Nokia Gives Some Hints On the Future of Qt

An anonymous reader writes "Continuing the damage control following the announcement of the Nokia-Microsoft partnership, Nokia has a post on their official blog outlining the future of Qt which includes some (cherry picked) comments from Qt users. Phil from Nokia writes, 'Lots of great questions and comments coming from you all on the future of Qt. One thing is for sure: Qt remains to play an important role in Nokia. We'll have more Qt-related posts coming this week during Mobile World Congress, but for the time being, the Director of Qt's ecosystem, Daniel Kihlberg, wrote a post on Qt's official blog on the future of Qt.'" An anonymous reader points to one unattractive possible future for Qt.

Re:Why is this a bad thing?

[Morty]

I would love to hear all the reasons this is such a bad thing.

Why Nokia getting into bed with MSFT is bad:

1. Nokia owns one of the major Linux desktop components, qt. This potentially endangers that component, by removing some of Nokia's incentive to continue qt development.
2. Nokia owns one of the major open-source phone OSs, Symbian. This potentially endangers that OS.
3. Nokia is involved in another open-source, Linux-based phone OS, MeeGo. This potentially endangers that OS, too.

In a single stroke, three high-profile open-source components are potentially endangered. If you care about open-source, this is a bad thing.

Erm... What exactly are they saying about MeeGo?

[Mr Z]

- Nokia also announced it will ship its first MeeGo-related device in 2011, which will rely on the Qt ecosystem – and then will continue with MeeGo as an open source project for future disruption.

Uh... "for future disruption"? What does that mean?

And "will continue with MeeGo as an open source project".... Does that mean the community of folks who buy it have to provide their own updates, much like what has happened with the N900? [maemo.org]

Re:Nope, scroll down, not going to be ported to WP

[NuShrike]

This [nokia.com] is why you can't port Qt to .NET/Silverlight. This is not even pointing out the marshalling issues.

Re:I bought an N900

[Znork]

Eh, the N900 is Linux on a phone. You don't buy Linux enabled hardware because the hardware manufacturer is going to give it great support (when has that ever happened?). You buy it because when the hardware manufacturer quits supporting you, you're still running Linux and you have support and source elsewhere.

I'm certainly happy with my N900, there simply aren't any devices even close without a lot of serious hacking. If anything, this makes me think about getting another one as a spare.

If Nokia releases a Meego phone I might buy that; again, Linux devices don't depend on the manufacturer as much as others do. But I'm hardly about to buy a WP, because when Windows Phone is discontinued (which might happen any day, considering Ballmers luck), there ain't gonna be no community support on that.