Qt 5.15 Alpha Released With Various Improvements To Qt 3D, QML, Core, New Qt PDF Module

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Qt 5.15 Alpha Released With Various Improvements To Qt 3D, QML, Core, New Qt PDF Module

After recently ending feature development on Qt 5.15, the alpha release of this forthcoming tool-kit is now available...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Qt-5.15-Alpha-Released

[DarkCloud]

But it's free, so how is it costing you anything

[starshipeleven]

Seems like a bad deal

Sign a CLA and get excluded from LTS releases.

The only difference with GNOME is the CLA, so it's still the same as before.

[Morty]

Seems like a bad deal

Sign a CLA and get excluded from LTS releases.

Since the latest version of Qt will always contain all bug fixes, who cares about a LTS?

Besides, are you developer with the skill to contribute to Qt, requiring you to sign a CLA. You also have the skill to backport any bugfixes important for your usage of the older Qt version.

[starshipeleven]

Since the latest version of Qt will always contain all bug fixes, who cares about a LTS?

Found the web developer.

LTS versions exist because adding new features will inevitably add more bugs, so a LTS version that receives only bug fixes will have less bugs than a "latest version"

You also have the skill to backport any bugfixes important for your usage of the older Qt version.

It's a matter of time (man/hours) too.

[Charlie68]

There are very few distributions that used QT Lts, so nothing changes for desktop users, as has been widely explained. Manjaro does not use Qt Lts versions, Arch does not use Qt Lts versions, Tumbleweed does not use QT Lts versions, KDE Neon does not use QT Lts versions ... etc. So no problem! LTS versions can be useful on an enterprise level, so it is right that they pay, so that they have money to invest in QT, so I agree.

[Nth_man]

As they wrote:

It is a question of balance. The company behind Qt gets money to pay developers, the distributions have access to bug fixes and the code stays free software, is OK.

[zerothruster]

There are very few distributions that used QT Lts, so nothing changes for desktop users, as has been widely explained.

True, and one reason is that bug fixes including CVE fixes first appear in releases of the latest version, and only later in LTS. So LTS offers nothing when there are important vulnerability fixes.

[Morty]

Found the web developer.

LTS versions exist because adding new features will inevitably add more bugs, so a LTS version that receives only bug fixes will have less bugs than a "latest version"

Not a web developer, so you Are wrong there.

But getting serious, of course new features add new bugs. It's always a tradeoff between wanting or needing new features versus staying at a known point. And when one decide to stay, in most case that means not updating for minor versions with bugfixes either. Only when bugs affecting you get fixed, you bother with updating. So LTS ends up without any practical impact other than a theoretical posibility to comfort management 🙂

It's a matter of time (man/hours) too.

It is, and often reffered to as cost. And in that case, perhaps a commercial license would be the cheapest option🙂

[pipe13]

There are very few distributions that used QT Lts, so nothing changes for desktop users, as has been widely explained. Manjaro does not use Qt Lts versions, Arch does not use Qt Lts versions, Tumbleweed does not use QT Lts versions, KDE Neon does not use QT Lts versions ... etc. So no problem! LTS versions can be useful on an enterprise level, so it is right that they pay, so that they have money to invest in QT, so I agree.

Fedora 30 uses Qt-5.12 LTS. Fedora 30 EOL's in May.
CentOS 8 uses Qt-5.11. CentOS 8 is for five years.