An Open conversation about the future of Qt.
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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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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 ?
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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. -
I just wanted to add my 2 cents regarding "You finally came to your senses" remark. I re-read the post and my interpretation is: "You see this from my point of view".
Regarding the scientist who has proposed that when communication is mis-understood it is the sender's fault. One cannot control how a message is perceived through another's emotional state. Scientists fail to take into account we are emotional as well as logical beings.
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^^ In my area of interests I have stumbled upon renowned scientists that are profoundly stupid and blunt liars. Like for example celebrity physicist Michio Kaku, who claims that quantum teleporation involves the actual teleportation on physical objects, which is fundamentally wrong. How is it even possible for "educational" channels to present him as a physics and especially quantum physics expert, when from what he says it is clear the man hasn't got even basic idea of quantum physics. There is a fine line between science - the intellectual discipline, and scientism - a religion-like belief system that goes against logic and reason to impose politically convenient mindsets on society.
Back on topic - Qt was purchased by Nokia in the dawn of the 2008 financial recession, for an unreasonably high amount of money. If Nokia is to sell Qt today, it will have to be at a significant loss, not only the initial transaction but all the investment, made by Nokia ever since. If a company is to purchase Qt, it would be with the purpose of money making. That means the amount of money, invested in Qt and paid to its developers will always be less than what Qt actually makes.
But why not cut the middle man? Why should there even be a company to make money on the backs of developers and increase the cost of a product just to post profit? Wouldn't it be much better if everything Qt makes goes towards its further development?
I've long had the idea of a framework, entirely developed by a community which directly benefits from its commercial exploitation. The more developers contribute to the framework, the more points they get, the more points they have, the bigger share of the income, generated by the framework they receive. Developers, working entirely for themselves, with no "business men" to drive it into the ground, burn billions and cost hard working people their jobs, like we've seen over and over again. No corporate greed, no corporate interests, instead a direction that is 100% in the best interest of the framework and its developer base. Easy to use high level APIs, with public access to the low level bowels, rich in supported features and platforms. A framework, whose direction is based on the requests of its developer base, instead of being ignored, as it is under Nokia's reign.
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entirely developed by a community which directly benefits from its commercial exploitation
I am not quite understand your ideal, could this method give
those good programmers enough of money?Who would like to and have the ability to become the leaders?
Do you think Qt could remain high quality without those good
programmers like trolltech work on it fulltime?Even I want to make Qt become better, I am only one of the
average programmer as other.Average programmers like me
could do a lot of things, but it is hard to believe a good library
like Qt could be done just by those average programmers like
me.Without financial support, could you gather enough of "Guru"
to do the jobs of code reviews? -
Well, if a company can make enough on a framework to pay its developers and post profit, if you subtract the money that goes for profit from the total money, made on the framework, then you have even more money left for its developers.
If you for example write a new framework module on your own, or as a part of a team, then you or your team get all the revenue, generated by this module. Of course, your module might make use of already existing modules, created by other developers, in which case the income is split based on for example code ratio, if for example 1/3 of your module code is using another module and your module requires the other module, then the author/s of the base module get 1/3 of the module revenue.
It is similar to freelancing, only you are 100% working for yourself, you aren't making the salary of anyone else.
There isn't a real need of a "leader" - decisions are being made by the community. If there is a feature, being requested, those, who request it are free to add it provided it doesn't break existing functionality, or other developers can agree to implement that feature and get a share of the points of the module/s which include the requested feature. This way the usual policy of forcing certain technologies on developers will finally be broken, which will inevitably make the framework more attractive to other alternatives, where you have to pay to use proprietary, and not always optimal technology. Some people might say this will lead to fragmentation, but the best technology will inevitably establish themselves as dominant, so the line that separates diversity from fragmentation will not be crossed. This will also create internal competition, stimulating developers to write cleaner and easier to use APIs.
There is no limitation that the developer community MUST be comprised of ONLY AVERAGE developers. Average developers are the portion of the developer base that uses a framework, while anyone, advanced enough to contribute by a significant amount will naturally be a high end professional programmer, who will pretty much make a living on it. The only difference - there will be no employer to feed, so the framework can be more affordable while at the same time more rewarding to its developers.
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Well, this may clear the discussion a bit: http://qt-project.org/forums/viewthread/19443/