What I would like is something like electron that can run on a frame buffer. What's the current state of the art for a html5 based embedded interface?
I mean, if you don't need to modify the Qt-library, you don't need commercial license. You just need to provide link to the Qt-sources.
If you intend to launch a closed-source* product at some future date and pay the per-unit licensing fees, the developer needs a seat license from day one.
(* closed-source or code that statically links in the Qt libraries)
Personally, I'm keeping my eye open on libui (https://github.com/andlabs/libui/) as it is already possible to do some basic things with it. However, it is pretty much in alpha state and I'm slowly writing the Python bindings for it at https://github.com/joaoventura/pylibui/. The thing that I like in the libui is that it is a thin wrapper around platform specific frameworks. Therefore, the library is very small (some 340 KB) and it's as native as the underlying platform calls are..
Regarding Electron, I am writing an application on it, but it is too god damn heavy in terms of memory, disk space and boot time, and web front-end development is absolute chaos these days. Although I'm currently writing my app on it, it is mostly an MVP as I want to make pylibui/libui usable enough to switch to a pure desktop cross-platform library asap..
How dare Qt demand that others pay them before developing a commercial product using their code?
I have no problem paying Qt. I'm just unwilling to do it until I know its the direction I want to go. The current Qt licensing structure adds friction to my making that decision.
Does the company that you work for (or yours if you're a founder) take the same "take it or leave it" attitude towards potential customers?
The incentives for me to comply with those terms are nonexistent, which is never a sign of a good contract.
It feels like the Qt Company is pushing C++ down the stack, with QML getting the main focus as application development language.
You don't want a Word-like app in your car dashboard, but a iOS-like app.
Same applies to Android, UWP and even Tizen with their respective native languages.
So it is a conscious decision not to provide C++ APIs besides the old QtWidget and make developers use QML and its compiler instead, as far as I understand it.
