The Monday after

[troubalex]

Boy, what a weekend!

We all spent most of it reading through comments, forum posts, blogs, news articles and the like. Executive summary: it's a storm out there -- and all I had was a cheap umbrella.

Many people are frustrated, angry, some even desperate and we sympathize. It was quite a shock. But it looks darker to many than it really is. Qt is not going away, we will continue to work on it. There are plenty of programs relying on Qt on mobile, desktop and embedded. There will still be tons of Symbian devices coming and a Nokia MeeGo device will ship this year.

Before you reply now that this is nothing but propaganda and you are tired of all the marketing blah blah, just consider this: sure, we have to find new answers to a lot of questions and there are plenty of things we simply don't know yet. But we certainly won't stop doing awesome things here.

And now, will you excuse me please, I need to change into my all-weather-gear.

[leinir]

i, for one, am looking forward to a bright, green and very Qt future. It's going to be a wild ride, just in a different way, and just for my own money: i'm really glad to hear you got through the storm in one piece, and hope the change of clothes helps ;)

[benglenn]

So in 5 years from now, all the applications written for Qt will have to be rewritten from scratch to run on Windows Phone 7?

Who do you think will now want to develop for Symbian Qt and why would anyone want to develop for WP7 when they know it will be the only OS where their app would run? Not porting Qt to WP7 will not prevent fragmentation, it will create it! There will be two separate worlds: Qt and WP7. Spare us your propaganda.

[troubalex]

And here's what my boss reports from Barcelona:
http://blog.qt.nokia.com/2011/02/14/update-on-qt/

[Franzk]

[quote author="benglenn" date="1297695037"]So in 5 years from now, all the applications written for Qt will have to be rewritten from scratch to run on Windows Phone 7? [/quote]
You don't think there will be a community effort to port Qt to WP7?

[parancibia]

Thanks for this words Alexandra, I believe in you and the Qt team, and if you continue improvement Qt, I will continue development for Symbian and in the future for MeeGo, the market share of Symbian is to big to be despised and as a Open Source activist, MeeGo is the only alternative that satisfies my needs currently.

[troubalex]

[quote author="benglenn" date="1297695037"]So in 5 years from now, all the applications written for Qt will have to be rewritten from scratch to run on Windows Phone 7? [/quote]

5 years?!? I don't even know if we still have apps on phones by then! Or WP7 or phones at all.

[andre]

The big issue is not "new answers to questions" or people using "marketing blah". The issue is that there is a huge issue of trust here. It was betrayed big time by this move. First Qt was to be the platform for all future Nokia devices and the company would be bet on it, now it is merely the platform for the soon-to-be-phased-out symbian line and a "research platform" called Meego.

You can not possibly hope that developers will still trust Nokians after this. Not after comments that Nokia will make huge cost reductions in software development. Not for a time to come. You have to understand that people have huge personal and/or business investments in Qt. Seeing Qt now all of a sudden in the hands of a company that from the outlook of it, does not have any strategic stake in it's continued development anymore, and a solid partnering with another company that most probably would like Qt to fail sooner rather than later, does not paint a picture of a solid future for the framework.

Personally, I hope with great hopes that Qt will make it out somehow. That it will continue to be a viable platform. I have a personal stake in that happening, and I think it would be terrible, terrible waste if the platform were die. Qt is awesome, and the Trolls have been and are doing a wonderful job. Sure, I have criticisms at times, but please understand that that is out of an honest concern, not out of malice.

The best thing anyone within Nokia could do to quiet down the Qt developer community, IMHO, is to sketch out a believable business case of why exactly Qt will continue to be an interesting, strategic investment for Nokia in the mid-term future, especially for the era after Symbian is gone.

[sfilippidis]

I think that we are focusing, in this (rather sad) conversation, on mobile development. Well, many developers are interested in desktop development, and maybe what we could have here is a chance for a shift towards desktop development.

Let me remind you something very optimistic in this direction: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/568 [www.markshuttleworth.com]

[leinir]

Thank you Stavros - yes, this is something to focus on :) That, plus the fact that while Nokia's slowing down on their MeeGo efforts, everybody else are still Qt-ing it on there :)

[andre]

[quote author="Stavros" date="1297700752"]I think that we are focusing, in this (rather sad) conversation, on mobile development. Well, many developers are interested in desktop development, and maybe what we could have here is a chance for a shift towards desktop development.

Let me remind you something very optimistic in this direction: http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/568 [www.markshuttleworth.com]
[/quote]
No, that is not the point. The point is that Nokia was interested in Qt especially for the mobile development. With that gone, or soon to be gone for a major part, what interest in Qt is left at Nokia? Canonical has an interest, yes. That is good. Perhaps they could buy Qt? Their business case I would understand at least.

Edit: note that I do not doubt the commitment of the Qt team within Nokia. I am sure they will do the best they can to continue to support Qt as good as they can for as long as they can.

[Knacktus]

If I had any plans in developing mobile apps with Qt I would probably drink a box of beer tonight, sleep tomorrow until 3 pm and then download the MS Visual studio stuff.

[benglenn]

[quote author="Alexandra" date="1297697349"][quote author="benglenn" date="1297695037"]So in 5 years from now, all the applications written for Qt will have to be rewritten from scratch to run on Windows Phone 7? [/quote]

5 years?!? I don't even know if we still have apps on phones by then! Or WP7 or phones at all.[/quote]

Wow. What a professional reaction. Just wow.

[Knacktus]

[quote author="Andre" date="1297702501"]

Edit: note that I do not doubt the commitment of the Qt team within Nokia. I am sure they will do the best they can to continue to support Qt as good as they can for as long as they can.

[/quote]

• 1

No doubt about the Qt folk's efforts and commitment. But in big companies it's not possible to defend resources against main stream (read: not Qt) business needs. Nokia has not business case for Qt except the remaining Symbian devices, which are not app centric.

[giesbert]

[quote author="Aron Kozak" date="1297707456"]

I am currently on booth duty at Mobile World Congress but I managed to sneak off and respond to a couple points here. Will be back online a bit later.

to Andre: We are evaluating Qt for our Mobile Phone strategy (bringing the web to the next billion people). This means we need to ensure it is still alive and evolving.

to AlexTAI: I have not heard any plans to drop any of our non-mobile platforms (Windows, Linux, Mac, embedded Linux)

[/quote]
From "this blog":http://blog.qt.nokia.com/2011/02/14/update-on-qt/#comments

We are evaluating Qt for our Mobile Phone strategy Really? this sounds different to all other statements up to now.... So what is now the strategy?

[leinir]

[quote author="benglenn" date="1297706877"]
[quote author="Alexandra" date="1297697349"][quote author="benglenn" date="1297695037"]So in 5 years from now, all the applications written for Qt will have to be rewritten from scratch to run on Windows Phone 7? [/quote]

5 years?!? I don't even know if we still have apps on phones by then! Or WP7 or phones at all.[/quote]

Wow. What a professional reaction. Just wow. [/quote]

Goodness me, did you just run out of things to say, or did you actually mean to try on the ad hominem thing?

Seriously, how would you expect anybody to be able to foresee the mobile landscape in five years? Five years ago, Nokia had the /only/ mobile ecosystem with downloadable apps. The iPhone was not even a glint in Stevie-boy's eyes. How could anybody be expected to guess what a world which moves that fast would look five years from now?

On that note, my personal prediction on that particular topic: Whatever happens to the base OS over the next five years, Qt will be there. This is not me speaking as a random (and obviously proud) fan of the whole Qt thing, this is me speaking as someone who sees what's going on out there - Qt is spreading. Qt Everywhere is still going on, and you might have seen Cute Hacks' blog entry earlier today about some... other platforms where Qt also runs on.

[CreMindES]

Thanks Alexandra for your thoughts, it's good to see that you still have your humour :)
I hope... :)

[dguimard]

Dear all,

the post at
Live from 'An Evening With Nokia' at MWC 2011
is interesting as well.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/13/live-from-an-evening-with-nokia-at-mwc-2011/

regards
david

[CreMindES]

Oh, a bit off, but check out the MeeGo advertisement on "Engadget's header":http://www.engadget.com/ ;)

[dguimard]

i didnt see the right one then