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Nokia Buys Trolltech
egil writes "Trolltech announced this morning (CET) that they have accepted a bid from Nokia to buy the entire company. The bid was for 16 NOK per share, which values the company at an equivalent of approximately 150 million USD. The stock currently trades at 15.70 on the Oslo stack exchange, up from around 10 on Friday. The offer has already been accepted by the Trolltech BOD."
TrollTech: $150 million
MySQL: 1 BILLION!
I really hope that the KDE Qt Free Foundation agreements are valid because I have a gut feeling that they will be tested in court soon...
My other account has a 3-digit UID.
Now, I suppose, when KDE boots up it's going to play that annoying, "bee de do deh, bee de do deh, bee de do doo dah."
Can't wait.
Gee, I haven't seen that one in ages.
Last time was from zoy.org.
Warning - if you're a windows user, don't click on it - it steals your browser's clipboard contents.
In case anyone can feel the panic setting in while thoughts of closed source qt libraries swirl around their heads it may be as well to remind people that Troll Tech and KDE have this all worked out nicely already.
The KDE Foundation takes the code if qt is ever released closed. Not sure if it covers a buy out situation but I'm pretty sure it does.
...i wonder if advance knowledge of this deal drove the recent GPL release?..
Now that Nokia has got the OpenC and the PythonForS60 community growing rapidly, there was need for a better UI which I think will be provided by Qt. More developers -> more apps -> high user base.
With Trolltech having products that are open source and commercial, and having products for the embedded and end-user markets, one would think their valuation would be higher, especially since Sun paid est. $1B(US) for MYSQL. Still hope they keep their products open and continue to work with KDE and other groups.
At that price, Nokia is stealing TrollTech.
I hope this doesn't hurt KDE long term.
Hmm ... I think I smell a QT fork in the near future. Thank God for FOSS licensing.
Damn Nokia feeding the trolls.
Will Trolltech lose them brilliant colors on their website or will they be safe from being branded "NOKIA!!"?
I like those colors.
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What will happen to Qtopia? :)
If Nokia switches to full-linux-ahead with it, it would really be sweet, although we'd see a nice internal fight between the existing GTK stack and the new qt one
Browse through Google News
Trolltech Acquisition to Position Nokia in Featurephone Space
(What's "Featurephone Space"?)
Helsinki shares drop midday, led by Nokia
(Ahh, so Nokia stock takes a hit, eh?)
Nokia Dishes Out $153 Million for Trolltech
(We know how much, exactly)
What other perspectives on the deal are you finding?
How to Download YouTube Videos
For all the hand ringers, I think this will prove to be a good thing.
Nokia seems to be honestly interested in QT as well as Open Source.
QT gets a stable base of funding.
I think this was as much a defensive move for Nokia as anything. It stabilizes QT development for them and also keeps it from falling to someone else who might have been less open about the product. Their development support under the N770/N800/N810 has been pretty cool.
Farewell then QT, rest in peace
Just as KDE was starting to look like a contender too. Coincidence?
This being Slashdot, the summary's pretty light on details like for example what will happen to KDE and Qt's relationship with Free Software at large. Well, there is an open letter to the community, so you can read it here. The letter's pretty encouraging insofar as it reaffirms the Qt team's commitment to the current symbiosis, and it says that Nokia is going to become a "Patron of KDE"(TM). Additionally, the Free Qt Foundation offers protection in case a buyout turns things nasty.
Having said all of the above, I can't help but remain a bit concerned about this turn of events. I was under the impression that Nokia have a rather tarnished reputation in the eyes of the Free Software world, since they seem to be pro-patents for software and there was that opposition from them concerning Ogg Vorbis as a web standard or something. Things like this make me worry. On the other hand, it seems like there is still a large gap between the cultures of proprietary software and free software, and maybe Nokia will gain a more balanced standpoint by getting involved with GPL projects like Qt. Ah well, I suppose we'll have to see how things turn out, but I don't really think a project the size of KDE can be killed so easily as this.
Some other people have remarked that it's interesting that Nokia should acquire Qt, seeing as how they use GTK in a few of their products. It seems fine to me though - I reckon heterogeny is a pretty big part of what Free Software is all about.
The KDE Foundation takes the code if qt is ever released closed. Not sure if it covers a buy out situation but I'm pretty sure it does. First, Qt is already released closed-source: it has several licenses, one of which is closed, others of which are GPL2, GPL3. But I presume you meant that they stop the FOSS releases. Then yes, you are essentially correct: if Qt stops being released in an (among others) FOSS license, it reverts to being BSD. However, this far from solves the issue. Qt may continue to be released as FOSS, but its development may stagnate, if e.g. Nokia's priorities are more towards mobile devices and less on desktop Linux (which makes sense, given what products Nokia specializes in). In that case, KDE will suffer, and little can be done.
You might say, "but then the community can fork Qt." Yes, a fork is possible. The fork will then be GPL2/GPL3, which is somewhat problematic, in that in the future we will never be able to write KDE apps in GPL4, should such be released (and I presume that Microsoft's attacks on FOSS will necessitate a GPL4 eventually, just as Microsoft's deal with Novell necessitated certain clauses in the GPL3). That is, yes, we can fork Qt, but we cannot add licenses to it (only the copyright holders can, and Nokia is now that entity). Thankfully Trolltech helped out KDE this time by letting Qt be GPL3, but next time, we have no assurances whatsoever.
Finally they can compete with Android with a decent platform. They probably have seen that Symbian is no longer good enough as a multitasking environment, and probably too difficult and expensive to add features to. And you would never ever attempt to run it on anything other than a phone thus making more difficult to build a whole platform ranging from small game consoles, PDAs, music players and the "next small thing" :)
Moderation is overrated.
Ironically, although Qt is GUI toolkit, it isn't as "visible" as MySQL is in the marketplace. Google Earth uses the Qt toolkit, but do you know how many people (read: non-geeks/non-techs) actually know that? Almost none. My non-geek wife knows only because I told her.
MySQL, OTOH, is an RDBMS, and well, a lot of people, including non-geeks, have heard of it.
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.. and the investments Nokia has made into GTK+?
And how will Nokia's competitors that currently use Qt for their mobile products take this?
Until now Nokia has been using Gnome/GTK libraries for their open source products (namely the N Series PDA devices). I'm sure they have invested a fairly large amount of time and energy building out the GTK port of webkit and writing the entire UI of these devices running on GTK. Can anyone shed some light on exactly what implications this has for the internal Gnome development efforts? There is at least one Nokia developer on the Gnome Board of Directors and Nokia is a corporate sponsor to the Gnome Project. Overall this seems like a very strange move for them.
The only obvious reason I can see for this decision is that Nokia's Mobile OS technology has been gradually falling behind for a number of years. Buying Trolltech gives them all the tech that went into the Zaurus devices and Trolltech's mobile environment (as seen on the green phone).
I assume that over the next day or two an official announcement will be made about Nokia's intentions for the Qt licensing. In the mean time we all have to sit on our hands and anticipate a fork. On one hand this is a bit of a slap in the face to the Gnome/GTK teams that seems to imply Qt was the superior technology. On the other hand it also justifies Gnome's existence as a project to begin with, there have always been concerns that Trolltech would take it's ball and go home. KDE is extremely dependent on paid developers at Trolltech for much of the code that is written, it will also be interesting to see if Nokia ends up becoming a major sponsor to both projects. Only time will tell.
Fear trumps hope and ignorance trumps both
The Qt toolkit allows rapid development of nice mobile and desktop application. A Nokia slide on the role of Qt in the company seems to suggest they want to use Qt to write applications that work and look the same on their mobile phones and on the desktop the user might have (be it Windows, Mac or Linux).
source
DNA is the ultimate spaghetti code.
According to this page, http://www.opensource.nokia.com/contributions.html, Nokia is already fairly involved in OSS, more so than I would have guessed. If they do smart things, I have no problem patronizing their product lines more.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
How will Symbian react? Will they switch to using GNOME so they have parity? I'd doubt they'd adopt Qt with one of their customers controlling its license back to them. Does this move mean Symbian will always use its own proprietary GUI SW?
--
make install -not war
I find it more amusing that Trolltech actually has its own Troll - well Chief Troll to be exact - Mr Chambe-Eng. I wonder if he's a slashdot regular...
I can't help but wonder if this has something to do with the death of the greenphone.
It will be androids fighting trolls by the end of next year
"I don't see Nokia as interested in the Linux desktop"
While I understand your arguments it would now be a relatively easy way for Nokia to sneakin to that business. Before this buyout it would have been "impossible".
Don't forget that the margins of the mobile phone industry may be diminishing and that the distinction between a mobile phone and a laptop is blurred more and more. Nokia is spreading its risks. Who knows what a laptop's wireless connection will look like in five years. I don't, but I guess Nokia now is better prepared to not only know, but also to adapt and dictate.
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You're missing an important detail here. KDE is important for Trolltech and the continued development of Qt. The CEO of Trolltech explained a few weeks ago in fact that Trolltech became a successful company because of KDE, not despite KDE.
Trolltech profits from the tons of feedback and publicity they get through KDE. In their first years they didn't have to do marketing at all! Qt has credibility in the commercial world because a complete desktop environment is built upon it. New Qt features or API's are pushed to their limits due to their immense use by KDE. This improves the overall quality of Qt, ability to reach enterprise customers, and we're back to square 1.
Destroying that upward spiral would hurt Qt development. Trolltech knows this, and so does Nokia.
* KDE also benefits from the relation with Trolltech, since they get an enterprise-quality toolkit in return. Trolltech also does the boring stuff which is typical for toolkit development (they can pay people to work on it!), and sponsors some KDE core-developers full-time.
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I wonder what this means for commercial users of Qt. Despite what they say, Nokia doesn't strike me as a company that will do a good job at providing cross-platform desktop toolkits. So... either they re-release Qt under a BSD-like license, or commercial users will be out of luck.
I'm also not sure this acquisition makes sense from a mobile perspective. Nokia needs a better UI strategy than they have right now, but Qt isn't really the top choice in that space either. This purchase really strikes me as one company with an aging platform buying another company with an aging platform.
Well, I guess we'll know how things turn out when the dust settles.
Qt is already released under the GPL; it can't go "closed source". KDE applications themselves are safe.
The big question is what happens to commercial users. For example, Nokia might stop Mac support. Or they might make the desktop versions really buggy. Or they might jack up licensing fees. In that case, it's the commercial developers that are in trouble because they can't get another commercial version of Qt from anybody. Right now, we don't know what Nokia is going to do. But they don't have much of a track record on desktop software.
Having said all of the above, I can't help but remain a bit concerned about this turn of events. I was under the impression that Nokia have a rather tarnished reputation in the eyes of the Free Software world,
That's not the main issue. Qt already is under the GPL, so whatever Nokia does or doesn't do won't affect KDE.
The big question is what Nokia will do for commercial developers.
I think Nokia's best bet is to re-release the desktop edition of Qt under a BSD-style license right away. Nokia isn't going to make much money from licensing anyway, and a BSD release could make Qt much more popular as a toolkit for everybody.
US dollars please...
Can be found here: http://trolltech.com/28012008/28012008
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
And when will Nokia buy AnonymousCowardTech?
NOK, AAPL, MOT.
Approximately 5 NOK = 1USD
...please change the QT license to LGPL!! Yeah, it'll piss RMS off, but it will benefit QT/KDE in the long run. Heck, maybe if you do this, we can
finally get the long rumored version of SWT for QT - that IBM is supposedly sitting on internally - released to the world.
// TODO: Insert Cool Sig
Sure, with the purchase of Trolltech, Nokia now can think of building an answer for Android. Sure they can now look at having a better widget toolkit than the one that ships with Symbian but here's my hunch..
The laptop segment is starting to see a wide range of ultr-portable low-cost PC's like the eeePC and the Everex Cloudbook. These run Linux with a lightweight GUI. Maybe Nokia is viewing this as the future of the ultramobile laptop segment and thinks it needs to have a foothold in that. Paying $150 million for that actually looks cheap IMHO.
Think about it, they have Maemo which is targetted at web-tablets and is stabilising quite well. They have Symbian , OpenC and Python for their high-end NSeries and ESeries phones. The one area of the "mobile" segement wherein they are currently lacking is the UMPC/el-cheapo laptop and by acquiring Trolltech and with it Qtopia/Qt they can make serious inroads into this upcoming area.
Will very likely stay EXACTLY THE SAME.
If Nokia change it too much, people will move. For the people using the commercial version, it's *easier* to stay as long is it isn't punitive.
As to your BSD hope, why the hell would Nokia take it BSD? What do Nokia get that they don't already? And they've lost free updates (the GPL reciprocity) and they can't stop others improving Nokia's work and denying the improvements to Nokia (in the BSD version). If Nokia don't want someone else taking FREE development off Nokia's dollar, they'd have three versions:
1) GPL version
2) BSD version
3) Their own version
at best they could drop the GPL, but at the moment, the ONLY difference between the GPL and commercial version is the license. They have one codebase, so it's still at least double the work.
And for what? So Tivoli can use them for their UI? But they don't have to pay Nokia, just take the BSD version.
Now, they might use LGPL, but that only cannibalises the commercial licenses to make it "more popular", but why would Nokia, a for-profit company, ignore shareholder value and reduce profit "to be more popular"?
Stephen Colbert discovered the real lyrics to the Nokia jingle: "You annoying stupid douche bag, turn your phone off now." I mean seriously, when Nokia phones are affecting the development of bird song...
But my first guess was a patent troll that Nokia just bought out to put moronic patent litigation to bed.
I'm personally crossing my fingers for Nokia to change the license to LGPL.
Nokia doesn't make their money licensing software, and I don't think they want to change that now. TrollTech was relatively cheap, because there wasn't a really lucrative market for their commercial licenses. TT had to stick with the dual-license model, because they had no other revenue stream. Nokia is a hardware manufacturer, and I'd think running their hardware on a mainstream software platform would be important to them. Going LGPL would go a long way toward accomplishing that.
Unless Nokia fears their competitors having equal access to the same software platform, a move to the LGPL would be all to the upside. And if they do fear that, then they could fork the Qtopia phone platform and keep that GPL. Or even drop the GPL version and go completely commercial on that. But these days, smart phones need a developer-friendly platform every bit as much as desktop systems do. QT would have some performance advantages over Google's Java-based phone platform. And Nokia, as the first mover and primary maintainer of the platform, ought to be able to leverage that into a huge lead.
That's if they make the switch to LGPL. And if they don't? They'll have a great phone platform, but less open to 3rd party developers. If they think, based on that, they can win a competitive battle for setting smart phone standards with Google and Microsoft, go for it. But I don't think they can. They're smart. They understand why Linux has all the buzz , BSD does not, and OS/2 is gone. GPL for apps, LGPL for libraries. It's scary to a commercial enterprise, but it really works - at least better than anything else (except, maybe, having a monopoly on desktop operating systems...).
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
I have never been comfortable with having Trolltech set themselves up as the gatekeeper/toll collector for closed-source software on any platform. Even Microsoft doesn't get to collect extra fees for commercial software development on Windows. GTK is much better suited for a general-purpose library on Linux than QT simply because it allows you to develop "anything" using it.
This "under new ownership" wrinkle tends to reinforce my opinion.
My "problem" with QT is simply that if, in time, KDE somehow becomes the default desktop environment on Linux and Gnome withers away for some reason, then Trolltech becomes the gatekeeper to commercial desktop software development on Linux, and nobody who wishes to develop that sort of software on Linux will have any choice other than to pay them whatever fee they decide to ask for.
On Windows, you can purchase a copy of the operating system and use any of several compilers (some free, some pay-for) and create commercial or free software to your hearts content without having to give more money to Microsoft. The amount that you pay for your operating system remains the same regardless of what kind of software you choose to write.
Again, Trolltech's current licensing scheme attempts to set them up as the toll collector for software development on Linux, using GPL QT as a "hook" to reel in software developers and get them to use their toolkit. "It's free now, but you will have to pay later."
Some people may take this as a mere "where is my free lunch" complaint. However, given that there is already a "free lunch" available in the form of GTK, why not use that as the superior (at least in terms of licensing and future-proofing) library? It seems that arguing the technical merits of QT vs GTK usually turns into something at least close to a draw or a stalemate, so the licensing seems to be the most important feature that differentiates one from the other.
There is a greater-than-zero chance that folks who have based their commercial software on QT could be up the proverbial creek, depending on what happens now. Developers using GTK could never be put into a similar position.
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
Why would they settle for being a corporate sponsor of GNOME, even if they have someone sitting on the board, when they could gain a greater stake in the direction of development by becoming an owner of part of the technology and development team?
I hope this works to make KDE a stronger project. I don't think it's necessarily a Bad Thing to have free software benefiting the commercial realm and vice versa (regardless of what RMS thinks). It's the best of both worlds to have free software, and to have vendors making money from adding value to parts of a free software core, whether it's in the form of support or increased compatibility with proprietary devices.
Your fear is unwarranted. My take on this: Nokia is a getting a little leary of MS gaining increasing control at Novell with their hand up Miguel.
Besides, basing your products on GTK is hard, there I said it.
QT is a programmer's dream to work with. Fully documented, Open Source, (or Closed if your PHB is twitchy) Cross compatible, and simple. Got a problem a shout out to the trolls usually clears it up. Licensor or not.
Nokia makes hardware and wants to control their own destiny. Makes perfect business sense, but so does keeping the good will of the community. Recent foibles with the n700 taught them that.
I use only KDE, I develop Desktop Applications and Embedded Devices using QT. It would be fair to call me a fanboy of the Trolls. I also have an unhealthy desire to own a n810, n700, and n800. The only thing holding me back was that I hate the GTK based Maemo toolkit. Recently KDE was ported, and with this development is making it difficult for me to contain the copious amounts drool.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
Yep, me too.
In retrospect, I consider Qt one of the two biggest 'misses' in open-source, the other being OpenSolaris. If Trolltech had 'gotten it' in time, GNOME wouldn't exist, and Qt/KDE would dominate the Linux desktop completely, a great vantage point from which to consider other markets. Likewise, if Sun had 'gotten it' way back then, OpenSolaris would be what Linux is today, Linux wouldn't exist, and Sun would be making a fortune. Yes, all of this is in retrospect, but the two stories are interesting, I think. And both revolve around fears of 'going all the way' with an open-source business model. Problem is, waiting too long is even worse. Maybe Nokia will get it right? GPL for apps, LGPL for libraries. It's scary to a commercial enterprise, but it really works - at least better than anything else (except, maybe, having a monopoly on desktop operating systems...).
Good summary, I agree completely.
PatentTrollTech
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
Likewise, if Sun had 'gotten it' way back then, OpenSolaris would be what Linux is today, Linux wouldn't exist, and Sun would be making a fortune.
I doubt it. It would have taken a lot more than a license change to keep Solaris relevant. BSD was available at the time, but didn't have a unifying figure like Linus Torvalds to rally around -- Solaris would have had the same problem.
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OK, the interesting thing here is: Did they do it for the QT package or for the Linux Phone tech? At least I haven't seen that Nokia has been showing off much Windows phones, but I may be wrong, I'm not too deeply involved in Nokia. (They also used to make boots and tires and a gazillion other things.)
In the '80s they had a computer division called "NOKIA DATA", and if you scrambled that you could get "ADA TAIKON" instead...
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
Is the Oslo "stack" exchange in Chicago? Or are they exchanging stacks?
NOK is the ISO 4217 code for Norwegian Kroner, the currency of Norway. Nokia vil pay 16 NOK pr share for Trolltech.
Spelling/grammar nazis welcome (English is not my first language and I am trying to improve my spelling/grammar)
Unless there is money to be made by supporting QT for KDE, don't count on Nokia being as friendly toward the Open Source Community as Trolltech was.
Nokia has recently been implicated in accepting almost 90 Million Euro's in subsidies from Germany to operate an R&D and Production facility on Bochum, Germany. The subsidy contract expired in the end of last year, and guess what? Nokia recently announced they are closing shop in Germany, putting almost 3,000 workers out of a job (many of whom have been with the company over 20 years) and moving production to Romania where they claim production labor costs are 10x lower than in Germany. The funny thing is, the plant in Germany was profitable. And furthermore, production labor costs only account for less than 2% of Nokia's total costs. There are calls for a Nokia Boycott in Germany, which just happens to be Nokia's largest market in the EU.
Now if Nokia would screw with their largest market in the EU to save less than 2% in costs, do you really think that they will devote resources or Money to the Open Source Community by continuing development of the OSE of QT? All they need to do to prevent Qt from reverting to a BSD license is to keep things on a low burner, possibly throwing a part time developer on the project. This is what they have done with the Internet Tablet Software 2007 for the Nokia 770 Linux device. Its in a state of slow development because there is only one part time developer working on it.
At that point BSD was clouded by FUD surrounding ATT's lawsuit. This provided the vacuum that the Linux kernel swelled to fill. Solaris (or, really SunOS then) didn't have any such problem. If Sun had gone open source early with their Unix, they would have stole the show. Its nice to make a hero out of a developer, but this really didn't have anything to do with the history.
NOK is Norwegian Kroner. Currently, 1 USD is approx 5.5 NOK.
NOK also happens to be Nokia's stock ticker on Nasdaq, I'm sure someone can make a joke about that.
If J.K.R wrote Windows: Puteulanus fenestra mortalis!
In other news, Nokia is in negotiations to purchase Novell.
If they don't care about the commercial version, I'd recommend they go with a weak copyleft like the LGPL or MPL rather than a BSDL. Both are fine for commercial application developers (since you can link to proprietary code), but minimizes of forks of the library itself, as any fork will have to remain open.
Changing the license to LGPL would make most sense, as it would put them on equal terms with Gtk and Wine license wise (Wine, BTW, switched from a BSDL'ish license to LGPL precisely because of the "proprietary fork" problem became urgent for them).
Fight Android
I noticed it said 'u=timecop' in the URL. I wonder if this was posted by the guy that used to do work for dattebayo (translating anime). If you don't know, the group at dattebayo are some rather sardonic, insulting people that are about as emotionally mature as your average 5 year-old (at least the ones making posts on the front page). And this guy is the only one, to my knowledge, that ever got kicked off from the team for being too insulting (made some rant about 9/11 or some such at one point I think and put it in the subtitles of one of their subbed Naruto episodes).
Going down the Distrowatch list:
PCLinuxOS - pretty much the opposite of Ubuntu. They release KDE primarily, and then do a Gnome version seperately.
Ubuntu - Again, the opposite, but they do both.
openSUSE - KDE predominately.
Fedora - Again, supports both. Fedora 9 will use KDE 4.
Mint - Basically Ubuntu, but they release for both.
Sabayon - KDE by default, and all the theming is for KDE.
Mandriva - KDE primarily.
You can go down the list, but you end up getting small distros that either ship with neither by default (Gentoo, Arch) or stuff like DSL use neither.
Ubuntu is growing in popularity, and they are Gnome primarily. But that doesn't mean every distro switched to Gnome. It just isn't true. With KDE 4 using even less memory than KDE 3, I think KDE looks more and more promising all the time.
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What do you think they just bought?
You still haven't said what they'll be getting back from either letting everyone rip off their work (BSD) or keeping two or more different codebases going (one BSD which they don't put anything that would help their competitors).
BSDing the code DOES NOT ensure that Qt is kept open either. There's absolutely NOTHING to stop Nokia using a BSD codebase and a completely different one that they put your (BSD'd) work in too, along with anything they wanted. And that commercial base (which gets them MONEY, don't forget) doesn't in any shape or form have to remain open.
If they GPL it, you can add your BSD stuff to the code. You continue to SEE your code. Nokia can put their own meaty goodness into it without giving their competitors a free ride (because they must either pay for the commercial license or GPL their work which, lets face it, is NOT going to happen).
Oh, looky. It's GPL'd now. Well bugger me sideways.
So answer the piggin' question.
If Sun had gone open source early with their Unix, they would have stole the show.
It's possible that Sun could have prevented Linux from being a success, and perhaps even from being started at all. I believe that corporate politics would have ruined it -- very few companies are willing to let their product go enough that it transcends them. Look at the free software that came out of companies: MySQL, OpenOffice.org, Asterisk, QT. They're still pretty much controlled by those companies. Firefox is an exception only because the parent company pretty much forgot about it.
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Since you will (or OUGHT to) give the customer the code you wrote anyway for such a complex system. Also, any chnages stop it being certified (and since it's GPL'd, you can SHOW it's been modified) so that isn't problem either.
Qt is C++ and GTK+ is C. Based on how well you can interact with them using your other code, pick based on that.
Sorry, but that's just not true. In the US Apple sold a lot of iPhones, but Nokia is a dominant world leader in cellphones and especially cell networks (Nokia-Siemens). The US is a weird and rather small market compared with the rest of the world. Europe and Asia is where the real action is, as you may well know. And real smartphones from the likes of Nokia have been here a lot longer than the iPhone. Apple has done just fine [in the US], but it has in no way managed to challenge Nokia for the real markets.
Oh, and I don't have anything against Apple. I'm European and I just ordered my iPhone from the US because I like the look and features. It will go nicely with my Macs.
However the iPhone will be my #3 phone as I change phones depending on my needs. I have a real smartphone in the SonyEricsson P1, a creditcard sized Samsung for going out and now the iPhone for entertainment.
Easy, they'll just bring the services to you over the Internet using free, open standards. SyncML is certainly interesting in that regard. I sync my phones from *my phone* using Zyb.com and it stores the information on the Internet. iCal syncs my calendar back from a feed.
And why focus on the desktop OS anyway? Today files are more or less independent of the OS it was created on if you want to. Webservices, my friend, is the future. And Nokia already has good sync software for their phones. And on the Mac iSync does a good job of communicating with many phones. I also believe Nokias sync well with Linux if you want to.
P.S. And Windows Mobile is not doing that well in Europe either. We like phones that work, go Symbian.
I have to say that you have a very one sided view both about both the situation in Bochum and Nokia as corporation.
Here in Finland we have been little staggered about recent events in there, or to say it straight, about the reaction the closure of Bochum plant has made in general population and also in politicians. It seems so strange that a closure of a small plant, with only 2000 employees, has generated so big reaction, after all there are justifiable reasons for the plant closure: employees cost very much compared to developing countries and in Bochum Nokia couldn't get all their supplier near them like they will have in Nokia Village in Romania.
The reaction seems just so strange when you remember that German companies have too moved lots of manufacturing jobs from Germany, and Siemens was driven from the mobile phone markets all together because they weren't cost effective. It's also strange that people forget that by closing the plant in Bochum, opening one in Romania, they employ themselves 4000 romanians. It should also be noted that atleast they are keeping the jobs in Europe and not shipping them to China. Also in larger context by keeping themselves cost effective they make sure that in future there will be European mobile phone companies, and that they won't die because of ultra low cost Chinese firms.
Yes, it's sad that people will lost their jobs, but then again, it's business as usual, nobody has a job for life. It should also be noted that it was just a matter of time when Bochum plant was to be closed, as according to notable Finnish banker Björn Wahlroos, that Nokia management would have closed the plant in 1992 if they could have afforded it: they couldn't as in Germany closing plant of decreasing work force is very expensive.
Also about Nokia and Trolltech. Nokia has its main R&D functions and personnel in Europe, they haven't outsourced or shipped their jobs away, as those jobs are best done in here not in India or China. Of course they have R&D in India and China, but that's not away from Europe as they have extended their activities. Same too will happen with Trolltech, Nokia bought them to increase value, and in case of Trolltech that means more R&D, more activities and extensions. I believe that only good will happen because of this acquisition. If the future is what the presentation held by Nokia is correct, then the community and people using Qt will benefit enormously as with same toolkit they can make applications not just to Linux, Windows and Mac OSX, but to S60, S40 and other platforms that are being developed.
Survey research tool for commercial and scientific use
As far as I know, the N700/N800/N810 are not, by any means, desktops. They are internet devices. And this move makes clear that Nokia in betting very hard on this. After all, they are very well positioned, have a decent software stack and an active community. Now they have a key component.
I wish I had mod points. This is so much of the truth -- *nix OSs are already the craze. See OSX-based iPhone (how could you miss it) and the super-open Android (already running fine on many versions of existing hardware). Symbian has been losing out to Windows Mobile just like Palm did, with WM being so compatible and easy (for amateurs) to develop for (and familiar), everybody flocks to it despite it having a poor touch OS and being a resource hog. Nokia knows it needs a good, established competitor -- so that users have an easy transition between their desktop/laptop and their superphone. The tech is no longer far apart -- look at the processors and features -- and the gap will soon be closed.
Great comment, thank you.
If I had a sig, this is where it would be.
Nokia doesn't make their money licensing software, and I don't think they want to change that now.
This is the part I disagree with. TT's commercial market may not have been "lucrative", but it was enough to keep the company afloat and growing for the last decade or so. Niche revenue is still revenue and I would be surprised if Nokia decided to simply write it off.
But I do see the upside to Nokia offering a free (beer) license for "its" mobile platform SDK. Less so for a free (speech) license. I don't think they'll discount the existing revenue stream quite so quickly though.
I'm looking more closely at the future of Qt on the desktop. I've been working as a developer at a company that provides a not-insignificant portion of TT's revenue in licensing fees, since the Qt2 days-- and after the pain and suffering of the port to Qt4, this is another bit of disquieting news. I'm not sure TT's new imperial overlords are as interested in the desktop toolkit as the mobile product.
But then, I can only hope they won't be so quick to throw away that revenue stream, either, and keep responding to our bug reports.
My very first non-trivial Qt application was written within 20 minutes after first reading the documentation, it was as simple as that. For Nokia, the ease of programming should be motivation enough to choose Qt. Think of what they save in programming labor alone.
Unless Nokia does a 180 on platform openness, OpenMoko now stands alone as the open source mobile *phone* choice.
Based on your descriptions for other OSes, Fedora should read "Gnome primarily". Sure it will have KDE 4 but also the latest Gnome by default. I don't follow the others, so can't comment. The only reason my Fedora installation involves KDE libs is some odd dependency for Gnash of all things....
If Trolltech had 'gotten it' in time, GNOME wouldn't exist, and Qt/KDE would dominate the Linux desktop completely, a great vantage point from which to consider other markets.
I doubt it. The split between Gnome and KDE we see today is not the same as the original split. In the Gnome 1/KDE 2 days, we had essentially one desktop environment separated by different toolkits. They both aimed to please the same market: Linux-using geeks and, to a lesser extent, their families who could rely on them to help. The real KDE/Gnome fork happened with Gnome 2 when the Gnome Human Interface Guidelines were introduced.
Basically, if Qt had've been free to begin with, around 2002 we would've seen a KDE/"Knome" split, with one branch becoming more and more poweruser oriented, and the other following the same path as Gnome. Whether this would have been a good thing or not is a harder question — Knome and KDE programs could co-exist, but it might have limited the development of Knome HIG programs. Because I think a lot of users are attracted to Linux by the simplicity of Gnome screenshots, even if they switch again to KDE, this might have hurt Linux adoption.
Look out!
Max.
Max.
I was really surprised by that. Am I the only one who finds the price terribly cheap?
It does not have to be an individual.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
What is Microsoft opinion in the matter?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
.... people voting for right wing politicians in Germany are placated, because less Romanians have the need to emigrate to Germany to find well paid jobs.
As always people want to have their cake (Nokia plant) and eat it (no Romanians in Germany please). How sad is that?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Qt4.4 is bringing in a media API with backends to DirectShow (Win), Quicktime (Mac) and a bunch of sound servers on Linux. Does gtk have anything remotely similar?
No. Why should it? This kind of stuff is handled by GStreamer and PulseAudio, each of which has its own development community (including a few companies) around it. Which means there is no single central power behind the development, for better or worse. Nokia participates in all of these projects, too.
My exception safety is -fno-exceptions.
Make a product that is widely accepted, and get bought out by a major company. Linux magazine predicted that Alfresco may be bought out.
* Nokia has bought Trolltech.
* Sun bought MySQL and StarOffice
* Yahoo bought Zimbra
* Snort was bough out
* Novell bought SuSE
How will this affect Trolltech's relation to the OpenMoko project?
http://trolltech.com/company/newsroom/announcements/press.2007-09-17.9260755578/
http://trolltech.com/company/newsroom/announcements/press.2007-10-21.0880321862/
Motorola is American and Nokia is Finnish.
Ballmer is American and Torvalds is Finnish.
I would hate to use that analogy, so I won't.
This is all about convergence, not so much the marketing efforts. The iPod is doomed and so is the non-MP3 playing cellphone. Sure, Apple has a strong brand with consumers, and especially so in the US. The iPod without wifi and cellphone tech would have been a dead end in a few years time.
I remember so well the quote from one leading figure at Sun that said: "I refuse to buy an iPod because the music should not be on my device but on the network". We're not there yet, but we're moving in that direction.
In other words the phone/personal entertainment device as we know it will change a lot in the coming years. And the services will be the real issue. iTunes as a streaming service probably. Apple is desperate to survive in the future and Nokia needs to move soon. Apple is squeezing everything they can out of their iPod now because soon it'll be as dead as the non-networked PDA.
This is where they will win or loose the war. Like most people here I love gadgets, and complex interfaces does not scare me. I however have the social skills needed to recognize that not everyone is me and need simpler and better solutions. Designing good user interfaces is what Apple is all about, that's certainly one of the keys to their success with the iPhone.
I'm making applications right now for the iPhone because I know my boss and clients have it, and love it, even here in Norway where the iPhone is not sold by any licensed partner. The very fact that I know my users will actually know, understand and use my applications is my inspiration to create applications for it. That can't be said for any other cellphone maker out there.
I don't know if you're referring to my 3rd party website or not. But take zyb.com. It uses open standards implemented by both SonyEricsson and Nokia (amongst others) that allows your phone to sync with any provider you choose. The standards are all that's needed for the service providers to get in on the game. Google will probably offer it once they discover it. Or here's hoping!
Configuring the sync is incredibly easy, so easy that ordinary consumers can get into it. The provider just sends an [specially formatted] SMS with the config settings right into your phone. You just have to accept it [and any local security prompt]. Voilá! Third parties can do a lot for a product's success, but you have to enable them and create the features.
Next, I would like to point out Nokia's very promising media portal called Ovi. Here's a good example of Nokia understanding the future needs of it's products - and more importantly it's customers ;)