I do not see this as "good news": with nokia killing their open source smart phone projects, we will only have android.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12427680

I see this as very bad, bad news, mainly not because the Phones, but because Nokia owns QT and KDE is based in QT. Microsoft WILL control Nokia and will kill anything that threatens it's software business...

http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/11/noki ... one-devel/

Qt is LGPL, so it is not really *owned* by anyone. In the worst case, we'll have a LibreOffice story all over again...

But, as always, let the dust settle in before starting more inflamed discussions.

http://twitter.com/qtbynokia/statuses/36012807392591872

Hmmmm. Thanks Nokia for giving us the LGPL license!

Bye

Thorsten

Hello,

reading the news this morning shocked me to a certain extend. We are a tiny company specialised in developing engineering software and about 50% of it is open-source (GPLv3). Qt has, so far, played an important role for us; for two years we even purchased commercial licences.

Now I am -- naturally -- a bit worried about the future of Qt. I agree with a previous post that panicking is certainly the wrong thing to do. Still, looking at the possible future in order to make the right decisions seems sensible enough.

Assuming Nokia will discontinue Qt development -- not an unlikely scenario: It is true that Qt is LGPL licensed, but a survival depends on enough developers (with enough knowledge) willing to continue working on it. I don't know what would happen to the ex TrollTech people. If Nokia considers Qt an unnecessary burden and cost, rather than a threat to its windows mobile plans, those people might be free to go and continue on their own account. Another possibility, however, is that Nokia actively wants to shut down Qt. In this case the developers inside Nokia might be "lost" -- at least for a couple of years. The question is: Are there enough people outside Nokia who have enough knowledge of Qt to continue its development? If that is the case, how could possible development be funded?

Maybe someone from the KDE team can shed some light on this. I would assume that there is "some" Qt knowledge amongst KDE developers

'Hoping for a non flaming discussion!

Cheers,
Oliver

I can not see how Nokia could shut down Qt. They need it for Symbian at least some years in the future.

@ogloth

Things are even better than 'just LGPL' - if Nokia stops releasing new versions, Qt automatically gets BSD-licensed.

> I would assume that there is "some" Qt knowledge amongst KDE developers

You assume correctly

@Odaer

It can do so in a sense of "Qt is good enough as it is until Symbian's EOL".

But where is now the platform for all of KDE mobile stuff?

Most was focused on Meego that looks now more like NoGo. As as so called future development platform it will not start to fly. I do not no other mobile platform where I can install e.g. Plasma mobile?!
Would be I nice touch if a unknown vendor steps in and use Meego as mobile platform and creates a notable success.

[EDIT]
Just see:
http://www.thelins.se/johan/blog/2011/02/meego-and-qt/

A nice touch!
[/EDIT]

Bye

Thorsten

I will post again here a very interesting link shared by someone in a similar thread on this forum:

http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/b ... osoft.html

ivan wrote:@ogloth

Things are even better than 'just LGPL' - if Nokia stops releasing new versions, Qt automatically gets BSD-licensed.

I was thinking why BSD and not GPL. Does BSD license offer an advantage than GPL if Nokia stops the developement of Qt ?

I searched a little to understand better the differences but it is nt very clear for me.

Mind that all of this is just hypothetical since it doesn't seem like it will be needed. (and speaking here not as a KDE representative or anything, but as a simple Qt user )

There are qt customers that use statically linked Qt. That is not possible with LGPL without making the rest of the code LGPL as well.

It is not important directly for us, but we'd need a unified Qt community (both free and commercial) in order for it to be really successful.

I think the BSD license is more permissive, it makes it easier for closed-source businesses to make use of the software. I think the idea is to make sure businesses that purchased commercial Qt licenses would not suddenly find themselves unable to make use of the software they paid for, which would be the case with GPL (note that the deal was made long before Qt became LGPL, although I think BSD is even more permissive than LGPL).

i see the importance of the companies that already use the Qt. Ιt is important to have them boosting the Qt development.

I just see this as Microsoft taking over another company.

A good development library is essential for a certain platform. In this case Qt is gold for Linux and it has the massive advantage of being cross platform and is used by a lot of companies. It only gained popularity when being bought by Nokia to spread its abilities to the mobile platforms too. Which is absolutely what MS doesn’t want! With this deal, MS saw the chance to acquire a big player on the mobile market and decreasing the focus on Symbian and Meego with the consequence of decreasing the popularity of Qt and lessen the number of competitors over time (Symbian will remain for cheap phones, Meego will be forgotten). Whatever Nokia says, if the Win7 Phone platform will be a success, the development of Qt will not be as important as it had been when this deal hadn’t been made. This is not only a hit for Meego or Qt, also a bit for Linux as it could have been a major player on the mobile market (smartphones and tablets).