Oxymoron of the day: Business Ethics
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Nokia rids itself of Qt and Meego responsibilities
THE FINNISH PHONE FIRM Nokia is selling off its Qt software licensing and professional business, abdicating its responsibilities for the cross-platform and user interface framework.
Although retaining the copyrights for Qt, Nokia has given general responsibilities to the company Digia, with the changeover expected to be completed by the end of the month. This was the expected result after Nokia dumped Symbian and MeeGo, which both use Qt, for Windows Phone. Qt is now not a core business for Nokia.
This is probably a move that suits the Qt community. Digia can focus its energy on Qt development in desktop and embedded environments, while platforms that were not or are no longer on Nokia's roadmap can get more support.
With last week's Qt Quick, Qt SDK 1.1 Beta and Qt 4.7.2 releases, there does seem to be a future for Qt. The KDE free software community made a statement to this effect last week.
Sebastian Nyström, Nokia's head of Meego, Qt and WebKit development, said in a blog post that there was a long-term Nokia commitment to Qt, and in the end an open model is the best way forward so other companies can get involved.
He said, "I expect that Qt Commercial software licensees and the entire Qt community, including all of our Qt Partners, will benefit from this change. We will continue to actively support the Qt community - including MeeGo." µ
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Qt is an awesome, powerful, multi-purpose and multi-platform C++ programming framework.
It could pose serious competition to big names like Java and .Net. You can do whatever you want with it for Windows, for Linux, for Mac, for Mobiles and for Free.
But who the hell would trust in a solution not made with that crappy, ugly mess of Java or that bloated, premium priced and ultra-proprietary .Net?
Some of the commentors need to learn to breath out once in a while. The truth is that Microsoft's development ecosystem is absolutely massive, accounting for about 60% of ALL the software ever written. Meego doesn't even have a version of Fart Machine.
Yes, Meego will do well in the future - but only so long as people learn to keep their head and stop making outrageous and even stupid claims.
Truth is that Meego's competition is NOT WP7 but Android. Both Apple and Nokia will account for significant shares of the market. That will leave the loose middle ground for Android and Meego to fight it out.
This is most likely a good move for all concerned. Selling licenses and supporting commercial users of Qt with professional services (ie. bug fixes, bespoke enhancements etc.) is NOT a core business activity for Nokia. This business is/was just a resource overhead for Nokia, a consequence of a hardware business buying Trolltech, a software business.
The decision to sell the licensing business was taken back in 2010 and so predates Elop, which is what the author is trying to capitalise upon, and would have happened with or without the move to Microsoft.
Selling this business should have no impact on the continued investment by Nokia in Qt for use on MeeGo and Symbian. The conclusions drawn by the author are entirely bogus.
Nokia threw its future away.
It's almost as if Elop was a stooge for Ballmer. Ballmer's surrogate. Trashing any open-source activity at Nokia (just as Ballmer would have done if he were in charge of Nokia). Getting Nokia to join Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 platform where open-source software is banned.
I wonder if Elop will be awaiting a call from Redmond to get his next instructions.
Even without Nokia, Qt will get much more developer interest than Windows Phone 7 ever will.