Trolltech Going Public

Posted by ryuzaki0 on Wednesday May 24, 2006 @07:32AM from the make-a-mint-and-get-out dept.

An anonymous reader writes "After 12 years in business, Trolltech, the company whose founders created KDE, has filed an application for listing on the Oslo Stock Exchange (OSE). From the article: 'The OSE reports receiving the application the following day, and says Trolltech is now subject to disclosure of information requirements. IPO rumors sprang up around Trolltech last Fall, when the company hired Juha Christensen and Tod Nielsen in September, and then added Benoit Schillings and Dr. Karsten Homann in October. The company said in January that it doubled its design wins, among other significant 2005 achievements', particularly in the arena of using Linux as OS to power mobile phones."

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Qt model is very good by mangu · 2006-05-24 09:00 · Score: 2, Interesting

Will it always be in the stock holders' best financial interest that new versions of QT for linux be licensed under the GPL?

They have a dual license system which is the perfect answer for those who say no one can profit under the GPL. You can get Qt under the GPL and then, of course, what you do with it continues under GPL. But if you want to implement something using Qt and sell it without the GPL, you can buy Qt from Trolltech under a different license.

If they should stop releasing Qt under the GPL they would have to consider market forces. Gnome is out there and in direct competition with Qt through Kde. By changing the Qt license now they would practically throw away any chance they have to profit in the whole Linux desktop market in the future.