest release here: www. Check our Qt demos and case studies in the virtual Qt World. Check out all our open positions here and follow us on Instagram to see what it's like to be QtPeople.
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