Mark Hatch, the COO of the Qt consultancy ICS, gives four strong arguments, why projects should pay for Qt Commercial instead of using Qt under LGPLv3 for free:
- Reduced obligations/greater flexibility of distribution
- Additional features
- Technical support
- License negotiation
Mark’s argument would be so much stronger, if The Qt Company published its license fees or at least gave some ballpark figures. If potential customers had a rough idea of the costs, they would think something like this: “Wow, Qt Commercial is much cheaper than I thought. I get some killer features on top of the free license. I have absolute peace of mind when deploying my application on devices. Let’s contact sales. I am sure I can get a good discount.”
Now compare this with the current situation: “I hate calling sales people to get a first quote. They’ll call me twice a week for the next four weeks. I really hate this. OK, I’ll call them next week.” It is unlikely that Qt Sales will ever hear of this potential customer.