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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.
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?
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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.
.. 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
"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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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'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.
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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)