A good overview by one of the KDE developers, focussing - obviously - on the Linux side:
Long story short - we may have to host our own version at some point.
I think it is worth emphasizing that it only affects users who build or
develop Wireshark from source. The final Wireshark installer will still
bundle the Qt bits.
We need to get those bundles from somewhere, meaning we either rely on 3rd-party packages or compile ourselves. This is a change from the current situation where we use the official LTS versions.
The main problem I see is it basically forces us to use the latest Qt
version which makes supporting older Linux distributions somewhat
harder. Based on the Qt version history [1], it looks like non-LTS
versions are supported for 1 year. Typical Linux distributions have a
longer lifetime.
This is not different from now. We still would support a minimum version, although shipping with a later one.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_version_history#Qt_5
The Qt project is still committed to providing security updates, so that
should not change the situation for Linux distribution maintainers.
Debian for example typically does not update the Qt version even though
there may be dozens of usability bug fixes.
It changes considerably, as the LTS versions (and code-branches) will no longer be available. As said above, we would have to maintain our own version of Qt if needed
The LTS branch is not just 'no longer easily accessible', it will simply
be unavailable for non-commercial users. The Qt company wants OSS
developers like us to use the latest version and report back issues and
such. Which I already did in the past, including patches...
Which results in us having an issue with packaging.
