Nokia Gives Some Hints On the Future of Qt

An anonymous reader writes "Continuing the damage control following the announcement of the Nokia-Microsoft partnership, Nokia has a post on their official blog outlining the future of Qt which includes some (cherry picked) comments from Qt users. Phil from Nokia writes, 'Lots of great questions and comments coming from you all on the future of Qt. One thing is for sure: Qt remains to play an important role in Nokia. We'll have more Qt-related posts coming this week during Mobile World Congress, but for the time being, the Director of Qt's ecosystem, Daniel Kihlberg, wrote a post on Qt's official blog on the future of Qt.'" An anonymous reader points to one unattractive possible future for Qt.

Comments

Intel was surprised as hell

[ryzvonusef]

http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/12/nokias-marginalization-of-meego-came-as-a-surprise-to-intel/

I wonder whether there is any point in continuing on with QT? I mean it's awesome and all *now*, but will still be awesome after one year of neglect?

Re:Intel was surprised as hell

[ryzvonusef]

The key word is "abandon". Can we legally compel Nokia to give up Qt just because it's not giving *sufficient* care?

I was looking around the net, and I found this interesting tidbit:

http://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php

The Foundation has a license agreement with Nokia. This agreement ensures that the Qt will continue to be available under both the LGPL 2.1 and the GPL 3. Should Nokia discontinue the development of the Qt Free Edition under these licenses, then the Foundation has the right to release Qt under a BSD-style license or under other open source licenses. The agreement stays valid in case of a buy-out, a merger or bankruptcy.

In case MS buys Nokia, or the company goes bankrupt, then there is a choice, but just mere neglect might not cut the cheese.

Also, what does "discontinue development" imply? If Nokia keeps toting out at least one update per year, would that count?

I am not an expert at legalese, but reading that paragraph tell me that there does exist some sort of "fork now!" option. Whether that will be good enough is another question.

Motives of Stephen Elop?

[G3ckoG33k]

Motives of Stephen Elop, doesn't own any Nokia shares, but hundreds of thousand Microsoft shares? Where is the loyalty?

From http://www.tracked.com/person/stephen-elop/

Aug 31, 2010: SOLD 23,250 MSFT shares [SEC Filing]

Jan 21, 2010: SOLD 8,434 MSFT shares [SEC Filing]

Sep 25, 2009: BOUGHT 136,308 MSFT shares [SEC Filing]

Sep 25, 2009: SOLD 12,422 MSFT shares [SEC Filing]

Aug 31, 2009: SOLD 11,614 MSFT shares [SEC Filing]

Sep 26, 2008: BOUGHT 51,301 MSFT shares [SEC Filing]

Sep 26, 2008: SOLD 4,675 MSFT shares [SEC Filing]

Aug 31, 2008: SOLD 6,939 MSFT shares [SEC Filing]

Aug 29, 2008: BOUGHT 76,141 MSFT shares [SEC Filing]

Jan 22, 2008: BOUGHT 62,520 MSFT shares [SEC Filing]

Nov 24, 2006: SOLD 1,315 ADBE shares [SEC Filing]

Oct 24, 2006: SOLD 1,315 ADBE shares [SEC Filing]

Oct 16, 2006: BOUGHT 100,000 ADBE shares [SEC Filing]

Oct 16, 2006: SOLD 100,000 ADBE shares [SEC Filing]

Oct 13, 2006: BOUGHT 116,124 ADBE shares [SEC Filing]

and microsoft-beware-stephen-elop-is-a-flight-risk

Re:Motives of Stephen Elop?

[Rithiur]

According to Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat, Elop wasn't allowed to trade the shares. Nokia informed the paper that after Elop started planning the co-operation with Microsoft, trading away the Microsoft stock and buying Nokia stock instead would have been considered illegal due to insider information.

A poor translation of the article is as follows:

On Saturday, Nokia informed Helsingin Sanomat that the CEO of Nokia, Stephen Elop, doesn't own any Nokia shares yet due to stock market regulations. The same reason has prevented Elop from selling his remaining Microsoft shares.

Stock market regulations prevent company insiders from using unreleased insider information in their trades. According to Nokia's interpretation, the changes in strategy that Elop planned were considered insider information until last Friday.

When Elop started his work on 21st of September, he also started to plan the new strategy. Nokia informed the because of this, Elop hasn't been able to buy shares.

According to Nokia, Elop had to stop selling his Microsoft shares last year for the same reason. According to Nokia's information, Elop was able to sell 60 percent of his Microsoft shares which means he still has 40 percent left to sell.

Elop stopped selling his Microsoft shares when significant co-operation with Microsoft was brought into the plans.

Nokia doesn't publish the date when that happened, but according to information from Nasdaq, Elop sold 23 000 Microsoft shared on the last day of previous August.

He still has 261 000 Microsoft shares.

Nope, scroll down, not going to be ported to WP7

[SuperKendall]

When the Q&A starts you see this:
Q: Anonymous Coward February 12, 2011 at 1:29 pm
Thanks. Please answer one more question as soon as you are able to: Will Qt be ported to Windows Phone? Iâ(TM)d assume it would be technically possible, but would you be allowed to do that business-wise â¦?

A: Aron (Nokia) February 12, 2011 at 1:38 pm
Qt will not be ported to Windows Phone 7. One of the key benefits of joining an established ecosystem is that there is an established toolchain that everyone uses. All Windows Phone apps will run on all WP7 devices. Adding Qt to the mix would only cause fragmentation.

Unfortunate from a Qt perspective but wise from a developer ecosystem perspective.

Re:The Insane Triad

[Microlith]

Now I see Nokia is traveling down all three paths. What?

They are not. All non-Microsoft paths will end, I suspect the remnants of the MeeGo path will be out by year's end, if not earlier. Symbian will have a longer tail due to its installed base and pipeline.

They will both charge on down the WP7 path, pushing closed, locked down systems with Microsoft firmly in control.

Take a deep breath

[21mhz]

The only possible scenario for QT under Microsoft's control

Qt is not under Microsoft's control. Nokia is not under Microsoft's control to begin with.

Re:Take a deep breath

[GNious]

yet - http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/12/nokia-usa-president-is-out-replaced-by-microsoft-vet-chris-webe/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+weblogsinc%2Fengadget+(Engadget)