Nokia to acquire Trolltech

They could well see this as one of few possible ways to compete with 
google in the increasingly open source mobile platform market

> http://www.kde.org/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php

You beat me to it! =8^)

What that amount(ed|s) to (was|is) a "poison-pill", to be activated in 
case of hostile takeover and attempt to take Qt proprietary.  Anyone that 
tried it, either trying to delay or weaken the free version as opposed to 
the proprietary one, or cutting off releases entirely, would trigger the 
release of the code under a BSD style license, thus losing the ability to 
demand payment for the proprietary version as the code under the BSD 
license, /unlike/ the current GPL (now (2|3) dual) license as 
proprietaryware developers would be free to pick up and use the BSD code 
at zero license cost instead.

So Nokia really has no choice but to continue the free Qt, unless they 
simply drop it entirely and let it go BSD -- but that's one particular 
advantage of FLOSS already, that if the sponsoring company drops the 
product, the community can pick it up and continue development as they 
have the code and the license to do so -- this arrangement just 
poison-pilled any attempt to take it 100% proprietary since doing so would 
release the code that brings in the money on the proprietary side!

It's also worth noting that Haavard Nord, Trolltech CEO, credited KDE for 
bringing in "almost half of their customers" ( 
http://dot.kde.org/1200788475/ ).  Thus, unless Nokia's going to simply 
abandon Qt to the BSD style license as above, it'd make little sense for 
them to do anything to hurt that relationship.

Finally, it should be pointed out that this will have been in the works 
for some time.  All the recent activities including the KDE/Trolltech 
partnership on Photon, now being integrated into Qt as well as KDE while 
still in the KDE repository and under nominal KDE control, must have at 
minimum not been something Nokia would have vetoed.  They'd have also 
needed to approve the move of Qt to GPLv3, and the GPLing of all Qt 
platforms including the MS side, not just the X side of things.  In 
particular, note the specificity of the patent guarantee language in the 
GPLv3 -- unless Nokia intends to directly attack the GPLv3 itself, that's 
significant given their earlier history (see below).

All that said, there's some serious mixed-messages going on here, and 
Nokia has anything but a friendly history toward FLOSS, particularly with 
their pro-software patent work in Europe during the recent software patent 
push there, and their anti-Ogg pro-proprietary/pro-DRM position in regard 
to HTML-5.  Are they going to be another Sony, now, with one very 
pro-FLOSS side and another very anti-freedom side, different departments 
of the same umbrella corp, or another Sun, who had the same problem for 
many years tho it seems to be coming out more pro-freedom recently, or 
another SCO or MS, with the light side of the force entirely absorbed, for 
practical purposes anyway, into the dark side?

In any case, as always seems to be the case in the FLOSS community, 
there's always something interesting going on, and this year it's the 
Nokia/Trolltech thing.  How it'll ultimately turn out remains to be seen, 
but there's certainly comfort to be had in both the GPLv2/v3 thing, and 
the KDEFreeQTFoundation (which BTW Nokia has reaffirmed) thing.  One way 
or another, if the freedomware community isn't happy with where Nokia 
takes things, we *DO* still have the code to work with, something that'd 
NOT be the case with proprietaryware.  For that code and the freedom to 
use it, AND for the additional specific patent assurances we now have 
under the GPLv3 which Qt is now licensed under, we can be thankful! =8^)  
Maybe Nokia IS trying to turn over a new leaf, or maybe they've got 
something else up their sleeve.  Regardless, time will tell.

Duncan

http://lists.maemo.org/pipermail/maemo-users/2008-January...

It seems Nokia's plan is to have Linux/GTK on N800-type devices, and Symbian/Qt on phones.
Nokia appears to not intend to standardize on either operating system or environment.

I guess this makes sense, in a way, they are hedging their bets. If Intel's MID platform takes
off with GTK, Nokia would want to be able to quickly utilize it, and vice versa if Qt on
Symbian is a hit. Nokia is a big company, it can afford to be careful.