Change in open-source licensing of Qt Wayland Compositor, Qt Application Manager and Qt PDF

The license of Qt Wayland Compositor, Qt Application Manager and Qt PDF will change from LGPLv3/Commercial to GPLv3/Commercial. Change becomes in effect with the Qt 5.14 release.

Since January 2016 most of the new Qt Add-On modules have been licensed under GPLv3 license for open-source users in addition to the commercial licensing option. We use GPLv3 license for the selected Qt Add-Ons in order for those making closed-source applications or devices to pick the commercial option when using these add-on modules, while still providing the functionality under an open-source license for open-source applications.

In order to increase the amount of GPLv3/Commercial licensed Qt Add-Ons the license of Qt Wayland Compositor, Qt Application Manager and Qt PDF is changed. Going forward, these modules are no longer available under LGPLv3 license option. Qt Wayland Compositor and Application Manager are mainly used in complex multi process embedded systems. These are not used on Desktop or Mobile, and not by majority of the embedded developers either. Qt PDF is a new module, which has not been released earlier despite the pre-release code being available.

The following Qt Add-Ons are licensed under GPLv3 for open-source users:
• Qt Charts
• Qt CoAP
• Qt Data Visualization
• Qt Device Utilities
• Qt KNX
• Qt Lottie Animation
• Qt MQTT
• Qt Network Authentication
• Qt Quick WebGL
• Qt Virtual Keyboard

For all of these modules, the commercial license option is available. In addition to the Qt Add-Ons, the Qt for WebAssembly platform as well as Qt Creator and other tools are licensed under GPLv3/Commercial.

The change in licensing of Qt Wayland Compositor, Qt Application Manager and Qt PDF is implemented in the coming days to be in effect by Qt 5.14 release timeframe and later releases.

For further information on Qt licensing, please take a look to the FAQ: https://www.qt.io/faq/  

If you have any questions or concerns about licensing of Qt, please contact us via the online form or email to legal@qt-project.org

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