Future of Qt: Digia aquires Qt
-
This is by far the best news about Qt we've had in months.
I guess with this announcement, the time of uncertainty about Qt's future is over (at least for a while).
The official announcement's text fuels hopes of a even brighter future of Qt on as many devices as never before. I'm even a bit surprised they anounced their commitment to Android and iOS with their first official statement, but it definitely shows a clear vision of true platform independence - a vision that could not be developed as effectivly when a company like Nokia is responsible for development, that has a high interest in committing to one specific platform only.
Nevertheless, I'm grateful for the effort Nokia has put into Qt within the past years and I believe that it has contributet a huge amount to the successful development of Qt in the past.
-
It would be more than a little ironic if Nokia's new main smartphone platform ends up being the only major such platform without Qt support...
-
Great news, hopefully Digia will be a good home to the developers of Qt. It would be good to get Qt back on tracks, and how that QtQuick is pretty much done, get the focus back on the native APIs, improving the old, rusty ones and creating craeting nice, public APIs to make use of the many features, that were exclusively available to QtQuick under Nokia.
But even with the old APIs, official and quality Android and iOS support will be great.
Also, it is about time to move onto GCC 4.7.x
-
-
[quote author="utcenter" date="1344526854"]^^Hopefully not, depends on what is digia's intent, simply milk what already exist or actively develop it further. I bet all of us prefer the second scenario, and pretty soon we will know, based on what will actually happen to the developers of Qt...[/quote]
According to the official statement and recent discussion on mailing list, the "125 people" is pretty much everybody working on Qt within (currently) Nokia, except - sadly - Brisbane. But don't take my word for it, if you want to be 100% sure, wait a bit and ask the Trolls on IRC or ML.
-
There will be a solution found for Brisbane, as they are responsible for Qt3D, QtDeclarative, QtMultimedia, QtSensors and QtSystems, as well as for the CI/QA (for which we have already confirmation that it will be part of Digia). All modules which are of great importance to Qt5 and the strong mobile focus Digia wants to attain.
We have no additional information yet, but I'm confident that things will turn out well for Brisbane - which would be the cherry on this super-delicious cake.
-
[quote author="Lukas Geyer" date="1344535654"]There will be a solution found for Brisbane, as they are responsible for Qt3D, QtDeclarative, QtMultimedia, QtSensors and QtSystems, as well as for the CI/QA (for which we have already confirmation that it will be part of Digia). All modules which are of great importance to Qt5 and the strong mobile focus Digia wants to attain.
We have no additional information yet, but I'm confident that things will turn out well for Brisbane - which would be the cherry on this super-delicious cake.
[/quote]
well, so far the only solution is 'find another job', and I doubt that will change.
Although since open governance, I can continue working on QSensors and QSensorGestures in my free time. Which apparently I will have plenty of
-
bq. So there is some gray behind the utopic view some people enthusiastically try to establish. Hopefully Digia will take you back, it wasn’t Digia that closed the Brisbane office in the first place.
I wouldn't call it a utopic view, though it seems like there's a lot more room for sleeping peacefully rather than before the announcement (when there was nothing to do but speculate.) I think there's pretty universal agreement that the Qt's future in Nokia's hands was pretty bleak, where there's a brighter possibility for the future now. I don't think that the future's necessarily all roses and gumdrops, but there's a lot of celebration to be had in an obvious stay of execution. I hope that Digia has the ability to salvage as much of the Brisbane office as possible, too. There's a lot of great talent there that would be a shame to waste.
-
[quote author="lpotter" date="1344536761"]well, so far the only solution is 'find another job', and I doubt that will change.
Although since open governance, I can continue working on QSensors and QSensorGestures in my free time.
Which apparently I will have plenty of[/quote]Well, that' sucks, no doubt.It would be a shame if all the valuable knowledge gets lost and the flow of ingenious work from Down Under would run dry - whatever logistical, financial or organizational problems have prevented an immediate solution for Brisbane.
Are there any plans to work on as an independent company? Even though Digia (and KDAB, ICS or any other) can't offer you a steady employment now, there might be other ways of (financial) support which would allow you to continue operation - maybe until there is a definite solution.
Well, I can't offer you a steady employment as well - but I for would sure scrape together some money just to see you doing what you are good at. I know that might be a delicate subject, but I would actually love to see some fundraising or kickstarting possibility itegrated into the Qt Project to support worthy projects. The simplest form of contribution is still money.
If all else fails having a profound knowledge of Qt and a troll badge on the vita is definitely a huge plus when looking for new opportunities - especially now as Qt seems to get a new, great momentum.
I don't how it is there Down Under, but here in Middle Europe more and more companies understand the advantage and value of having employees beeing heavily involved in the stuff they have to work with on a daily basis and support or even reward contribution and participation.
