Other Information and Licenses¶

Currently QualCoder is developed on Windows 11. QualCoder is written in python 3 using Qt6 for the graphical interface.

After the 4.0 version, one area of development will be to review the visual presence, the user interface, of QualCoder. The aim is to make the interface more modern and appealing. Another area of improvement will be to provide more governance documentation, to support QualCoder's use in large institutions.

Operating systems used¶

QualCoder has been used on Windows 11, macOS, Ubuntu 24, Lubuntu, Fedora, Linux Mint, Arch Linux, Fedora, NixOS and ZorinOS.

Using audio or video with QualCoder on Fedora crashes QualCoder.
Debian with Gnome and the tiled window option - shrinks the QualCoder window size. The best option is to turn off window tiling in the Gnome settings.

Acknowledgements¶

Ronggui Huang, Zhang Gehao - Created RQDA - inspiration for QualCoder. Mike MacCana - Source code for the docx module. Julius Reich - Created the QualCoder logo. Kai Dröge - Programming, artificial intelligence and much more. Justin Missaghieh-Poncet - French translations, programming, setting up the new website and more. Lorenzo Salomón - Programming and Spanish translations. Jofen Kihlstrom for past Swedish translations. Van Tran for providing many useful suggestions and support over the past years. To the many members on GitHub for feedback, ideas and supporting this project.

Citation¶

Citation: Curtain C, Dröge K, Missaghieh--Poncet J, Salomón L. (2026) QualCoder 4.0 [Computer software]. Retrieved from https://github.com/ccbogel/QualCoder/releases/tag/4.0

Data structures¶

The qda project folder Contains folders for imported documents and the sqlite database to store coding data. When AI is enabled, there is an ai_data folder containing a chat history sqlite database and a vectorstore. A vector store is a numerical representation of words, phrases and sentences used by the AI language model. The .qualcoder working folder in your home folder. QualCoder creates QualCoder.log and configuration files. Do not put any files inside this folder, as it is used as a working settings and storage area for QualCoder. The .qualcoder_ai folder in the home folder contains configuration details for AI use.

Licenses¶

LGPL-3.0 License¶

QualCoder is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. QualCoder is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU Lesser General Public License along with QualCoder. If not, see https://www.gnu.org/licenses

License for highlighter.py code¶

This file is part of the examples of PyQt.

LICENSE:BSD

You may use this file under the terms of the BSD license as follows:

Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:

Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution.
Neither the name of Nokia Corporation and its Subsidiary(-ies) nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products derived from this software without specific prior written permission.

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE."

License for docx.py code¶

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.

Dependency Licenses¶

Dependencies are extra python modules that Qualcoder needs to run. Dependency licences are found in the QualCoder/docs folder. Last update 8 october 2026.

DEPENDENCY_LICENSES.txt