Nokia planning to buy Trolltech

[kubicle]

As the title tells, Nokia is making an offer on Trolltech
(for the uninitiated, Trolltech is a Norwegian company behind Qtopia and the Qt toolkit that is used by KDE)

Trolltech announcement:
http://trolltech.com/28012008/28012008

Faq:
http://trolltech.com/28012008/28012008-faq

Open letter to OS community:
http://trolltech.com/28012008/28012008-letter

Nokia's press release:
http://www.nokia.com/A4136001?newsid=1185531

[dibl]

Re: Nokia planning to buy Trolltech

"Nokia plans to continue to license Trolltech technology under both commercial and open source licenses."

Sounds encouraging.

[andrewyoungisgreat]

Re: Nokia planning to buy Trolltech

"Nokia plans to continue to license Trolltech technology under both commercial and open source licenses."

Sounds encouraging.

But for how long? What will happen to KDE (and Kubuntu) if Nokia stops developing Qt*, or changes the license?

*I believe KDE uses Qt

[kubicle]

Re: Nokia planning to buy Trolltech

What will happen to KDE (and Kubuntu) if Nokia stops developing Qt*, or changes the license?

Probably this: http://www.kde.org/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php

[larand78]

Re: Nokia planning to buy Trolltech

What will happen to KDE (and Kubuntu) if Nokia stops developing Qt*, or changes the license?

Why would Nokia buy Trolltech and then stop developing Qt? Even if they do, the KDE Free Qt will come to the rescue (but it isn't really needed as Qt is already released under GPL).

Changes the licence? Qt has been released under GPL and that just can't be withdrawn. Anything released under GPL will stay released under GPL forever.


Now, the rest of my post is not directed at you, but at all the doomsayers crying wolf that I've seen around in various discussions in various places, so please don't get upset.

Al right, I've seen some people saying that Nokia only cares about Qtopia, yeah sure, please download Qtopia and have a look at the code. If Nokia kills Qt they effectivly kills Qtopia. Start with downloading and comparing Qtopia Core to Qt and you'll probably see something very funny.

Qt has been released under GPL2 and GPL3. Nokia simply can't revert this. It's just impossible. Also, please don't forget about KDE Free Qt. They can release Qt under BSD if Nokia/Trolltech stops developing it - and also if Nokia/Trolltech starts releasing crippled spoiler version in an attempt to "work around" the KDE Free Qt agreement.

Some people also say that Nokia sucks at cross platform development and Linux in general, and that Trolltech now automatically will suck at this as well. Nokia might suck at cross platfor development, yeah, so why buy a cross platform software company? To cripple it? Just for fun? Or to get the expertise? Maybe we'll see Nokia improve their cross platform and Linux efforts now? Maybe one year from now Nokia won't suck so much at these things?

Trolltech is full of KDE coders and Free Software fanatics. If Nokia pisses them off they will leave. Nokia did not buy Trolltech to get their source code, their hardware or their stationary and some t-shirts. Nokia bough Trolltech for the company culture and talent. I feel quite confident that Nokia won't throw their money in the bin by pissing off the brains they bought.

And why not just read the press releases from Nokia and Trolltech? They actually say what Nokia wants to do with Qt (and if you're to lazy here's the answer for you: they want to use it in their software stack!).

I'm sure that somehow this will cause something to change somewhere, but change is not always for the worse. Very often change is actually good. Always look at the bright side of life.

Just my 5 cents.

[Beren Camlost]

Re: Nokia planning to buy Trolltech

Changes the licence? Qt has been released under GPL and that just can't be withdrawn. Anything released under GPL will stay released under GPL forever.

If I understand it correctly, they can change the license, but this change in licensing would only affect versions released after the license change have been made. Cedega being a nice example.

On another note, I sincerely doubt Nokia will change the licensing. Why? Nokia is already using an open-source platform (Symbian) on some of their products, and I dare believe they will continue endorsing open source software.