Re: Reaction to the new QCAD Community Edition
Posted by
AndrewM on
Nov 01, 2013; 9:30am
URL: https://forum.librecad.org/Reaction-to-the-new-QCAD-Community-Edition-tp5708149p5709113.html
R. van Twisk wrote
Well, the problem was like I said that if the community would drop support for LibreCAD we might end up in the same situation as before where QCad Open Source version wasn't supported by Ribbonsoft anymore and we again end up with ageing software because of the lack of competition.
Just for the sake of correctness: There is no longer an older "Open Source Version" and a recent "Commercial Version" of QCAD (since version 3.1, June 2013).
There is only one version of QCAD which is free, open source software, distributed under the GPLv3 with optional exceptions. These optional exceptions allow us (or anyone else for that matter) to distribute commercial, proprietary plugins and script add-ons together with QCAD under their respective licenses. This is an optional extension to the freedom provided by the GPLv3. Again, as required by the GPLv3, these exceptions are optional.
QCAD Professional is nothing else than the one and only QCAD open source software distributed under GPLv3, bundled with commercial, proprietary plugins and add-ons for DWG support and some advanced CAD tools.
Whenever QCAD Professional version X.Y is released, you can at the same time download QCAD X.Y source code under GPLv3 with or without exceptions at your choice or you can simply download the pre-compiled packages from our web site (for free without registration) and remove the proprietary plugins with a few mouse clicks. This latter option leaves you with the latest version of QCAD, completely open source and free, no strings attached.
Complete overview of licenses involved in QCAD and underlying libraries:
https://github.com/qcad/qcad/blob/master/LICENSE.txtGPLv3:
https://github.com/qcad/qcad/blob/master/gpl-3.0.txtOptional GPLv3 exceptions:
https://github.com/qcad/qcad/blob/master/gpl-3.0-exceptions.txtDownload of pre-compiled packages for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X:
http://qcad.org/en/qcad-downloads-trialAndrew Mustun