Nokia has announced plans to make the open source Qt toolkit available under GNU's Lesser General Public License (LGPL), alongside the existing GPL and commercial licensing options. This change could significantly boost Qt adoption, redefine the economics of cross-platform programming, and dramatically reshape the landscape of commercial application development on the Linux desktop.

Qt is a popular cross-platform software development framework and widget toolkit that supports Windows, Linux, Mac OS X, and several mobile operating systems. It provides the underlying foundation of the open source KDE desktop environment and is also widely used by commercial software vendors. It was originally created in the early 90s by a Norwegian company called Trolltech, which was acquired last year by Nokia for $153 million.

Nokia's decision to adopt the LGPL for Qt will eliminate the cost barrier, making it possible for developers to freely use Qt for proprietary application development. This in turn will significantly expand the number of developers who are using the toolkit and will also attract involvement from companies that find the permissiveness of the LGPL appealing. The impact of these changes could be enormous.

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