[NTLUG:Discuss] Nokia buys Trolltech

[Greg Edwards]

> From: discuss-bounces at ntlug.org [mailto:discuss-bounces at ntlug.org] On
> Behalf Of Daniel Hauck
> 
> Greg Edwards wrote:
> >
> > I don't see where Nokia could kill Qt since it's already out there
as
> > GPL.  I'm sure that the KDE team has 1 or 2 copies.  Even if Nokia
> > decided not to take it forward, KDE is too dependent on it to let it
> > die.
> >
> 
> That may be true, but consider that if Nokia was interested in moving
> over to Qt based software but didn't want to release special changes
to
> the public, as owner of the Qt software, they'd be at greater liberty
> to
> do that  than they would otherwise.
> 
> The more I think about it, the more it seems likely that this is their
> intention.  It's nice that people are interested in hacking and
> duplicating their products especially where their N810 and the like
are
> concerned.  But things would be a lot more difficult to duplicate when
> the software becomes closed.
> 
> They may well continue to allow development on Qt, but you can bet
> Nokia
> will have some sort of Nokia-Qt for themselves.
> 


Owner of the current version or not they would not have any say on
development that followed a fork from the last GPL release.  SourceForge
is a good example, even though VA Linux closed it the original continues
on.

I agree that a battle between standards could get ugly, i.e. Microsoft
and Sun over Java.  Then again if Nokia closes Qt apps like KDE won't
have access to their version.  If Nokia wants apps to be developed for
their platforms then it would be in their best interest to keep it open
and alive.

As has been said, we'll see.

--
Greg Edwards