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Qt and Digia, facts and fiction (Qt Blog)
Sebastian Nyström separates fact from fiction regarding the future of Qt.
"The Qt commercial business is important, but it is not the majority of Qt. An estimated 400,000 developers across more than 70 industries use Qt. There are 3500 commercial customers. Some have one license, some have dozens of licenses, but commercial customers do not make up the majority of the Qt user base.
Nokia will continue to invest in the development of Qt, continues to hold
the copyright and will continue to publish Qt under an open source license
benefitting the whole community." (Thanks to Mats)
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Qt and Digia, facts and fiction (Qt Blog) Posted Mar 15, 2011 19:32 UTC (Tue) by hp (subscriber, #5220) [Link]
wouldn't it be better if Nokia _had_ spun the whole thing out as a sustainable business TrollTech style? now it seems like the developers at Nokia have no direct funding source. they're now a complement to another business instead of themselves a business.
this article seems to consider it a negative accusation to say that developers were spun off, I guess I'm missing why that would have been bad.
Qt and Digia, facts and fiction (Qt Blog) Posted Mar 15, 2011 19:56 UTC (Tue) by stumbles (guest, #8796) [Link] "...now it seems like the developers at Nokia have no direct funding source."I believe that to be the intent of their current head C type person. Why would he want to support something that would be a direct competitor to their new buddy.
Qt and Digia, facts and fiction (Qt Blog) Posted Mar 16, 2011 1:44 UTC (Wed) by Duncan (guest, #6647) [Link]
The stated goal is to create a FLOSS-based development community, very possibly no-copyright-assignment-necessary as is now strongly favored in the community, but with the current LGPL license tweaked further so as not to isolate the current commercial customers. Whether that will mean fully liberalizing it to an MIT/BSD style license, or riders granting specific companies (presumably Digia and Nokia included), I'm not sure yet, but given the setup of the KDE Free Qt Foundation, with its guaranteed BSD style license if (GPL/LGPL) free edition releases cease, it could be that they're thinking about that. Certainly, the trend has been ever more liberal licensing (under Trolltech, QPL, to only *ix version GPL, to all versions incl. MS Windows version GPL, with Nokia's purchase, now LGPL), and Nokia could well have in mind to complete that journey all the way to the BSD it had pledged in the KDE Free Qt Foundation agreement.
Nokia's best positioned to continue that journey, with serious progress already made toward an open FLOSS community, with this likely being a primary reason they kept the copyrights. In fact, if that's their goal, legally separating (by selling off) the commercial licensing business from the copyrights holder could well be seen as an important step in that direction. Developing Qt into a healthy and thriving /independent/ FLOSS community under, very possibly, a BSD style license, fits in extremely well with Nokia's now announced longer-term focus on the Linux/Meego/Qt strategy, as arguably, it will allow them to use the already very good but still developing Qt resources later on as /external/ resources, effectively outsourcing Qt to the community, to the point they can ultimately lower their own focus and investment in it, simply using the available independent but community cooperative resources, much like many businesses (including phone biz, Google/Android especially) already use the Linux kernel.
Ultimately, then, they'll be able to use the independent Qt/Linux platform , much as their now-current model outsources to MS Windows Phone 7.
Meanwhile, Digia really does seem more interested in servicing the commercial business than in furthering the FLOSS licensed side, but given the complications of the KDE Free Qt Foundation agreements, it'd be legally difficult (read, potentially years of litigation, and/or a hostile fork under either the current LGPL or the pledged BSD license, no /sane/ business wants that legal uncertainty and community PR nightmare if they can avoid it) for them to take Qt fully proprietary even if they wanted to. It's thus in both companies' best interests for Nokia to retain copyright and continue to develop Qt and its FLOSS community, releasing Digia from the headache it would certainly be for them to take over, while at the same time releasing Nokia from the increasingly cross-purpose with announced and working-toward goal commercial support contracts and the headaches that's causing them.
As referenced by TFA, read the ArsTechnica and the other coverage they link, as well as (TFA unreferenced) KDE statements on the matter, which point to the importance of the KDE Free Qt Foundation agreements in all this. That's some of the background I've read that has lead me to the conclusions above.
Qt and Digia, facts and fiction (Qt Blog) Posted Mar 16, 2011 3:24 UTC (Wed) by drag (subscriber, #31333) [Link]
I think it's completely safe to ignore any promises or assurances coming out of Nokia.
They are a publicly owned corporation and thus they they have a moral (not to mention if they want to keep their jobs) obligation only to financial stake holders in the company. They are not in a position to spend money (and everything they do costs money) to support and develop software that they have no plans to make a profit from.
If they do not plan to make money from QT in some manner then you can 100% expect to drop all support and development for it. This is probably what is going to happen.
Right now they may be hedging their bets and keeping the idea of a Meego phone open just in case WP7 Nokia is a flop. But this is a unlikely eventuality. They probably now have legal/contractual obligations to Microsoft due to Microsoft's payments to them. There is probably significant obligation for at least 3 years, I am guessing.
As far as a BSD version of QT coming out of Nokia... this is extremely unlikely. So much so that I mark this up as pure and unadulterated wishful thinking. A pipe dream. This would cut Digia off at the legs. It would destroy any potential profit from licensing commercial versions of QT and probably would result in lawsuits.
In conclusion it's pretty obvious that the most likely fate of QT in Nokia's hands is for QT to wither on the vine. The most you can hope for is Nokia decides to be gracious and let employees support and work on it in their free time. They will probably maintain a website, maybe a mailing list. Maybe some documentation. Any significant progress on QT will have to be done through a fork.
In the end they will probably sell off the copyrights. Maybe in 6 or 7 years KDE can do a NaN Blender-style buy out and purchase rights to the software if LGPL/GPL-only becomes too onerous.
Ultimately it probably won't affect open source projects too much since they can continue to use and improve it under existing licenses.
Qt and Digia, facts and fiction (Qt Blog) Posted Mar 16, 2011 9:50 UTC (Wed) by ebirdie (subscriber, #512) [Link]
>As far as a BSD version of QT coming out of Nokia... this is extremely unlikely.
I really hope you will be right.
However, have you considered, how much love MS has towards BSD -licensed software they could Embrace and Extend?
Digia going after Nokia with lawsuits? Not in this reality in Finland. Digia is a poodle at most or at least a dust ball to Nokia IMHO.
Qt and Digia, facts and fiction (Qt Blog) Posted Mar 16, 2011 10:37 UTC (Wed) by bk (guest, #25617) [Link]
What use is a BSD-licensed Qt? It already is LGPL so developing proprietary applications is permitted. I can't imagine there are too many companies that want to internally hack a giant toolkit like this.
Qt and Digia, facts and fiction (Qt Blog) Posted Mar 15, 2011 21:59 UTC (Tue) by nicooo (guest, #69134) [Link] Trolltech was losing money when Nokia bought them.
Qt and Digia, facts and fiction (Qt Blog) Posted Mar 16, 2011 0:15 UTC (Wed) by pboddie (subscriber, #50784) [Link] Trolltech was losing money when Nokia bought them. People always trot this out when talking about Trolltech, or more usually the observation that Trolltech "never made money". In fact, looking at reports from a few years ago (for example, this one from 2006), the losses were 10 million NOK in 2005 against revenues of 119 million NOK, so we're not talking about, say, Opera Software-style financials circa 2001 (or one of many dot-com companies in the dot-com boom) where the financial shortfall was double revenues and presumably covered by money from previous rounds of funding. And in 2004, at least according to that article, Trolltech made a pre-tax profit of 10 million NOK. That the company didn't turn a profit after going public might have had something to do with a deliberate expansion strategy, Opera-style, where expanding the head-count was seen as a necessary step to being able to exploit new sources of revenue. Even a loss of 50 million NOK against revenues of around 175 million NOK (as noted in this article from 2007) is fairly tame in the light of "an almost 50% increase in the number of employees and full-time consultants" and those other financials mentioned above.
Qt and Digia, facts and fiction (Qt Blog) Posted Mar 16, 2011 7:38 UTC (Wed) by MKesper (guest, #38539) [Link] It's sad Nokia also creates the false dichotomy between "commercial" and "Free Software" licences and even seems to spread FUD about Free Software licences.
The most important facts are ignored... Posted Mar 16, 2011 20:39 UTC (Wed) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] Gosh. I understand that Nokia does not want to be "a bad guy" but it's kind of pointless. It does not matter if some division bring money directly or not. What does matter is if company strategy depends on work of said division! Google gets nothing from Android directly, but their mobile strategy is centered around Android. Nokia's former strategy needed Qt as bridge between Symbian and MeeGo. In both cases it was clear that development of both systems helps the whole company and so it was clear that these divisions will get bringht developers and ample funding. Today Nokia does not need Qt at all. So Qt development will be frozen/halted/etc. It's only matter of time. Why support thing which is used by a lot of guys all around the world, but which is not used by you? This just does not makes sense! If Nokia does not want to be the bad guy they should think about strategy which moves development of Qt to some other company. May be Digia will be great candidate, may be not. But to insist that they will continue development of Qt "like before" is to delude everyone. If Nokia's people believe their own spiel it just means they lie to themselves, not just to us.
The most important facts are ignored... Posted Mar 17, 2011 16:52 UTC (Thu) by compte (guest, #60316) [Link] Qt seems very flexible, I read that even WP7's limitations might be overcome by use of Qt. See the platforms it supports. You can also do a search and see that Qt for Android is on the way. Who would want to throw away Qt now?
The anwers are simple... Posted Mar 17, 2011 18:36 UTC (Thu) by khim (subscriber, #9252) [Link] See the platforms it supports. You can also do a search and see that Qt for Android is on the way.Right. Android recently made this possible. So now Qt supports most popular mobile platfroms except two: Blackberry and Windows Phone 7. Sadly one of these is the one Nokia has chosen. Qt may even support Web apps to some degree, and there are possibility that Blackberry will be supported as well, but Windows Phone 7... it's Silverlight all the way - and there are no signs that Microsoft will backepdal on it. Who would want to throw away Qt now? Nokia, apparently. Note: Microsoft uses native code in bundled apps (as usual: Microsoft programs should be better then all other programs, right?), but it's not supported by Windows Phone 7. There are a C++/CLI, but it's not yet supported by Windows Phone 7 either. I've tried Qt on a Symbian phone a year ago and it worked. I did this on a dime on someone else's phone becuase I didn't have an S60 at the time. Right. That's why I've said it made sense two months ago. Qt is compatible with almost anythin - but it's not usable for the one platform Nokia have chosen! Why will you develop something useful for all your competitors, but not for you? This just makes no sense.
The anwers are simple... Posted Mar 18, 2011 11:08 UTC (Fri) by compte (guest, #60316) [Link]
Nokia has said it wants Qt to be a community project, so it's taking the right steps for Qt to prosper with minimal future support from it. So Qt will be necessary for developers to build apps for Meego. WP7 will substitute Symbian, Meego will be used in one high end phone. It will be the public who will say which will prosper, but that can be both.
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