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I am aware that using Qt attracts certain licensing restrictions under the LGPL licence - i.e. you must provide source code or at least object files so that people may link other versions of the Qt framework. I'm also aware that you can obtain a proprietary licence from Digia to overcome these restrictions - but I don't have the budget!
My question is this - if I use just qmake and the Qt Creator app, but don't include ANY Qt functionality in my app (so no linking whatsoever to Qt's libraries), and don't make use of MOC and none of the resource compilation stuff either, am I able to sell my app without a Qt commercial licence (effectively, I'm just using qmake as a build system and Qt Creator as an IDE)?
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As long as you can comply with the (L)GPL requirements of the Qt libraries, then you do not need to purchase a "commercial license" from the Qt Company. Note that the terminology "commercial license" is a bit ambiguous, because the (L)GPL license also allows 'commercial' use as long as you can follow the obligations.
The qmake tool helps simplify the build process for development projects across different platforms. It automates the generation of Makefiles so that only a few lines of information are needed to create each Makefile. You can use qmake for any software project, whether it is written with Qt or not.
Is Qt Creator free? There is an open-source license which is free and a commercial license. The commercial license (Qt creator and Qt SDK) starts at $459/month.
To protect the interest of the creators and maintainers of Qt, every user of Qt must either have a valid commercial license or needs to agree to the open-source terms and conditions.
Qt for Application Development is dual-licensed under commercial and open source licenses. The commercial Qt license gives you the full rights to create and distribute software on your own terms without any open source license obligations.
LGPL/GPL restrictions only apply to software linked to executable code that's covered by LGPL/GPL.
The qmake utility operates on, but is not directly linked to your source code and as such you can use it freely.
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