
Nokia Reportedly Selling Off Qt - macco
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTE1MTc
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paulbjensen
I'm glad that Nokia have decided to do this. I understand that it might be
financially motivated, but given that they've made a bet on the Windows
platform, it's a nicer move than just mothballing the whole thing and
eventually shutting it down.

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keyle
[http://www.phonenews.com/nokia-closing-qt-australia-
office-q...](http://www.phonenews.com/nokia-closing-qt-australia-office-qt-
asset-sale-likely-20861/)

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nicholassmith
I wonder who will be a candidate for buying it, depends how much Nokia will
want to offload it for.

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ajross
Google has used it for some client apps (Earth, MusicManager). Skype uses it
(though post-MS that seems subject to change). Intel already employs some of
the senior Qt people.

I think the most likely resting place will be a non-profit of some sort along
the lines of the Mozilla foundation.

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sciurus
There is already a nonprofit reponsible for the project infrastructure.

<http://labs.qt.nokia.com/2011/09/12/qt-project/>

And a governeance model that looks open to the community.

<http://qt-project.org/wiki/The_Qt_Governance_Model>

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mtgx
Would it help Google if they bought it as their own dev tool for Android?
Something like Apple's own Xcode? Or are the incompatibilities too great to
bother with it?

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azakai
> Or are the incompatibilities too great to bother with it?

Yes. Also Google already has multiple development platforms, including one for
Android (two, if you count Java and C++ Android development separately, they
do have separate development kits).

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wtracy
Qt could provide a GUI toolkit for C++ on Android.

Last I checked, native apps on Android were limited to raw OpenGL.

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nuclear_eclipse
That would still require some sort of NDK backend for the Qt toolkit, since
X11 is not compatible with the native Android windowing system. I'd imagine
that's no small feat.

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codedivine
Well Qt doesn't require X11. Qt's backends are actually VERY flexible,
essentially all you need to do is provide it with a 2D drawing surface in most
cases.

There is already an Android port of Qt in progress here, with a lot of things
(including Qt Quick and QWidgets) already working:
<http://sourceforge.net/p/necessitas/home/necessitas/> Several apps using Qt
have already been published in Google Play.

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msg
Nokia sold the Qt licensing business over a year ago. The remainder was in the
offing as soon as the Windows deal went down.

<http://venturebeat.com/2011/03/07/nokia-sells-qt/>

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skeletonjelly
Had a friend who saw the warning signs and bailed early enough. Queensland
(the state Brisbane is in) recently had it's government shed tens of thousands
of workers in a bid to reduce debt. Seems to be a great time to be hiring
talent in Brisbane?

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Perceptes
I wonder what this will mean for the future of headless browsers built on Qt
WebKit, e.g. PhantomJS.

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skeletonjelly
I had no idea Qt was used for that.

<https://github.com/ariya/phantomjs/tree/master/src/qt>

They didn't mention it in their readme at least.

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mariuz
I also use it for wkhtmltopdf <http://code.google.com/p/wkhtmltopdf/> , is the
only decent solution that works with javascript pages and from almost all
languages : python , ruby , php

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bergie
We're also using Qt for controlling our info displays:
<http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/qt-air-cursor/>

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paines
?!?! Didn't this happend already last year or so. They sold it to Digia iirc.

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bergie
They only sold the commercial licensing:
[http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/07/nokia-sells-qt-
licensing-...](http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/07/nokia-sells-qt-licensing-
and-services-business-to-digia/)

The actual development of Qt has still mainly been happening at Nokia, though
with an increasing number of outside contributors thanks to the new governance
model: [http://labs.qt.nokia.com/2012/01/10/qt-4-moved-to-open-
gover...](http://labs.qt.nokia.com/2012/01/10/qt-4-moved-to-open-governance/)

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paines
Thanks for clearing things up.

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fernly
but, but -- Qt moved to an open-source model a year ago.

qt-project.org

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tomjen3
Sad qt was a really good framework and excellent use of c++

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slug
Do they have any more feet to shoot?

