Slashdot Mirror
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.
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.
Damn Nokia feeding the trolls.
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
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.
.. 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
I can't help but wonder if this has something to do with the death of the greenphone.
"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.
-
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.
The best way to accelerate a windows server is by 9.81 m/s2
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.
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 am not sure I understood your post. But if I did, then you are missing the information that Nokia owns 48% of Symbian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbian_OS
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.
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.
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!
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.
http://blindscribblings.com - Tasty pop-culture in conceptual fashion.
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.
Finally! A year of moderation! Ready for 2019?
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