This is a great question. We do not consider or want CopperSpice to be a framework and one of our goals has been to transition our code base to a clean set of C++ libraries.
Our understanding is that Qt wants to remain a framework. No clue what Roland might be considering, but he did give us an "ear full" of bike shedding.
You are correct that we did the fork many years ago. Since then we have back ported a significant portion of Qt 5. Piece by piece our team has been improving the foundation and adding new functionality. We leverage C++ classes using inheritance and composition when possible.
A decision was made to move to C++20 and we are keeping an eye on when to make the next jump. We welcome contributors and friendly conversations.
I am one of the very "passionate developers" of the CopperSpice project. Roland is the single person behind this fork. He was angry with Qt for not listening to his demands and his hope was that our team would agree to everything he wanted modified. Yes, he told us we had to stay on C++17 and never migrate. He also demanded we provide 20 years of ABI stability while providing new features.
There is of course a much larger back story but I think this speaks volumes about the situation.
Our understanding is that Qt wants to remain a framework. No clue what Roland might be considering, but he did give us an "ear full" of bike shedding.
Barbara Geller CopperSpice Co-Founder