Quote Originally Posted by high_flyer
There are two issues here:
1. Technical
2. Legal

The technical issue I think, is not as simple as you describe it.
Taking out just the functionalities you need, may prove to be harder and complexer then you might think.
It is very likely that the end functionalities that you need are dependent on other more low level functionalities in the specific Qt module you are dealing with.
I'd say that purely theoretical this is possible, but I don't think it is doable in any practical way, that would benefit you more then just to link with the whole module.
I don't understand what the problem is. Would it not be enough to just include all the source files that I use (and all their dependencies)? Are you implying there would be some platform specific issues not handled with this approach?

Quote Originally Posted by high_flyer
If the functionalities you are talking about are really "local" (in terms of dependency) and basic, there is a good chance you can find them as independent GPL/public-domain code, after all, what would be the advantage of devouring Qt, if you can have it clean from another source?
Right, but Qt is inherently cross platform and thus it would be nice to use something that is known to work well. Afterall, that's the benefit of Qt in the first place, right?

Quote Originally Posted by high_flyer
The legal issue ofcourse is, that if you are talking about the GPL/QGPL version of Qt, I am not sure you are allowed to do that, and if you are, I am not sure what it means in terms of you needing to supply the full Qt code, but I am no lawyer, better let others who know more then me on this issue to answer...
I don't know anything about the QPL licence, but under GPL it's perfectly alright to take part of some code and redistribute it. My application would be GPL as well.