Do I need to make my code open source or buy a license? [closed]

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I want to develop a GUI in python for my company in order to sell it to the customer.

Being fresh from the university where I used pyQt, I promptly started programming using that library, just to discover the fact that it is under GNU GPL, making it unusable for my purpose.

Searching in the web for an alternative, I encountered a similar question where they suggest to use PySide, being it completely free and under a different license.

At this point, I have a few questions:

1. pyQt has another option: the commercial license. My company is ok paying a little amount of money (like 500$) but then do we need to pay for Qt also?

2. PySide is under LGPL, does this mean that I can sell my programs without having to make my code open source? (even if pyside uses qt itself)

3. I started using PySide2 instead of PySide, is there any difference related to the license topic?

Answer 1

Qt, unless you buy an exception, is licensed as LGPL. This means that whatever modifications you make to Qt has to also be released as LGPL. Your application, on the other hand, does not have to be licensed as LGPL, as long as you make it possible for your users to link your application against their own version of Qt. That is, you're not allowed to statically link Qt to your application. The same would be true of PySide (and PySide2, which a cursory web search tells me is also LGPL).