Nokia Gives Some Hints On the Future of Qt 329
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.
The burning question (Score:2)
Will Nokia send a takedown notice to that parody of their documentation website? Or just grin and bear it?
Parody by regexp.... I love it!
Re: (Score:2)
I wasn't sure if I should give that parity a thumbs up or down.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
No thumbs = no parity.
One thumb = odd,
Two thumbs = even.
Seems pretty straight forward to me.
Re: (Score:2)
they should insist it is taken down....it should be .com, not .org.
I have an idea... (Score:5, Funny)
KDE's Qt developers should split off and form a separate company -- named Trolltech -- and continue work on a forked Qt.
Re: (Score:2)
KDE's Qt developers should split off and form a separate company -- named Trolltech -- and continue work on a forked Qt.
Great idea!
Wish I'd thought of it :-)
Re: (Score:2)
Who would finance it?
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe Google can throw some cash their way ...
Re: (Score:2)
Why would Google do that? Qt as a desktop framework is not interesting to them because they're trying to kill the very concept of desktop, and replace it with the Web. Qt as a mobile framework is not interesting to them because they already have Android. And they're not a charity.
This is probably great news for Qt (Score:2, Funny)
Microsoft is undoubtedly a big player in the software industry. If they add it to Visual Studio and makes Qt a first-class .Net citizen I can't see anything bad coming out of this for Qt and Qt developers.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
But if Microsoft's incompatible QT.net were to be official and recommended and supported up there with C#. It would be a nightmare.
We all know Microsoft doesn't like cross-platform.
FTFY
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
But we all know Microsoft doesn't like cross-platform.
Yep, that's why the .NET framework is designed to be platform agnostic and the whole thing is submitted to ECMA and ISO for standardization
Yes yes, The OOXML is also ECMA certified. Do you see where I'm going with this?
Re:This is probably great news for Qt (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah. There will be exactly one first class implementation, available on one operating system [Windows].
Then there will be partial implementations elsewhere.
For an example of this see...Microsoft SilverLight.
Standardisation? (Score:3)
the whole thing is submitted to ECMA and ISO for standardization
What, like OOXML? Do you reckon they would have to buy votes again or is the ISO process now sufficiently damaged to just push it through? I'm not even talking about ECMA, that's just rubber stamp based marketing.
Nope, scroll down, not going to be ported to WP7 (Score:5, Informative)
When the Q&A starts you see this:
Q: Anonymous Coward February 12, 2011 at 1:29 pm
Thanks. Please answer one more question as soon as you are able to: Will Qt be ported to Windows Phone? Iâ(TM)d assume it would be technically possible, but would you be allowed to do that business-wise â¦?
A: Aron (Nokia) February 12, 2011 at 1:38 pm
Qt will not be ported to Windows Phone 7. One of the key benefits of joining an established ecosystem is that there is an established toolchain that everyone uses. All Windows Phone apps will run on all WP7 devices. Adding Qt to the mix would only cause fragmentation.
Unfortunate from a Qt perspective but wise from a developer ecosystem perspective.
Re: (Score:2)
Qt is free software. How can Nokia prevent ports to platforms such as Windows Phone 7? They can refuse to make it part of an official Nokia-backed Qt release, but they cannot prevent the port from happening.
On the other hand, there don't seem to be many external contributions to Qt, so such ports seem rather unlikely.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
How do you port something that entirely depends on access to the underlying native APIs to an environment whose whole purpose is to keep you away from the native API? As so far as not even have a native programming layer.
Qt's rendering is almost centered around OpenGL and shaders. Porting to Direct* is going to a huge setback, and it's not even available on Wimpy7s either!
That is already a measure of how immature Wimpy7s is.
Re: (Score:2)
How do you port something that entirely depends on access to the underlying native APIs to an environment whose whole purpose is to keep you away from the native API? As so far as not even have a native programming layer.
Perhaps using C++/CIL? It certainly needs quite a bit porting. (And Qt is not tied to OpenGL.)
So Nokia could say, "we will not commit resources to a WP7 port, but will happily include a community-provided one", with full knowledge that it is quite unlikely to happen, ever. Sends a much better message to the community.
Re:Nope, scroll down, not going to be ported to WP (Score:5, Interesting)
This [nokia.com] is why you can't port Qt to .NET/Silverlight. This is not even pointing out the marshalling issues.
Re: (Score:3)
Qt IS tied to OpenGL. In fact, the design is centered around OpenGL ES and it's quoted many times in their docs and source.
There's only THREE graphics systems, default (which is basically raster), raster (cpu-based) and OpenGL (1.x and 2.0). Widget system is either Qt custom, or Native. There's nothing in between, and they've gotten rid of the legacy rest.
I've before dived into the 4.7 and 4.8 (HEAD) source and written a custom DirectDraw backend for WinMob 6.5 because there was no existing support for it.
Re: (Score:2)
It would be kinda tricky to port a C++ framework to the platform for which there is no C++ compiler (and no theoretical possibility to even write one with any decent performance of generated code).
Re: (Score:2)
Qt is a C++ framework. It cannot be a "first-class .NET citizen" by definition, since C++ itself is not a first-class .NET citizen.
I suspect that you can already run Qt on .NET using VC++ compiling to MSIL - it can do it to almost any C++ app. But the result is only .NET in a sense that it is bytecode which runs in .NET VM - it does not tie into .NET type system. You cannot take a C++ class and use it from C# in the same way you can today with code written in VB, F# or IronPython.
Re: (Score:2)
The only thing that makes Linux usable is the fact that Microsoft hasn't crippled it yet.
FTFY
Re: (Score:2)
Wow, you really are out of it. Most apps on Linux are written in C++ or Python.
I actually like Mono, but almost nothing on Linux uses it. In part, that's because the Linux community doesn't trust it (an irrational fear), and in part because the few Mono apps that actually had any use on Linux at all (Tomboy, F-Spot, Beagle, Banshee) were resource hogs and flaky so they got replaced.
Re: (Score:3)
Irrational? Definitely not. I shall not infect any of my Linux boxes with patent-encumbered bloatware waiting to explode any time Microsoft decides to go for it.
You run Java? You run C++? You run the Linux kernel? They all are "patent-encumbered bloatware". In fact, unlike Mono, people actually already pay patent licensing fees for some of those.
The patent situation for Mono is actually a lot simpler and clearer than for other systems.
Except, of course, for morons like you.
Re: (Score:2)
Because they want to offer a high-level set of APIs which makes it relatively easy to rapidly develop applications.
Re: (Score:2)
Intel was surprised as hell (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/12/nokias-marginalization-of-meego-came-as-a-surprise-to-intel/ [engadget.com]
I wonder whether there is any point in continuing on with QT? I mean it's awesome and all *now*, but will still be awesome after one year of neglect?
Re: (Score:3)
If Nokia abandons Qt, maybe Intel or some other interested party could buy it from Nokia and continue, or if no suitable buyer can be found, maybe the Trolltech guys can fork it and start up Trolltech again.
Re:Intel was surprised as hell (Score:4, Informative)
The key word is "abandon". Can we legally compel Nokia to give up Qt just because it's not giving *sufficient* care?
I was looking around the net, and I found this interesting tidbit:
http://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php [kde.org]
The Foundation has a license agreement with Nokia. This agreement ensures that the Qt will continue to be available under both the LGPL 2.1 and the GPL 3. Should Nokia discontinue the development of the Qt Free Edition under these licenses, then the Foundation has the right to release Qt under a BSD-style license or under other open source licenses. The agreement stays valid in case of a buy-out, a merger or bankruptcy.
In case MS buys Nokia, or the company goes bankrupt, then there is a choice, but just mere neglect might not cut the cheese.
Also, what does "discontinue development" imply? If Nokia keeps toting out at least one update per year, would that count?
I am not an expert at legalese, but reading that paragraph tell me that there does exist some sort of "fork now!" option. Whether that will be good enough is another question.
Re: (Score:3)
> I am not an expert at legalese, but reading that paragraph tell me that
> there does exist some sort of "fork now!" option. Whether that will be
> good enough is another question.
If Qt is available under LGPL and GPL, then "fork now" is always an option. The only question is whether someone might to push for abandonment to get a different license, or to get control of the "Qt" trademark, or something like that.
For KDE's needs, LGPL and GPL should be good enough.
Re: (Score:2)
The whole Meego thing was a disastrous decision for Nokia.
Maemo (as on the N900) works great as an OS. The UI is decent enough too. The "only" thing missing is applications.
Have a look at talk.maemo.org. [maemo.org] The main complaints there are things like the old version of Ovi Maps (no turn-by-turn voice navigation), the old version of Flash (no version 10.1 with hardware acceleration), the poor email program, missing support for a few "nice" features like per-caller ringtones.
Nokia found themselves suddenly trailin
Re: (Score:2)
Do I sense sarcasm? :p
My point was "awesomness", not bare utility. IANAC (I am not a coder), but I know quite few, and reading the comments of a few more, every one was pleased by Qt's progress.
It wasn't 100% perfect, but still the stage the Qt tools had reached, and the love Nokia were showing for it, meant they were happy to select it as their programming option, to make apps and such.
Now however, it looks like Nokia will not show any love for it, and why should they? Qt-running Symbian and MeeGo are no l
Fork (Score:4, Insightful)
The only possible scenario for QT under Microsoft's control is gamesmanship to dilute it and undermine its usefulness to KDE and other open source projects. The only rational response is a quick and clean fork under a new name. In this way QT will develop better and faster than it ever has before, guided by the needs of a community and not handicapped by the vagaries of corporate politics. This has to be spearheaded by the KDE project, the largest participant in the QT ecosystem.
Take a deep breath (Score:5, Informative)
The only possible scenario for QT under Microsoft's control
Qt is not under Microsoft's control. Nokia is not under Microsoft's control to begin with.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Sigh. Right. Wormtongue has moved into the palace and set up housekeeping, but no, Saruman's not in charge, or anything.
Re: (Score:2)
"The only possible scenario for QT under Microsoft's control
Qt is not under Microsoft's control. Nokia is not under Microsoft's control to begin with."
It's what Spock said when the Enterprise(nokia) was stuck in front of the Planet Killer(microsoft). "If we don't break free in sixty seconds, we never will."
With Elop at the controls I won't hold my breath for it. He seems determined to get swallowed up.
Nokia just cut off its dick and balls and the rest of the world knows it. Without its dick and balls it mig
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
yet - http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/12/nokia-usa-president-is-out-replaced-by-microsoft-vet-chris-webe/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+weblogsinc%2Fengadget+(Engadget) [engadget.com]
Nokia Stock Plunges ! (Score:3)
I am a nerd.
I am a nerd who watch the stock market closely.
After the announcement of Nokia jumping into the sack with Microsoft, this is what happened ---> http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/software/elop-gambles-nokias-future-on-microsoft-partnership/articleshow/7486397.cms [indiatimes.com] " .... with Nokia's stock closing down a staggering 14.22 percent at 7.00 euros
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Fork (Score:4, Insightful)
They've already announced that Qt won't be ported to WP7, which to me seems like suicide.. They pushed Qt hard as their unified development platform for all their devices, a lot of people learned it and loved it, and now they're completely abandoning that strategy. A move like this really upsets developers, and I think they're much more likely to move to Android now than to develop for WP7...
Re: (Score:2)
I have always suspected that the "Qt for all Nokia devices" plan is not feasible anyway.
Putting Qt on Symbian is like putting lipstick on a pig. And it caused a tremendous amount of drag on development of Qt.
Now, hopefully, we can shed it and concentrate on relevant platforms. Such as MeeGo, which is not going anywhere yet.
Re: (Score:3)
Strategies. You can never have too many.
Because as any fule kno, It stands to reason that eventually one of them is bound to work; it's the law of beverages. Or something.
Re: (Score:2)
KDE-like interfaces on a mobile device have effectively been tried and they don't work (and were a dismal failure in the market): mobile devices are not desktops, and you really need to rewrite most apps from scratch. I doubt KDE (or Gnome for that matter) would even be good on a tablet.
Mobile versions of Qt may finally have reached the point where they are usable on mobile devices; KDE will never be without a fundamental rewrite.
Re: (Score:3)
Ever try to learn Cocoa and develop for the iPhone? It's confusing as hell
Seriously? A simple framework that applies half a dozen design patterns absolutely everywhere is 'confusing as hell?' I really hope I never have to run any code that you've written.
Gag me. (Score:5, Insightful)
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...
I'm used to PR people spray painting happy faces all over everything, but this is some of the gaggiest PR barf I've had spilled in my path.
Fool me once (Score:5, Insightful)
Back last autumn, Nokia had promised that it had finally gotten its platform house in order:
-S40 for dirt-cheap phones. No apps anyway, so it doesn't matter for developers.
-Symbian for feature phones.
-And Meego for advanced phones and devices.
But devs would only have to use one platform (Qt) to target both Symbian and Meego. Oh, and Qt will also run on Win/Mac/Lin. Icing on top.
That's a story. And after all the bungling, it looked like devs and users would forgive Nokia, and give it another shot.
But now, it changes the platform story once again. No stability. No trust. And no reason why users and devs shouldn't abandon Nokia for Android.
Re:Fool me once (Score:5, Insightful)
Back last autumn, Nokia had promised that it had finally gotten its platform house in order
That would have been before Stephen Elop, former Microsoft executive, became the president and CEO of Nokia?
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, interestingly, it was afterwards.
At that time I thought that Elop wasn't an MSBot, and actually had a good plan suited to Nokia's history and situation.
I can't find a link at the moment because "Qt Nokia" just brings up the latest developments.
Nokia's also dropped the free music on Ovi, which was a great differentiator.
Re:Fool me once (Score:5, Insightful)
Seen this a lot more than once (Score:2)
Since then they have an idiot new executive that says the company that still sells more phones than anyone is in such deep trouble that it is "an oil platform on fire" and everything has to be changed.
That's code for firing anyone that gets in the way of bringing in as many friends into sinecures to feed their snouts at the trough and an excuse for any irrational near criminal behaviour. Expect no promises to be kept on anything and the company to decline for a while.
Nokia is probably big enough to survive
Re: (Score:3)
Maemo never had its own developers, just Linux developers who used it. Yes, the move towards Qt looked cool, but all that meant was familiarity for QT developers, you'd never get write once run anywhere, hell you don't get that under Android.
Yet, you can easily run Andoird apps under Maemo [youtube.com], which basically resolves all app concerns for users. Nokia should have pursued this rather obvious option form the day Android was released. Ideally, they should've supported an open source product to turn GnuSTEP int
Erm... What exactly are they saying about MeeGo? (Score:5, Interesting)
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:Erm... What exactly are they saying about MeeGo (Score:5, Funny)
Stephen Elop kept using the word "disruption", I'm don't think even he even knows exactly what he means by that...
Re: (Score:3)
I think he means disruption as in disruptive technologies i.e. technologies that make present tech redundant. So the iPhone was a disruptive technology in that it changed the market for mobile smart phones.
I think that the statement is meant to imply that Meego was being kept so that they can produce a product in the future that was disruptive to the competition in the mobile market
Whether that is a genuine possibility or a carrot to retain staff is open
Re: (Score:3)
But I suspect it's mostly just words to keep Intel from blowing a fuse and to keep the ship jumping to a managable rate.
Re:Erm... What exactly are they saying about MeeGo (Score:4, Insightful)
For the N900? I was on the open source developer program for the 770. About a year after I got mine (a week before the official release), they released an update to the OS that only ran on the newer model. It was eventually back-ported as a 'community edition', but it was clear that Nokia had no interest in supporting older devices - if you weren't buying a new one each year, they didn't want to know.
Trying to replace Symbian with Linux was an incredibly stupid idea. The Symbian kernel has better power management, lower memory usage, a cleaner capabilities model, better realtime support, and the microkernel design scales nicely to multicore phones (the kernel services are all in largely independent processes already). The only bad thing about it was the old C++ APIs that were heavily optimised for devices with under 4MB of RAM and made life hard for programmers who didn't care about obsessive-compulsive memory conservation, but you've been able to program for Symbian without going near these for some time now.
They even had a POSIX subsystem for Symbian that would have been used to port *NIX apps (no fork(), but most code uses vfork() anyway).
Re: (Score:3)
Trying to replace Symbian with Linux was an incredibly stupid idea.
Right, that's why everyone and their mom is doing this or something just like it.
The Symbian kernel has better power management, lower memory usage, a cleaner capabilities model, better realtime support, and the microkernel design scales nicely to multicore phones
So Symbian uses less resources but now we're using more powerful devices so this doesn't matter, and their POSIX model is incomplete unlike Android... I'm not seeing the strengths here. Linux is pretty great at multiprocessing, by the way.
The Insane Triad (Score:2)
I thought Nokia had come to its senses. I thought they were defining Symbian as legacy, MeeGo as dead, and moving on to Windows Mobile 7 as the ecosystem of choice going forward with a full partnership in helping to define what Windows Mobile 7 was.
Now I see Nokia is traveling down all three paths. What? This will work out for them every bit as well as Palm supporting both PalmOS and WinCE, never producing a great device for either OS and then eventually being subsumed by HP (although I have to admit th
Re:The Insane Triad (Score:4, Informative)
They are not. All non-Microsoft paths will end, I suspect the remnants of the MeeGo path will be out by year's end, if not earlier. Symbian will have a longer tail due to its installed base and pipeline.
They will both charge on down the WP7 path, pushing closed, locked down systems with Microsoft firmly in control.
Re: (Score:2)
Now I see Nokia is traveling down all three paths. What?
It's pretty much continuing what it was doing, except now it diverts part of the insane R&D money that used to be sunk in Symbian to little effect, towards producing some WP7 devices where it does not have to do a lot software from scratch. I mean, it's an improvement.
Re: (Score:2)
Now I see Nokia is traveling down all three paths. What?
It sounded more like an attempt at consolation of all the Symbian and Qt developers who have been drinking the Kool-Aid for the last few months, and have now found out that no future supply is coming. They were, in essence, told that it will be available for a little bit more in small quantities.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Wait, what? The Qt documentation is by far the best I've seen. Care to point out a few examples where it's conflicting and/or lacking?
Motives of Stephen Elop? (Score:5, Informative)
Motives of Stephen Elop, doesn't own any Nokia shares, but hundreds of thousand Microsoft shares? Where is the loyalty?
From http://www.tracked.com/person/stephen-elop/ [tracked.com]
Aug 31, 2010: SOLD 23,250 MSFT shares [SEC Filing]
Jan 21, 2010: SOLD 8,434 MSFT shares [SEC Filing]
Sep 25, 2009: BOUGHT 136,308 MSFT shares [SEC Filing]
Sep 25, 2009: SOLD 12,422 MSFT shares [SEC Filing]
Aug 31, 2009: SOLD 11,614 MSFT shares [SEC Filing]
Sep 26, 2008: BOUGHT 51,301 MSFT shares [SEC Filing]
Sep 26, 2008: SOLD 4,675 MSFT shares [SEC Filing]
Aug 31, 2008: SOLD 6,939 MSFT shares [SEC Filing]
Aug 29, 2008: BOUGHT 76,141 MSFT shares [SEC Filing]
Jan 22, 2008: BOUGHT 62,520 MSFT shares [SEC Filing]
Nov 24, 2006: SOLD 1,315 ADBE shares [SEC Filing]
Oct 24, 2006: SOLD 1,315 ADBE shares [SEC Filing]
Oct 16, 2006: BOUGHT 100,000 ADBE shares [SEC Filing]
Oct 16, 2006: SOLD 100,000 ADBE shares [SEC Filing]
Oct 13, 2006: BOUGHT 116,124 ADBE shares [SEC Filing]
and microsoft-beware-stephen-elop-is-a-flight-risk [siliconbeat.com]
Surprise (Score:3)
1. Microsoft Fat Cat Exec leaves for heading Nokia.
2. Nokia ditches internal Linux development and saves MSs limping phone OS.
3. Profit!
How could that be a surprise?
Re: (Score:2)
You did not want to wait for step 2 to become true in order to post this witty comment. This is understandable, but might be proven wrong.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
According to Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, Elop wasn't allowed to trade the shares [www.hs.fi]. Nokia informed the paper that after Elop started planning the co-operation with Microsoft, trading away the Microsoft stock and buying Nokia stock instead would have been considered illegal due to insider information.
A poor translation of the article is as follows:
Re: (Score:2)
Instead of waiting a few years for the request for state assistance, the Finnish state should simply go in and nationalize the company now, before it's utterly destroyed. The idea here is basically gutting the company, leaving it geared to simply be a me-too manufacturer, which will be the end of Nokia as a Finnish business anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Law is the explanation. Elop had insider information involving both MS and Nokia which prevented him from selling his MS shares and buying Nokia. At least this was the reason given by Nokia to a finnish newspaper.
I wonder if that explanation will fly in court?
good luck with that (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, it is. Good luck with that. You effectively just canceled their platform (Symbian) and the only platform with any viable migration strategy (MeeGo). You also just removed the incentive for developers to create new apps for the Symbian platform.
You could have done something special by turning MeeGo into a platform that allows users to run Symbian, Qt, and Android, giving people a viable migration path. But none of that is going to happen with Windows Phone 7. And nobody is going to believe you are going to keep spending money on MeeGo now that you are in Microsoft's pocket and have your company run by an ex-Microsoft exec.
Developers are perceiving that MeeGo is dead, and with it, Qt is dead for your products. You might as well stop investing money in them now.
Re: (Score:2)
You also just removed the incentive for developers to create new apps for the Symbian platform.
I just cancelled all my Qt mobile apps. No more profit in it. Fortunately I don't need them. Would just have been some nice extra income. I think I might take a look into android.
This is what happens when you do anythin with (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Greed.. They're hoping for short-term profits, no matter the impact on the long term, they'll have bailed out by then.
Business plan for TrollTech 2 (Score:2)
Let's imagine a bunch of upset Qt devs get together and form a company to develop Qt outside Nokia.
What's their business plan?
Re: (Score:2)
What's their business plan?
A difficult one since they would be stuck with the LGPL.
Re: (Score:2)
Open source businesses exist and do quite well in many cases. What approaches would work here?
Re: (Score:3)
So, they sell support and training. Apparently (according to a Qt blog) there are 400,000 Qt developers, so a reasonable base to support. It's really quite an opportunity to be given Qt at it's current (advanced) state LGPL'd and be able to build a support business for that, without having to incurred the $millions it took to develop or the $150million or so it took Nokia to aquire!
Zero Day win32.elop.trojan (Score:4, Funny)
I think it just sums up the situation succinctly:
"Nokia got trapped by that win32.elop.trojan."
Has look and feel of a Zero Day exploit, and is creating that sort of confusion as well.
One could easily say it's not Zero Day, but then all ZD's are developed quietly over time and simply 'sprung' on the unsuspecting and unprepared innocent victims one day. Pretty much what happened.
QT has merit, and if the merit is good enough, and I think it is, it will have a strong future... just probably not with Nokia. (and yes I am a GNU/OSS/FLOSS fan boy, just not a zealot about it).
Anyway much credit to "eMPee584" for such a fine summation (assuming he was not quoting some one else, without attribution).
Re: (Score:2)
QT has merit, and if the merit is good enough, and I think it is, it will have a strong future... just probably not with Nokia. (and yes I am a GNU/OSS/FLOSS fan boy, just not a zealot about it).
The only chance I see for Qt is a fork and a very quick community driven development of Qt for android. Only chance for mobile devices that is. For desktops it will be fine the way it is for at least two years.
I can see the future (Score:3)
- kde4 will now come with regedit and Tweakui-95
- will ship with Norton antivirus
- all kde system services will now run as root
- system tray icons in Kde will mysteriosly multiply like drunken gerbils
KDE Logo (Score:3)
An easy prediction: QT and Nokia part ways (Score:3)
To put it even more bluntly: "commodity" services and protocols are good things for customers; they promote competition and choice. Therefore, for Microsoft to win, the customer must lose.
Microsoft truly behaves as though it corporately believes that there's only a fixed pool of key ideas, most already discovered, which software designers must squabble over in zero-sum competition until the end of time. In that game, the only definition of `winning' is cornering enough goodies to guarantee you a monopoly lock.
assert one's viewpoint at the potential expense of another. It can be useful when achieving one's objectives outweighs one's concern for the relationship.
Here's the definition of accommodation:
surrender one's own needs and wishes to accommodate the other party.
Let's analyze the Nokia-Microsoft "deal". What has Microsoft gained?
What has Nokia "gained"?
In summary it looks to me like the bargaining resolution was a (competition, accommodation) pairing with Microsoft in the drivers' seat. If I was on Nokia's board or a shareholder I would probably demand an investigation into fraud and at the very least fire Elop.
Re:Why is this a bad thing? (Score:5, Interesting)
I would love to hear all the reasons this is such a bad thing.
Why Nokia getting into bed with MSFT is bad:
In a single stroke, three high-profile open-source components are potentially endangered. If you care about open-source, this is a bad thing.
don't worry so much (Score:2)
Fortunately, Qt isn't needed for a modern Linux desktop. In fact, I'd say the majority of Linux desktop users don't ever even install it. If Nokia's downfall were the catalyst for unifying Linux under a single UI, all the better. However, frankly, I don't see anything happening to Qt: it's open source and it will survive with or without N
Re: (Score:2)
Fortunately, Qt isn't needed for a modern Linux desktop
Speak for yourself. It's needed for mine.
Re: (Score:2)
The sooner Symbian goes away, the better, open source or not.
Why?
Re: (Score:2)
If Nokia had to sign up with MSFT, then the projects were already endangered - by fact of being owned by the company with failed long-term strategy.
In short-term, I do not think that something would change for the projects. But in the long-term one can expect Nokia's going to distantiate themselves from the projects by either being influenced by the MSFT or by virtue of having no money to support the involvement.
I care about OSS and I'd say the larger problem here is that (from your words) that Nokia
Re: (Score:3)
Fortunately Qt, being open source, can be forked, but that's only the second best alternative.
No, it's the best alternative. That way the development ends up being needs driven instead of agenda driven.
Re:Why is this a bad thing? (Score:4, Insightful)
I had great hope that the new CEO would have shed - attachment to his former employer.
Looks to me he's still in love with microsoft.
His actions are those of a Microsoft employee and apparently he is one of the largest owners of Microsoft stock. If this doesn't cause a shareholder lawsuit then Finnland might as well go back to making paper.
Re: (Score:2)
Besides, Opera Mini is available for iOS. I'm sure if Opera gets in, Firefox does too.
Re: (Score:2)
Google Voice still isn't on iPhone. Apple's criteria aren't logic and analogy, they are ideology.
Opera and Skype make proprietary, closed-source products with iffy cross-platform support, so they are in. Google and Mozilla make open source apps that work well across many platforms, so Apple hates them and they don't get approved.
Apple not the one blocking Firefox on iPhone (Score:2)
Dude, your OWN LINK states that Firefox are the people who are not going to craft Firefox for the iPhone.
Now that Apple has relaxed the stance on interpreters, it could be the case that Apple would allow it. Although if they will, we should see some other browser before too long, like Opera...
Re: (Score:3)
Dude, your OWN LINK states that Firefox are the people who are not going to craft Firefox for the iPhone.
Now that Apple has relaxed the stance on interpreters, it could be the case that Apple would allow it. Although if they will, we should see some other browser before too long, like Opera...
Have you read the 3.2.2 (if I remember correctly)? It states that all interpreted code must come with the application and everything else must be interpreted by webkit. I guess you could make a HTML rendering engine, but good luck with JavaScript etc.
Re:I bought an N900 (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re: (Score:3)
I bought an N900 too, and i did it not because was hoping that Nokia improves it after, but the community, and it delivered. Now is a better device than it was at the start, not just because of apps (that if well could had been far more, there are several quality ones), but also core features, like kernels with enabled overclocking that improved battery life a lot or libraries that enable apps to do nice tricks with the camera like taking HDR photos.
Regarding Nokia, i bought it to the old company. It deli
Re: (Score:2)
I don't care what fancy words they put on this: Qt will be canceled,
Will never officially happen. Every 12 month there will be an unimportant formal update, else Qt becomes free under BSD license. This is the last thing M$ wishes.