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Qt 5 Alpha Released
After nine
months of effort, Nokia's Qt Lab has announced the availability of
the alpha
release of Qt 5. Goals achieved for this release include a new platform
abstraction layer, a re-architected graphics stack, and the
inclusion of Qt Quick as a first-class citizen (hitting version 2.0, and using Google's V8 Javascript engine to boot). Quoting Lars Knoll:
"'Qt 5 should be the foundation for a new way of developing
applications. While offering all of the power of native Qt using C++,
the focus should shift to a model, where C++ is mainly used to
implement modular backend functionality for Qt Quick.' I can say that
we came a good way closer to this vision with Qt 5.0. The model is
working nicely on the embedded side of Qt where UIs are full
screen. On the desktop, we have laid most of the foundations required
for this model, but it’ll take us until 5.1 or 5.2 to really take this
into use."
Nokia has posted the the source and detailed release
notes on the Qt wiki.
Then the KDE Free Qt Foundation kicks in: http://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php
They've made an effort over the past year to move Qt into becoming an independent project. See http://qt-project.org/ and http://wiki.qt-project.org/The_Qt_Governance_Model . In some respects, Nokia's already put all their eggs in Microsoft's basket (their abandoning of Meego and non Windows Phone mobile OSs), and it doesn't seem to have impacted Qt's development in any noticeable fashion.
They've been moving resources around for a while now to ensure that QT isn't tied to Nokia's success.
Commercial support contracts have been sold to Digia. They've been the drivers behind several patch level releases already, including 4.8.1 a couple days ago.
The QT project has adopted an open governance model, with members outside of Nokia. They've moved their web presence off of Nokia's servers. They switched to LGPL licensing from QPL over a year ago.
If Nokia diverts resources progress may slow, but QT is not going anywhere. It will almost certainly outlast Nokia.