This made the offline installer an “exclusive” perk for paying customers. The Qt Company justified this change as a way to sustain the project’s development while still offering open‑source access under the LGPL/GPL. From a business perspective, LTS versions require significant engineering resources to backport fixes, and the company decided to offer those only to subscribers.
: While open-source users are still entitled to use the code under LGPL v3/GPL v3 licenses, they are generally required to use the Online Installer or build from source. qtopensourcewindowsx865152exe exclusive
: It contains over 176 bug fixes compared to previous 5.15 patches, making it the most stable version freely accessible without a commercial account. This made the offline installer an “exclusive” perk