An Open conversation about the future of Qt.
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bq. "I commissioned a deeper investigation into the scope of work required for Qt to work fully on Windows 8. I will receive the full review of this investigation early next week. I will make sure to share this detail with everyone as soon as I am able to."
"Chuck Piercey":http://lists.qt-project.org/pipermail/interest/2012-June/002751.html
Director Product Management & Key Accounts -
Well, for one, Qt is open-source so it is impossible to "kill" it. As far as I understand, Qt Project itself is also now not dependent upon Nokia per se for governance. I think the administrative costs and server costs etc. are paid by Nokia but those probably could be taken care of.
The question really is, where do the Qt contributors and maintainers employed by Nokia go now? How do we ensure that they can keep working on Qt full-time? I hope that divison of Nokia is sold to a home(s) where they can still keep working on Qt open-source.
As for mobile platforms, port to WP8 is a non-trivial endeavor. Android is a more likely destination, with some success already by Bogdan and others.
(About me: You have not seen me much around here, but I do love me some Qt and would love to contribute to Qt in my spare time, especially Android port.)
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There is more to come.
Microsoft is "rumored":http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2012/06/21/microsoft-first-branded-tablets-next-their-own-cell-phone/ to be activly working on their own (non-Nokia) mobile devices; Research In Motion (BlackBerry) is "rumored":http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/06/24/us-rim-split-idUSBRE85N0D320120624?feedType=RSS&feedName=businessNews&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+reuters/businessNews+(Business+News) to split or sell mobile devices division.
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My two cents is this: I hope that in an ideal world the Trolls can be sponsored by a foundation like the FSF and also that Nokia would do the right thing and donate Qt to the same foundation and keep it free from commercial interests forever. Why Nokia has gone down the Windows 8 Phone route makes me shake my head in absolute disbelief.
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OK. So this joint venture wasn't about using M$'s OS, but for Microsoft to put it's OS on Nokia devices. That makes more sense. I didn't even think of it that way.
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My theory was MS actually wanted for Nokia to fail, so it can grab a nice chunk of Nokia's market share, which was pretty much dominating the mobile market a few years ago. Unfortunately for MS this plan didn't work out all that well, surely, Nokia lost its market, but it was immediately taken over by Apple, Samsung and a few other smaller Android platform players, MS is a big and slow to respond company...
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I readed all the thread and nobody mentioned nothing about the "KDE Free Qt Foundation":http://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php, that means that in the worst, case the KDE proyect will aquire the ownership of Qt, and Qt will be controled by a real FOSS community.
The open source Qt is guaranted, there are no need to make a fork or to worry about the future. -
Sure, KDE Free Qt Foundation could end up with the rights on Qt. However, I doubt that would be a good thing for Qt. It is more like a last resort in case all else fails. With the transfer of the rights on Qt to the foundation, none of the infrastructure needed to run the project comes with it, let alone the resources needed to keep all those kick-ass developers working on Qt full time to make it the great toolkit we all love. So no, I'd much rather see a take-over by a company that actually can invest the resources to keep Qt running and keep it moving forward.
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bq. With the transfer of the rights on Qt to the foundation, none of the infrastructure needed to run the project comes with it, let alone the resources needed to keep all those kick-ass developers working on Qt full time to make it the great toolkit we all love
You finally came to your senses, if KDE, a fairly big foundation and community cannot move Qt, what about the few volunteers you kept on repeating should stop "complaining" and write a complete modern GUI API...
On the other hand, the majority of effort, exerted by Nokia went in direction QML, the framework itself is fairly complete and most APIs are stable and done, KDE will have no problem maintaining what already exists, unfortunately, it won't have the capacity to innovate.
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So no, I’d much rather see a take-over by a company that actually can invest the resources to keep Qt running and keep it moving forward.
It depends on which company, although nokia did sponsor Qt a lot, yet also in charge of
the road map of Qt.Could you imagine Qt taken by Oracle or MS? -
[quote author="utcenter" date="1343995985"]
You finally came to your senses, if KDE, a fairly big foundation and community cannot move Qt
[/quote]Moderator's note:
Watch your words, please. This forum is meant to be driven in a friendly manner. While we can "fight" with arguments, becoming personal, if not insulting, is not acceptable. We will delete further comments that do not fit into the "general rules":/forums/rules.Please not, that this is not to stop the actual discussion, but just to get everything back to a polite and unoffending track.
Thanks
Volker -
^^ Are you addressing me, as the act of quoting me infers? I fail to see anything impolite in my post, which merely noted he is finally agreeing with something I stated over and over again and he rejected. Overacting much perhaps? Having a bad day? Well, don't take it out on me ;)
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According to some dictionaries, "to come to your senses" means "cause someone to (or start to) think and behave reasonably after a period of folly or irrationality"[1] or "to start to understand that you have been behaving in a stupid way"[2].
I definitely declare this unpolite and offending.
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You can put pretty much anything in an offensive context, but that doesn't mean it was originally used in such. Surely, there is a conflict of opinions here, but clearly and obviously it is not a product of stupidity but of personal bias.
From your own link:
come to one's senses = to begin thinking sensiblyand then...
sensibly =- Perceptible by the senses or by the mind.
- Readily perceived; appreciable.
All in all, my post actually congratulates Andre rather than insulting him. Yes I infer irrationality but certainly not stupidity. So calm down and enhance your English language horizons ;)
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There's a simple rule in communications scienes: If the receiver gets it wrong, it's always the sender's fault. (This is not from me, some clever scientists proposed it.)
Your proverb can be understood as a compliment. And it can also be understood as the complete contrary - unpolite and offending. Everyone I talked to, understood it the latter way.
It's always problematic to use proverbs and phrases in an international forum, like this one. Not everyone might get the correct point, and not everyone using such a phrase is fully aware of the exact meaning. Better to avoid them, particularly if they can be interpreted in different ways like here.
To calm down things, it's ok to express ones apologies or explain things. On the other hand, adding some more "advice" that can be interpreted as some hidden criticism or joke on other's language skills may be interpreted offending again. Not everything that was meant funny, is recepted this way.
So, let's stop arguing on English language subtleties and come back to the actual topic, please.
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When someone wants to feel offended he can always twist everything into an offensive context, and when the receiver disregards the sender, I fail to see how this is a problem of the sender. If the corruption of communication is on your side, there is very little the sender can do. If you have a virus on your system that alters the data you receive, I fail to see how this is a problem of the sender.
I myself begin to feel offended that you are putting words in my mouth and inferring I aim to insult.
"to come to your senses" means to become reasonable after a period of being unreasonable, "enhance your English language horizons" means to realize that not everything that can be put into an offensive context is an offense. If those are offending to you - it is your problem. If you prefer to interpret my words in an offensive context instead of the context of my intent - it is your problem. If you want to feel offended, you can easily find a reason to, I can call you "smart" and you can assume I am being sarcastic and actually mean you are stupid or something. What you are trying to do is actually very dishonorable in my book and reduces the respect I have for you. Feel free to misinterpret that as well if you want ;)
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To come back to the topic...
[quote author="qtnext" date="1343946379"]Is there any comments about external Nokia Qt contributors about Qt Future regarding theses bad news ... ICS, KDAB, DIGIA,INTEL,and other ? Is there anything in project to ensure a bright Qt Future without Nokia ?[/quote]
The companies that surrond the Qt ecosystem do care about the future of Qt and they are in contact with each other in order to find solutions to bring Qt back on a solid, long term lasting base. Some of these talks started right during the Qt Developers' Summit in June - Nokia's announcement was just a few days before. Of course, those ideas take time to mature and nothing has been announced yet.
But to proof the interest of that companies, look at the Qt Developer Conferences that will be held in November and December in Berlin and Silicon Valley. Two firms of the ecosystem, KDAB and ICS, stepped in by their own and saved all the Qt enthusiasts' date of the year. So I'm quite sure that we will hear back something from them.
One should also be aware, that Nokia still owns Qt. The good ideas still need Nokia Nokia in the one or the other way. As long as the negotiations still go on (or need to start at all - I don't know), it's not a very wise idea to go public with that plans.
Regarding the KDE foundation. Yes, there is the contract between Trolltech and KDE, which Nokia is bound to too. Everyone involved in the details of that contract regards this as one the worst solutions. The other one being a fork of the LGPL version. Both would lead to fragmentation of the Qt community.
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@Andre, but Qt is commercial product, and I doesn't see the difference between begin it maintained by a foundation or another company.
Supose that Qt is begin mantained by the KDE foundation, if a company has a commercial interest with Qt, then they will contract fulltime developers to make Qt grow, as well as so far with Nokia.
I see a business and manteinance model similar to the Linux kernel.
Anyways this is supposing the worst case.