While it's doubtful you'll see ads in KDE's core applications, it would be possible for distributions that wish to further monetize their work to fork these applications, placing ads in them.
If LXQt (what I use) and KDE ever opt into this, it’ll be the time for me to prefer GTK. I do like Qt better, but I guess such is life. I do not think that’ll happen any time soon though.
Not sure about the mobile KDE and apps, being mobile KDE the selected default environment for pine64, but I hope phones using KDE and non KDE Qt apps keep away from adds as well…
And not sure about independent Qt apps, like smplayer, cantata, and others. I really doubt this will come to GNU+Linux, but if so, then I guess there are choices, such as GTK apps, DE and toolkit…
Although the reddit comment indicates it’s misleading, because of being the commercial version of Qt, and KDE being free SW, that’s a blur area, I don’t know if being FOSS prevents being able to show adds. Perhaps the license might force to give an opt out option to the users, but again, I can’t tell that’s enforced by the freedoms enforced when using GPL. Also, other free SW apps, as the ones mentioned before, might not be KDE projects, and even if KDE chooses not to take advantage of adds, it might be non KDE developers do. Although not likely, this deserves paying attention on how this moves…
If LXQt (what I use) and KDE ever opt into this, it’ll be the time for me to prefer GTK. I do like Qt better, but I guess such is life. I do not think that’ll happen any time soon though.
The Qt source: https://www.qt.io/blog/monetizing-cross-platform-use-cases-faster-and-easier-with-qt-digital-advertising-platform
Not sure about the mobile KDE and apps, being mobile KDE the selected default environment for pine64, but I hope phones using KDE and non KDE Qt apps keep away from adds as well…
And not sure about independent Qt apps, like smplayer, cantata, and others. I really doubt this will come to GNU+Linux, but if so, then I guess there are choices, such as GTK apps, DE and toolkit…
Although the reddit comment indicates it’s misleading, because of being the commercial version of Qt, and KDE being free SW, that’s a blur area, I don’t know if being FOSS prevents being able to show adds. Perhaps the license might force to give an opt out option to the users, but again, I can’t tell that’s enforced by the freedoms enforced when using GPL. Also, other free SW apps, as the ones mentioned before, might not be KDE projects, and even if KDE chooses not to take advantage of adds, it might be non KDE developers do. Although not likely, this deserves paying attention on how this moves…