[NTLUG:Discuss] Nokia buys Trolltech

[Daniel Hauck]

Greg Edwards wrote:
>> Chris Cox wrote:
>>
>> larry dagostino wrote:
>>> http://trolltech.com/company/newsroom/announcements/press.2008-01-
>> 28.4605718236
>>> Very interesting news from Trolltech.  Does this mean that NTLUG
> will
>> get more love from Nokia?
>>
>> No offense, but likely  VERY bad news.  Nokia isn't a software
> company.
>> There's a better chance that this would spell the end of Qt long term
>> (at least
>> for FOSS things like Linux).
>>
>> We'll see.
>>
>> This is just a need for greed deal.
>>
> 
> 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.