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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."
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.
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
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 annoying tune was actually stolen from a relatively famous late 19th century spanish composer and guitar player, Francisco Tarrega. It's part of the Gran Vals. Afterwards Nokia claimed it as a sound trademark...
It was a shock to find out, while being in an auditorium, listening to a beautiful classic guitar concert, and suddenly a phone rang from the guitar... or so it seemed.
Tis women makes us love, Tis Love that makes us sad, Tis sadness makes us drink, And drinking makes us mad.
"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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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.
I don't trust Nokia. They bought PDAapps (the company that made Verichat) just to promptly kill the product. No explanation, no way for current users to keep using it. Just... dead.
Any company that does this is one to be feared.
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...
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.