Do I have to pay for Qt license to develop a commercial application for Symbian OS? [closed]

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I have the intention to develop a commercial, closed-source application for mobile phones.

I've choosen to start with Symbian OS, as I've got a Symbian phone as well, and I really like it. I would like to adopt Qt, because it's actually the way suggested by Nokia, and because I know I could port my app quite easily to ios and other platforms by using the Qt libraries.

So, having to make the choose between Qt and C/C++/Carbide I have one compelling question: do I have to pay to obtain a license for using the Qt to develop a commercial closed-source program?

Truly, I won't to pay for using a development tool, as I'm not sure I could return on my investment. Besides, I have also to pay to open an account for hosting my app on the stores.

Please feel free to correct my English if it sounds bad. Thnx.

Answer 1

No, you don't have to pay for the Qt framework to build commercial or proprietary applications. GNU LGPL version 2.1 allows this, and Qt is licensed under this licence.

Read about the Qt licensing here.

Extract:

This version of Qt is appropriate for the development of Qt applications (proprietary or open source) provided you can comply with the terms and conditions contained in the GNU LGPL version 2.1.

Note that LGPL still has some requirements. For example, if you improve the Qt sources to provide your application a better performance or to fix a bug, you have to make the source code of your modifications available to anybody you give (sell; distribute) your application to. As this is not a bad idea per se, one may want to keep such changes private and use it as a competitive advantage.

See also FAQ on Qt licensing (thanks to Claudio for the comments).