The *possibility* of a community fork is one of the things that might make Nokia’s management still do the right thing (keep investment and the QtSW division people jobs). And while this possibility is something you know about, there are definitively Qt developers that are panicking right now because they do not know that, no matter what Nokia decides to do, there is a reassured escape route, thanks to the GPL and FreeQt foundation.

So the message, for me, should be: “We are behind Qt, it will thrive no matter what happens. It will continue either internally at Nokia or via a community-supported version”. This is not FUD, is reassurance and commitment to your toolkit. If anything, it avoids panic. Intel, with its thousands of managers and internal policies, was quick to react, in a very direct press release, KDE imo should do the same in order to calm their users so they know that there are options and we are not automatically depending on MS.

How ?

Think about how worse will be if the community doesn’t fork it. Everyone is pretty aware how far M$ is willing to go. If they can do a hostile take over of Yahoo / Nokia – Qt ain’t too much for them. Think about this.

Have you guys ever spent a single thought on the social side? Like all the bonds that have been created between the employees of Nokia (among them the Trolls), KDE, and whatnot people, held together by the Qt framework? And you are asking for a fork? That, really, makes me want to scream.

I think it is definitely time to move on from Nokia, thank God it is up to the community and not Nokia to make that decision. Wasting time welcomes developer apathy. For instance, I have been waiting for quite a while for the Qt team to settle their direction on video playback api’s. While they worked on the issue, the future of the platform’s video playback was incoveniently bundled with their mobile strategy. That is how I found this blog to begin with and I thank Mauricio for his contributions to QtGstreamer.

I think we can only expect a frustratingly slow and insufficient upkeep of Qt under Nokia, so eventually (hopefully sooner than later) it will find a new home. This new home will of course have its own agenda for the upkeep and usage of the framework. Certainly, KDE has a huge interest in Qt. I personally do not use KDE. I wonder if they will have an agenda that works well for Qt development outside of the KDE environment. Will they be interested in QML? Why has there been a problem between trolls and KDE with submitting patches? I guess I am hoping that Qt does not just become a tool *fucused* on building applications for KDE.

Thanks to Mauricio for providing a concrete and relevant example of the danger that is facing Qt in the coming year.

Brian Duffy

PS.: I like microsoft as i like nokia and google, facebook and apple. I just don’t like the partnership killing a visionary tool.