History
KDE, a desktop environment for Linux, is based on Qt. Only the personal edition of Qt was covered by the QPL; the commercial edition, which is functionally equal, is under a pay-per-use license and could not be freely distributed. Meanwhile, the Free Software Foundation and authors of the GPL objected to the QPL as it was a non-copyleft license incompatible with the GPL. As KDE grew in popularity, the free software community urged Trolltech to put Qt under a license (the QPL) that would assure that it would remain free software forever and could be used and developed by commercial third-parties. Eventually, under pressure, Trolltech dual-licensed Qt for use under the terms of the GPL or the QPL.
Read more about this topic: Q Public License
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