
What's New with Qt for Android - Memosyne
https://www.qt.io/blog/whats-new-with-qt-for-android
======
pedro2
FYI, the delay of source availability of future Qt releases is not clear.

Last public discussion about the subject, to my knowledge:
[https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-
community/2020q2/006098.h...](https://mail.kde.org/pipermail/kde-
community/2020q2/006098.html)

~~~
Nokinside
It seems clear to me. Qt company considers that they might follow the legal
agreement with the KDE Free Qt Foundation to the letter doe nothing extra.

> they are thinking about restricting ALL Qt releases to paid license holders
> for the first 12 months. They are aware that this would mean the end of
> contributions via Open Governance in practice.

This is the minimum they can do, and they can't do legally anything less. If
they don't release free edition within 12 months...

[https://kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php](https://kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php)

> Should The Qt Company discontinue the development of the Qt Free Edition
> under the required licenses, then the Foundation has the right to release Qt
> under a BSD-style license or under other open source licenses. The
> agreements stay valid in case of a buy-out, a merger or bankruptcy.

KDE releasing Qt under BSD is IMHO credible threat.

~~~
thePunisher
I don't understand the rationale behind this. Why would a commercial company
dupe itself into restricting the licensing of its product?

------
mwcampbell
Can anyone point me at a Qt-based Android app on the Play Store? Would like to
find out how Qt's accessibility support is on Android these days, but not
serious enough about it to build an app or contact the Qt company.

~~~
aerique
Not the prettiest and somewhat older here's a Common Lisp REPL using QT:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.eql5.andro...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.eql5.android.repl)

(I am NOT the author.)

~~~
mwcampbell
Thanks for the link. Unfortunately, this app doesn't work at all with the
TalkBack screen reader. Not sure if the problem is with CL REPL or Qt.
Apparently, according to the Git commit history, Qt introduced accessibility
support on Android (and iOS) in 2014. I'll have to dig further when I have
time.

------
greatgib
In my personal opinion, it is insane to use qt for a Mobile or embedded
environment based on the fact that the license for that kind of devices is
quite shady and that they have a clear history to do major breaking changes at
each major release.

~~~
rat9988
If the license of the device is shady then it's not a qt problem. If they do
major breaking changes then qt should abstract over them and alleviate the
problem.

~~~
amelius
We should remember that "development frameworks" were not even allowed in the
early days of iOS [1]. That we can use them now is a huge step forward. But at
the same time, little prevents companies like Apple from throwing the switch
back for new apps.

[1] [https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-
flash/](https://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/)

Quoting from [1]:

> We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software
> come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-
> standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If
> developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools,
> they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third
> party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a
> third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available
> to our developers.

~~~
pjmlp
What many forget when quoting iOS victory about Flash, is that Adobe was quick
to adapt and offer AOT compilation for Flash.

So many of the casual games in iOS kept being Flash, before Unity and Cocos
got enough uptake.

