Nokia increases Qt adoption with easier licensing

14 January 2009, 10:27am

Espoo, Finland - Nokia today announced that its Qt cross-platform User Interface (UI) and application framework for desktop and embedded platforms will be available under the Lesser General Public License (LGPL) version 2.1 license from the release of Qt 4.5, scheduled for March 2009. Previously, Qt has been made available to the open source community under the General Public License (GPL) license. In addition, Qt will now be available from the new domain, www.qtsoftware.com.

The move to LGPL licensing will provide open source and commercial developers with more permissive licensing than GPL and so increase flexibility for developers. In addition, Qt source code repositories will be made publicly available and will encourage contributions from desktop and embedded developer communities. With these changes, developers will be able to actively drive the evolution of the Qt framework.

Qt 4.5 will also be available under commercial licensing terms, while licensing for previous versions of Qt remains unchanged. In addition, service offerings for Qt will be expanded to ensure that all Qt development projects can have access to the same levels of support, independent of the selected license.

"Broader use of Qt by even more leading companies will result in valuable feedback and increased contributions, ensuring that Qt remains the best-in-class, cross-platform UI and application framework. The accelerated development of Qt will allow developers, including Nokia, to deliver better devices and applications, reduce time to market and enable a wider deployment base for their solutions," said Sebastian Nyström, Vice President, Qt Software, Nokia.

"Nokia is making significant contributions to open source communities through ongoing work with Qt, its contribution of Symbian OS and S60 to the Symbian Foundation and open development of the Maemo platform," said Kai Öistämö, Executive Vice President, Devices, Nokia. "By moving to LGPL, opening Qt's source code repositories and encouraging more contributions, Qt users will have more of a stake in the development of Qt, which will in turn encourage wider adoption. Nokia will be able to leverage improvements in Qt across S60 on Symbian OS, Maemo and OVI services without rewriting the source code."

"Combining Nokia's OS-independent Qt application framework with Freescale's enablement software offers OEMs and applications developers a unique freedom of choice in selecting the most appropriate Freescale chipset while allowing the developer to develop and maintain a single code base of their application," says Raja Tabet, Vice President of Solutions and Enablement Technology at Freescale. The LGPL model is an excellent and timely licensing option that will accelerate the adoption/deployment of the Freescale/Qt combined platform."

"Qt is used extensively in Kubuntu and KDE applications, and Canonical is delighted to see this breakthrough in its licensing model," said Mark Shuttleworth, founder of the Ubuntu project. "Qt's new licensing terms will help us deliver ever more 'lustful' applications to users. Nokia's continued investment in cross-platform Qt libraries, and the Linux platform, is a major driver of innovation in the free software desktop and mobile device stack."

"We applaud Nokia's move to simplify the licensing of Qt," said Joe Miller, vice president, Platform & Technology Development, Linden Labs. "We find Qt to be intriguing and innovative technology regardless of licensing, but the new licensing has greatly simplified our decision to pursue QtWebkit for integration into Second Life."

"Qt being available under the terms of the LGPL streamlines the licensing of applications built using KDE components on top of Qt-based applications," said Sebastian Kügler, KDE e.V. Board Member. "This more permissive licensing will further lower the barrier for adoption of Qt and KDE technologies. The KDE team welcomes opening up the development process and is looking forward to further improved collaboration between KDE and Qt Software."

About Qt

Qt is a cross-platform application framework. Using Qt, you can develop applications and user interfaces once, and deploy them across many desktop and embedded operating systems without rewriting the source code. Qt Software, formerly Trolltech, was acquired by Nokia in June 2008. For more details about Qt Software and its new licensing model, please visit the web site below.

Qt software

Nokia

Geo: International