But why would I develop if i can't sell? If i do open source, I have no need for a license. If i don't, the 500/year option is useless?

Plenty of companies develop desktop software for internal use. They built it, update it, and use it heavily but never sell it. I'm not sure how many of these fall into Qt's startup/small business category, though.

It seems like this license is maybe ideal for a small company that wants commercially-supported Qt to use while developing a product prior to selling it?

That seems like a fairly small niche to target, but presumably they're making this change based on actual usage data and not just conjuring it out of thin air.

As mentioned elsewhere, it's mainly about Qt for device creation. Not for regular desktop apps. For device creation you'll very likely need the commercial version to get platform support.

Is that a new thing invented to go with this start-up licence? I can't see any reference to distribution licences elsewhere in their pricing material.

It seems... eccentric... to make a public announcement of the price of a new licence, then mention that in order to actually use it you'll need to buy another licence as well whose price you aren't publishing.

No, "distribution licenses" are very common in this type of commercial software for embedded systems market. If you talk to Wind River, QNX, OpenRTOS, Qt, Crank, or any of the numerous software tool vendors for commercially-supported embedded software, there will be a "development license" which you pay to license the tooling, source code and precompiled binaries, plus a per-unit "distribution license" to actually sell their product as a component of your product. The pricing is usually really reasonable compared to your per-unit BOM cost and expected production quantities.

> No, "distribution licenses" are very common in this type of commercial software for embedded systems market

So does this whole topic apply only to embedded systems then? I am a Qt developer who has bought Qt licences in the distant past, but I know nothing about embedded systems, so that would explain why we seem to be talking at cross purposes as well as why I found the original post so puzzling.

For desktop & mobile applications, I can go to qt.io, ask to buy a Qt licence, and be quoted straight away a per-developer annual fee with no reference to any separate distribution licence. What I'm wondering is whether this will also be the case for the new micro-business tier, or whether it introduces some requirement for a separate distribution licence that the normal application development licence does not have.

Edit: I see now that I have completely mis-read the original post. It says that the micro-business tier offers a licence for "Qt for Device Creation", not for Qt in general. So it probably isn't available at all for desktop & mobile applications. I'm sorry for wasting your time.