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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."
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.
I assume that means as long as Nokia continues to develop Qt in the same manner (keeping Qt Free available for KDE), then the agreement doesn't apply.
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Why? Nokia does not make OS'es or IDE's. They make mobile phones, and they are pretty fucking good at it. If they get a good QT, they can release multiplatform PC software for synching their phones to Any OS(TM). The more it is open, the better the quality will be. Remember they are competing against Windows Mobile. I have a HTC and I have to say, under windows the cooperation between PC and mobile is near perfect. (I miss writing SMS-es from the PC keyboard though...). Having a cross-platform, open and good quality dev platform will help them whacking MS where it hurts. I, for one,..... ;-)
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Damn Nokia feeding the trolls.
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.
Seems like they really want to give the impression they don't intend to screw anyone over. Time will tell.
.. and the investments Nokia has made into GTK+?
And how will Nokia's competitors that currently use Qt for their mobile products take this?
I assume that means as long as Nokia continues to develop Qt in the same manner (keeping Qt Free available for KDE), then the agreement doesn't apply.
Yes, all Nokia needs to do is keep Qt development on a low burner to avoid BSD-ization of their code. Not hard to do.
I don't see Nokia as interested in the Linux desktop, so I presume that part of Trolltech's work will not continue exactly as before; why pay the salaries of several KDE developers, for example - not sure Nokia will see the point in that. I don't predict immediate firings, though, but if I was one of them I wouldn't count on long-term job security. What I do see Nokia as wanting from Trolltech is everything related to mobile devices, Qtopia, all that stuff. So overall Qt may continue to be developed, but I'm not sure its focus won't move to one that is less useful for KDE.
Of course, this risk with KDE basing itself on Qt was obvious all the time due to the licensing model there. It is probably part of the reason why all major distros have moved to GNOME.
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
Priceless. There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's...aww heck, you know.
Hummm,
It's nice to have GTK and all, but look at QT4, it has much more advanced features. KDE3.5 already has a smaller memory footprint than Gnome, thanks to QT4 KDE4 will have an even smaller footprint.
There were the GreenPhone. Also, there's already a Windows Mobile port of QT4, proving that it's well suited for embedded devices. And QT4 has Java bindings, witch is widely used on cellphone development as it is sandboxed.
Pehaps Nokia is looking into replacing Symbian with a Linux stack? Pehaps they found out GTK lacking? Pehaps they fell the need to be able to control more directly the development of their toolkit of choice?
Time will tell.
---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
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
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)