Changes at Nokia
-
[quote author="veeraps" date="1339748178"]I guess if Nokia couldn't promote Qt, no one else would buy, Samsung already have their own OS and they are already into Android, RIM is also having their own!!!
What is gonna happen to Qt!! [/quote]
Qt is a development platform and can be made to run on any OS. Qt is an important part of RIM's new BB10 platform. There is also a port going on for Android. Since Qt is opensource, I guess anybody can use it on top of their OS platform just like RIM did. Samsung may use it for Tizen. Don't know how Nokia sees this, but from Kerris' comments, they don't seem to have any problem.
-
Qt doesn't need to be /bought/ in order to continue to live. It is now a free software project like any other. And it existed a long time before Nokia acquired Trolltech.
While Nokia is the major (~80% of commits) contributor to Qt (that is, ex-Trolltech people), they are not the only one.
I'd really like to see some company like KDAB (the second contributor) or a new company (possibly called Trolltech :) ) to emerge as the new guardian and de-facto support provider.
The important thing is that there is a market for Qt and that there still are parties interested in it. It remains to be seen whether the market for Qt is big enough to keep the pace of development it currently has.
-
What I find amazing is Intel is surprisingly non-enthusiastic when it comes to software. They have long been in a position of being able to deliver complete hardware platforms, or a complete solution on hardware level, and even thou they have all the resources a company could ask for, then never went the extra step to create a complete in-house platform solution, both hardware and software. All they have is their compiler, some other development tools, some drivers and that's pretty much it.
In another thread I pointed our Samsung as a company that can be interested in purchasing Qt. Samsung produce a complete hardware platform too, have a nice market share in mobile devices and even thou so far they rely on Android, they also offer their own software enhancements. Currently, Android is the only obstacle Samsung has to completely PWN Apple, and purchasing Qt can get them much closer to the goal of having their own OS with a high performance, native framework.
What is even better, since they already have many Android devices on the market, they may very well officially support Qt on Android, cuz I doubt they will just leave behind their current user base like some other * cough * companies, switching to a new OS...
-
Forget about Samsung, they already have a full access to the Enlightenment Foundation Library, a free C fast, ligth and highly themable tooklit designed by the Enlightenment project for embedded and ressource constrained hardware from the ground. This library already include widget build on top of a scene graph (Evas) with a theme engine getting the layout from file description (Edje), that work perfectly with OpenGL, OpenGL ES and even with just software.
And they are already using it in Tizen for all the native UI application. That's why Samsung never needed Qt in Tizen, because they have something that already fit the embedded world much better than Qt does.
Now, it's time for the Qt project to prove that it is a really open source project. That it doesn't need anymore the umbrella of one big company and get contribution from much more wide range of company. Maybe that's a good thing as it will mean that one company will not decide for its futur, and make it as resistant as the Linux kernel is.
-
[quote author="bluebugs" date="1339998216"]Now, it's time for the Qt project to prove that it is a really open source project. [/quote]
Since 90% of EFL is a BSD-licensed project, it clearly encourages 3rd-parties to close the code and and keep the modifications secret more than LGPL projects such as Qt or GTK+. And I hear you praise EFL for being "fully accessible" for a company (read: available for closing). Finally, which project has to prove its open source face, really? :)
The other LGPL project is WebKit's JavaScriptCore & WebCore module delivering foundations for HTML5 features - which reportedly - according to Linux Foundation and Tizen Association, is the real building block of Tizen SDK [http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/labs/tizen].
[quote author="bluebugs" date="1339998216"]...That it [Qt] doesn't need anymore the umbrella of one big company and get contribution from much more wide range of company. Maybe that's a good thing as it will mean that one company will not decide for its futur, and make it as resistant as the Linux kernel is.[/quote]
Like Enlightenment does not need Samsung, yeah? As you tried to compare the projects in this regard, may I ask where are the public uses of EFL 1.0 in stable/complete products (free or commercial)?
The bottom line would be that every activity needs funding done this or another way - no need to use biased declarations or accusations like you just posted. The question is how transparent the activities can be and how inclusive the project is. In case of the Qt Project, what you see is a "meritocratic, consensus-based community":http://qt-project.org/wiki/The_Qt_Governance_Model. Feel invited to come and see :)
-
Qt better not be in the hands of mobile hardware companies like Nokia, Samsung etc, because it will be limited to their own mobile platforms as it is like now with Nokia. I would like it to be in the hands of some company who is prepared to support it on all popular platforms. Had Nokia not acquired Trolltech, we would have official port for major mobile platforms like ios and Android by now.
-
[quote author="jstaniek" date="1340407449"]Since 90% of EFL is a BSD-licensed project, it clearly encourages 3rd-parties to close the code and and keep the modifications secret more than LGPL projects such as Qt or GTK+. And I hear you praise EFL for being "fully accessible" for a company (read: available for closing). Finally, which project has to prove its open source face, really? :)[/quote]
Sorry, I didn't want to start a troll nor offend you, I just wanted to point to some fact regarding Samsung. But you are wrong about your number, the fundation and the widget library are fully LGPL. The canvas and the event layer are BSD. The reason is that we assume that nobody is able to follow the improvement speed of the canvas to make a proprietary fork of it and to put anything useful for the community in it. So both of this layer are BSD to make it easy for people to write and port their own engine using the generic software backend or the generic OpenGL/OpengGL ES backend and put the needed glue around them to have them running on their platform.
As a matter of fact, the Enlightenment project has been open and run based on meritocracy since day 1, so that should be 15 years ago. The only difference is that in the past 4 or 5 years, Samsung has been trying to hire a lot of the core developer of the project. Now about half of them are working for Samsung I guess. This is exactly what I mean, by having a full access to EFL, not for closing as everything Samsung does is upstreamed (look at the mailing list and you will see the proposed patch coming in) and they have people to guide them on how to do that properly. This people are really believing in the open source model and will certainly move on quickly if it goes in the wrong direction (proprietary fork). Samsung is really like another contributor to the project, they just have a bunch of people helping them to do it right and quickly.
[quote author="jstaniek" date="1340407449"]Like Enlightenment does not need Samsung, yeah? As you tried to compare the projects in this regard, may I ask where are the public uses of EFL 1.0 in stable/complete products (free or commercial)?[/quote]
So Enlightenment as been running without any company trying to sell it for 10 years (that's not the case for Qt nor GTK). That's the main reason behind the lack of a release. It was a play ground for developer that did have fun with it. No need to release as we were all using svn daily. Sure that would have helped get users and company on board, but that was first a project for fun.
But 5 to 6 years ago, people working for various company noticed that they could do things with EFL that they couldn't with other toolkit. Since then various company have been using it in the embedded market (mostly when they didn't have a choice). But maybe the most interesting achievement is that the only computer you can buy in a store in France with a Linux running on it has been for the past two years being using Enlightenment (Ordissimo). The company doing it is also contributing back patch. And they are doing that product with only maybe 4 peoples working on Enlightenment and EFL applications.
Sure there is less people using EFL in a final product as Qt for mostly two reason, first there was never any company trying to push commercial use as hardly as Trolltech did, and the second point is almost linked with the previous one. Qt has a much better tutorial and learning curve due to that history. But my remark was never about Qt vs EFL, you took it for yourself, it was just a statement that Samsung already has an equivalent technology with a phone stack using it.
[quote author="jstaniek" date="1340407449"]The bottom line would be that every activity needs funding done this or another way - no need to use biased declarations or accusations like you just posted. The question is how transparent the activities can be and how inclusive the project is. In case of the Qt Project, what you see is a "meritocratic, consensus-based community":http://qt-project.org/wiki/The_Qt_Governance_Model. Feel invited to come and see :)[/quote]
As a matter of fact, the Enlightenment project has 10 times less active core developper than Qt, this at least means we need 10 times less funding. I do agree that we are now depending to much on Samsung already.
But I think you did take my comment in the wrong way, it wasn't a comparison between EFL development model and Qt development model. I do wish that we (the free and open source community) in the near futur have at least one open source toolkit (but more would be better, just to drive competition and innovation) that does have as many contributor and company as the kernel get. And you must agree with me, that we are far from that point yet (for both Qt and even more for EFL). From my point of view the Linux kernel did manage to create an active contributing community that has yet to be reproduced in other open source project. This is important as the use of Linux for desktop is currently in danger.
-
[quote author="john_god" date="1340472785"]
[quote author="jstaniek" date="1340407449"]This is important as the use of Linux for desktop is currently in danger.
[/quote]
Why do you say that ?
[/quote]Go to any Free Software events in the world and count how many people are using Free Software desktop vs Apple OS. If even Free Software developer are switching to an App Store unfriendly for Free Software vendor, that's bad. And the trend is sadly not new.
