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Qt Licensing
The page describes the various licensing options available for use of Qt.
For more information on which licenses are available for each product
and platform, please review the Licensing Matrix.
Qt Commercial License
The Qt Commercial License is the correct license to use for the development of proprietary and/or commercial software with Qt or Qt Jambi. For the sake of avoiding complexity, we mainly use the term "commercial" in the following. The
commercial license allows you to:
- Develop commercial software and software whose source code you wish to keep private.
-
Freely choose licensing for the software you are writing (Commercial, Open Source or both (*)).
- Get commercial support from Trolltech
- Be able to gain access to Qt Solutions and commercial-only Qt components such as commercial database drivers and the Visual Studio Integration on Windows.
You must purchase a Qt Commercial License from Trolltech or from any of its
authorized resellers before you start developing commercial software. The
Commercial license does not allow the incorporation of code developed with
the Open Source Edition of Qt into a commercial product.
Royalties and Runtimes
For desktop applications, there are no royalties, runtime licenses, or other additional costs. For fixed function systems, and other dedicated embedded systems running Qt-based applications, a runtime distribution license may apply.
Purchase and Transfer of Commercial Licenses
The license is sold on a per-developer basis and assigned to an individual. To order one or more Qt Commercial Licenses please contact Trolltech sales. Qt licenses may be transferred, but only every six months and within the same organization. To transfer a license, or if you need a more flexible licensing agreement, please contact sales.
Qt Educational License
The Qt Educational License allows schools and universities to use Qt, free of charge, for classroom educational purposes. If you want to use Qt Jambi for teaching, the Qt Jambi GPL version will give access to all needed functionality, including the Eclipse IDE integration.
Find out more about the Qt Educational License
Qt Academic Licensing
The Qt Academic program offers educational and academic research institutions a discount on Qt and Qt Jambi for educational, non-commercial research and/or administrative purposes.
Find out more about the Qt Academic License
Qt Open Source Edition Licensing
The Qt Open Source Edition is available to the Open Source community under Trolltech's Dual Licensing Model. The Open Source Edition of Qt and Qt Jambi is freely available for the development of Open Source software governed by the GNU General Public License (GPL). If you want to do proprietary, commercial development you need to purchase a Qt Commercial Edition.
Find out more about the Qt Open Source Edition licensing
* Please note if you choose an open source license for your Qt-based application this license needs to be compatible with the Qt Open Source Edition licensing (GNU GPL or one of the licenses listed in Trolltech’s GPL Exception) for your end users to be able to compile, run and further modify your application. You may not change the license terms of any parts of Qt itself.
Qt Educational License
The Qt Educational License lets schools and universities use Qt, free
of charge, for educational purposes.
Educational institutions can get a site license for Qt/Windows to use in relevant courses. The Educational
Edition provides the same functionality as the commercial Qt
Desktop Edition, including the Visual Studio Integration.
Educational institutions may also use the Open Source Edition of Qt for instructional purposes.
Restrictions
- Licensee must be a school, university, or other academic institution.
- The Educational License does not allow these institutions to develop or distribute commercial software.
- The Qt Educational license is limited to non-commercial use by students
in plenary or one-on-one educational settings and only for educational
purposes.
- Non-profit research institutions do not qualify for this license.
- Technical support service is not included.
More Information
To apply for the Qt Educational License, please contact sales. Use of the Qt Educational Edition is regulated by the Qt Educational License Agreement. Please contact sales to receive a copy for review.
Qt Academic License
The Qt Academic program offers educational and academic research
institutions a discount on Qt for educational, non-commercial research and/or
administrative purposes.
The discount is offered for the Desktop Edition of Qt on all platforms
(Qt/X11, Qt/Windows, and Qt/Mac).
Restrictions
- The Academic License is available only to academic institutions for educational or research purposes.
- It may not be used for developing applications that are
distributed (sold, leased or rented) in return for money/recompense.
Other Information
- Use of Qt under the Qt Academic Program is covered by Qt Academic License Agreement. Please contact sales to receive a copy for review.
- For educational and academic institutions that are interested in teaching Qt in a class setting, the Qt Educational Edition is available.
- To order, please contact sales.
Qt Open Source Edition Licensing
The Qt Open Source Edition is offered to the Open Source community
under Trolltech's
Dual Licensing Model. The Open Source Edition is freely
available for the development of Open Source software governed by the GNU
General Public License (GPL version 3). The Qt Commercial
Editions must be used for proprietary, commercial
development.
The Qt Open Source Edition is available for the development of Open Source Software for Windows, Linux, Unix, and Mac OS X under the GPL license.
Please note the following:- We provide the Qt Open Source Editions with no warranty and no support
- The Qt Open Source Edition may be freely copied and distributed, put on FTP sites and CD-ROMs, etc. under the same open-source licenses that they are supplied with.
- Based on the "Quid Pro Quo" principle, if you wish to derive a commercial advantage by not releasing your application under an open source license, you must purchase an appropriate number of commercial licenses from Trolltech. By purchasing commercial licenses, you are no longer obliged to publish your source code.
- If you wish to use the Qt Open Source Edition, you must contribute all your source code to the open source community in accordance with the GPL or Trolltech's GPL Exception when your application is distributed.
- For historical reasons, the Qt/X11 version is also available under the QPL license. We do not recommend the use of the QPL, especially if you are planning for your Open Source software to be distributed on Mac OS X or Windows.
- If you are unsure about Trolltech's licensing, we recommend that you contact sales.