We have published another blog post with a summary of the changes to the commercial developer licenses here.

The Qt Company has invested heavily in developing new features and functionality and acquiring new technology to expand our product offering. The feedback from the market has been that our license offerings, terms, and conditions are complex and challenging to understand. Therefore, we are streamlining and simplifying our commercial offering. One of our primary goals is to "make it easy to do business with us,” and we believe that the changes outlined in this blog post will put us on the path to our goal.

Here are the highlights of what we are planning to change:

• We are streamlining and consolidating our developer license offering down to four editions
• Qt Design Studio will be both included in the developer licenses and offered separately
• Customers with a subscription license will be able to distribute applications after the expiry of their Qt developer licenses
• Our Quality Assurance Tools are now covered under a single Qt License Agreement with developer and designer tools

Existing customer licenses and ongoing negotiations will not be affected by these changes. The new portfolio and licensing will be available from the 1st of February 2022.

Consolidation of our developer offering

To reduce complexity, we are consolidating our developer offering down to four main license editions, as illustrated in the table below. The higher-level an edition, the more features it includes. Each edition builds on the previous one in an onion-architecture license.
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Figure: Commercial developer offering editions in an onion architecture. The upper-level licenses include features and functionality in the 'inner / lower' layer.

You can see in the picture that we are incorporating several add-ons, which used to be sold under a separate license, into the overall offering. These commercial add-ons provide machine-to-machine (M2M) protocols, libraries to develop user interfaces for microcontrollers, and functionality for safety-critical applications, automotive-specific purposes, and application management.

How does this impact me?

Subscription license holders of ‘Qt for Application Development’ will be converted to ‘Qt for Application Development Enterprise’ licensees. Subscription license holders of “Qt for Device Creation” will be converted to ‘Qt for Device Creation Professional’ licensees. As illustrated in the table above, the new licenses will give subscription license holders added features at no extra cost and will simplify our developer offering significantly. Existing licenses will be automatically converted to the new version through autorenewal at the end of their license terms, and many of the new capabilities will become available immediately via the Qt Maintenance tool.

Need more information? Find all the details on the features included in the different editions here and information about pricing here.

Qt Design Studio license updates

We are going to release Qt Design Studio 3.0 soon. Commercial licenses will be made available in two editions.

1. Qt Design Studio Professional
2. Qt Design Studio Enterprise

The Qt Design Studio Professional license offers all the tools for user interface design, editing, animations, and prototyping, also for 3D. The features and functionality match those in Qt Design Studio 2.3, excluding the 3rd party bridge plugins. Designers can buy the license separately, and developers using Qt Creator 6.0 or later versions will have the tool included as part of their developer license.

Qt Design Studio Enterprise is an offering for technical artists and user interface designers. It lets you import designs from leading graphical design tools including Figma, Adobe XD, and Sketch and 3D elements from Maya, Modo, Blender, to name a few. We will introduce more value-added features this year, empowering designers to create beautiful user interfaces.

Updates to terms and conditions based on customer feedback

You have told us that the requirement to have a valid developer subscription license to distribute your products is hindering you, and we have listened! We have decided to remove this requirement to protect your investment in Qt licenses.

Previously, our license agreements did not allow customers to distribute applications without a valid developer license. These terms were intended to give you the ability to address security and maintenance issues and update your products. However, based on your feedback, these limitations are now lifted for licenses purchased under the Qt License Agreement (Version 4.4) released today. Although no longer required, The Qt Company still strongly recommends maintaining at least one valid developer license subscription for security fixes and maintenance of your software.

There are also other changes in the Qt License Agreement 4.4: We have added The Qt Company’s Quality Assurance (QA) tools to the agreement. The QA tools are products we added to the Qt portfolio through the acquisition of Froglogic in 2021. Squish, Test Center, and Coco are now covered by a single license agreement along with the designer and developer licenses. This change does not impact the terms or pricing for the QA tools but makes the contract structure simpler.

Furthermore, we have aligned the liability period with the subscription term. In earlier versions of the license agreements (version 4.3.x or earlier), the Qt liability period was limited to 12 months regardless of the purchased license term. Now the liability period follows the duration of your subscription.

Existing customers with signed agreements do not get the benefits of the new agreement automatically as we cannot unilaterally make changes to contracts. Please contact your account manager or make a contact request if you would like to discuss an upgrade to the License Agreement version 4.4.

Benefits of the simplified portfolio and licensing

Qt customers have provided us with plenty of feedback on our license structure, terms, and conditions. We have put much effort into simplifying and consolidating our product offering.

The changes will make it easier to understand our offering and do business with The Qt Company. Existing customers will benefit from consolidating features under fewer different license types.

More details of the simplified portfolio are documented in the Frequently Asked Questions www.qt.io/faq/overview about the commercial licensing on www.qt.io/pricing. And if you have questions or comments, please contact us or comment below!