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kactus2 / kactus2dev

Kactus2 is a graphical EDA tool based on the IP-XACT standard.
https://research.tuni.fi/system-on-chip/tools/
GNU General Public License v2.0
192 stars 34 forks source link

Qt6 requires purchase by commercial users #95

Closed lmg260a closed 9 months ago

lmg260a commented 10 months ago

Hi, I'd really like to try Kactus2 and show the value of IP-XACT at my company, and (hopefully) persuade them to do a couple of test projects using Kactus2.

We do all our work on linux. However, Kactus2 for linux requires Qt6 which requires purchasing a license. Which means I have to get Legal department involved, management approval to purchase, etc. etc.

I.e. demonstrating Kactus2 is dead in the water.

I hope that there will be some way to resume support for Qt5, which doesn't require a license on linux.

vowstar commented 10 months ago

Kactus2 for linux requires Qt6 which requires purchasing a license.

Based on the Qt 6 licensing documentation, using Qt 6 for open-source projects like Kactus2 does not require a commercial license if the project complies with the GNU LGPL or GPL terms. The misconception that Qt 6 necessitates a license purchase for Linux is not accurate. Qt allows free use in open-source projects under certain open-source licenses. For more detailed information, you can refer to the Qt 6 licensing page: https://doc.qt.io/qt-6/licensing.html

Most modern versions of Linux distributions like Debian, Fedora, Arch Linux, and Gentoo already include Qt 6 in their repositories, allowing for straightforward installation. Furthermore, for older versions of these distributions, it's possible to compile and install Qt 6. This availability in standard Linux repositories further supports the accessibility of Qt 6 for open-source projects without the need for a commercial license.

It's indeed possible to maintain code compatibility with both Qt 5 and Qt 6, considering the migration to Qt 6 has not been very long. If you have the expertise and are willing to contribute, you could consider creating a pull request (PR) to the Kactus2 project to help with this compatibility. This approach would be beneficial for users on various versions of the software.

hagantsa commented 9 months ago

Hi,

As @vowstar already said, a commercial Qt6 license is not required to build Kactus2 for linux. As for Qt5, we currently have no plans to resume support for it.