Given the threat that Windows NT poses to Unix we feel a strong sense of urgency and believe it to be important to develop a great desktop for UNIX first, before we might even want to think about rebuilding the _tools_ we are using to build this desktop. Given the fact that our resources are limited KDE itself can not engage in a Qt cloning project at this point. However, if anyone feels that they would prefer a L/GPL'ed version of Qt we would like to encourage you to write such a L/GPL'ed clone. Keep in mind that Qt is only about 80.000 lines of code while KDE is already more than 500.000 lines and the number is rising daily so that a precise count is very difficult. This means writing a Qt clone is definitely feasible and it is only a matter of people who feel strongly enough about a L/GPL'ed version of Qt getting together and starting such a subproject.
Currently, there is a project called Harmony which started to implement a GPL'ed Qt-clone. If you dislike Qt's license, please consider joining this project.