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Comment by arinlen | Hacker News Reader

> They work really hard to hide this, but they do have a LGPL license that applies to most of the framework (...)

No, LGPL also excludes projects from most commercial software.

Also, keep in mind that this is not a choice between Qt with a paid license or Qt with LGPL. It's a choice between Qt and any other framework, and licensing alone makes Qt a very poor choice.

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Which frameworks though ? WxWidgets, GTK and Electron need compliance with LGPL, and I don't know any other that would be comparable in terms of features with Qt

That's perhaps an advantage that Flutter has over Qt.

See: https://github.com/flutter/flutter/blob/master/LICENSE

The API span of flutter is ridiculously small compared to Qt. Does it even have a proper tree view? I only see stuff comparable to Qt Quick there: https://gallery.flutter.dev/ ; nothing to make a complete desktop UI.

e.g. if I look at what I can find for docking widgets (and I have hardly ever seen an actual useful software for content creation without a whole set of dozens of docks): https://caduandrade.github.io/docking_flutter_demo/#/ like, is this a joke?

Yes, Qt is the best for certain types of desktop UIs and it has a proven-track of years. However, if you're a small business, what options do you have --realistically-- that come with friendly licensing and without having to shell out big bucks?

.. using the LGPL version ? it's used by small and large businesses alike and don't need you to shell out a cent nor to open-source your proprietary code.

Like, it was certainly a very shitty move given how much they make but if fucking Tesla managed to use the LGPL Qt in their car dashboard, surely your app can do it too

Well, that's a good point.

Feature-wise, wxwidgets and gtk+ are a joke compared to Qt.

Electron is not just a joke but a fat pig.

Truth is there's nothing comparable to Qt in the cross plataform world today, unless you are willing to take the risk of Flutter, JUCE, some web technology (which would be regarded as obsolete by the time you ship your product), etc.

Sure, I agree haha. They are the closest but they aren't comparable (although likely for GTK+ one would mention the entire glib stack which is I think comparable to Qt in scope)

The whole glib would be just a subset of QtCore. Not comparable.

OP is talking embedded, so things like TouchGFX.

https://www.st.com/content/st_com/en/campaigns/touchgfx-adva...

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