The KDE Free Qt Foundation: 25 Years of Celebration

On the 22nd of June 1998, the KDE Free Qt Foundation was founded and has accompanied Qt on its amazing journey to become the success story that it is today.

Qt has established itself as the go-to solution for UI development because of its high quality, consistency, ease of use, and broad cross-platform support. A key factor in this achievement is Qt's dual licensing strategy: Qt is available as free software for open source, but it is also available under a paid license for proprietary software development. A legal foundation ensures the continued availability of Qt as free software alongside the commercial licensing options.

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.

The KDE Free Qt Foundation is a collaboration between Qt Group and KDE. KDE is one of the largest Free Software communities for general-purpose end-user software, and has been around since 1996.

Qt is developed as a true open source project. People from many different backgrounds join The Qt Company to contribute to the framework. Many contributors come from The Qt Company, but many others come from other companies and from Qt-based Free Software projects, including the KDE community. They know that their contributions will continue to be available as Free Software because the Foundation protects and ensures that contributions to Qt will remain open.

Join us in celebrating 25 years of freedom and collaboration for Qt!
Join us in knowing that the KDE Free Qt Foundation is protecting the future of Qt, both as open source and as a proprietary and commercially supported offering.

Find our more about the KDE Free Qt Foundation.