
Leadership, Strategy and Qt - mariuz
http://www.agile-workers.com/web/2012/06/leadership-strategy-and-qt/
======
wheels
The title is incorrect -- the original was, "Leadership, Strategy and Qt".
Nokia has not at this point fired the Qt team. They fired the folks in the Ulm
office. Those are not the guys that formerly worked for Trolltech (in Oslo,
Brisbane and Berlin). While there's naturally some uncertainty about what
their futures will hold, the axe hasn't totally fallen yet.

Edit: To be clear, I my intent wasn't to question Mirko, but to point out that
the title here was added on HN; it wasn't the title he used and I didn't read
his post as saying the entire Qt team was fired.

~~~
pg
I reverted the title; sorry it took us so long.

~~~
mirkoboehm
Thanks, the server is slowly recovering again. :-) Mirko.

------
paulbjensen
To give context: [http://techcrunch.com/2008/01/28/nokia-acquires-trolltech-
fo...](http://techcrunch.com/2008/01/28/nokia-acquires-trolltech-
for-153-million/)

4 1/2 years later, Nokia is pulling the trigger on it.

My question is this, if Trolltech wasn't part of Nokia's strategy anymore, why
not just spin it out?

And to compare to an equivalent business, Novell tried to shutter down Mono,
thankfully the people behind it forged a new company out of it, called
Xamarin.

I keep seeing cases of companies being acquired, only to then be semi-
destroyed or shut down later on. Sometimes you get the impression the the
acquirers only want to buy others just to shut them down and stop them
becoming a threat.

For example, look at what Google did to Jaiku, or Slide, or Dodgeball.

Why can they not follow the example of HP and Agilent? Agilent was spun out of
HP: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agilent_Technologies>

I'm coming to the view that when you start up a business, if you care about
what you've built more than you care about money, and what you've built is
profitable, then you shouldn't sell to a big company, because chances are they
will destroy it.

~~~
sho_hn
Let's be clear, though: Nokia also did a lot of good for Qt. They
significantly grew the number of people paid to work on it, and by moving to
the LGPL license they significantly grew the community.

They also turned it into a proper open source project. There was no public
repository history under Trolltech. Nor did Qt under Trolltech have a working
contribution process; now tens of thousands of contributions have flown into
Qt from the outside. There's even review rights and write access for non-
employees, and maintainers that are non-employees.

Qt today has a much better chance of surviving Nokia than it had a chance of
surviving Trolltech back in the day.

~~~
paulbjensen
Fair enough. I'm just concerned in that trying to downsize to save money,
Nokia has missed the opportunity to take what was a profitable business
(Trolltech's 2007 numbers (in NOK): 174m Rev, 46.5m Profit, 26.7% Net Profit
Margin, 227 employees), and salvage it by spinning it back out into a separate
business.

In dollar terms, Trolltech in 2007 was doing $30m Rev and making $8m profit.
Obviously that's 5 years ago and I don't know what the current fundamentals
are, but it would be interesting to know if that business within Nokia was
doing more revenue or less, and what it's costs were.

If I were a former TrollTech employee, I would suggest taking a leaf out of
Xamarin's book: <http://gigaom.com/2011/12/12/xamarin-mono/>

~~~
sho_hn
> salvage it by spinning it back out into a separate business.

That's assuming a newly spun-out neo-Trolltech could be profitable again using
the same business model as before, which isn't the case. Trolltech's business
model was to sell Qt licenses to folks making closed-source software with it,
who couldn't or wouldn't deal with the GPL-and-similar licensing of the open
source version. This business model mostly died with the move to LGPL: There
hardly any money left to be made selling Qt licenses now.

That leaves Qt-related consulting/development work, which companies like KDAB,
basysKom, FrogLogic and others are doing.

------
simplexion
Why defend Elop? He is a big reason Nokia is failing. They could have had
something great with Meego. The N9 was selling well even though Elop was
trying to destroy it. Why else would he fail to disclose sales of the N9? The
N9 may have outsold the Lumias in Q4 last year even with this lack of support.
I can't understand how anyone can defend a CEO who takes a company with a few
mature operating systems and goes to his old employers company and uses their
juvenile product instead? What the fuck, people?

------
twelvechairs
text only google cached version:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.agile-
workers.com/web/2012/06/leadership-strategy-and-qt/&hl=en&prmd=imvns&strip=1)

------
netvarun
It seems that Nokia funded a lot of the development behind QT. How is this
going to affect the development of KDE?

~~~
sho_hn
This is a complicated question, and at this time it's impossible to answer it
without heading into the realm of speculation. I'm going to try anyway, to at
least put some of the facts out there that many outside the direct community
may not be aware of.

First of, the Qt Project, that is the sum of all contributors within Nokia and
without and so also including KDE, is currently busy putting together the next
major generation of the technology, Qt 5. But our ongoing 4.x release series
is still based on Qt 4, which Nokia's developers have not been targeting for a
while now. Instead, commercial support of Qt 4 has passed to Digia some time
ago, and they have been putting out new point releases since. So in the short
term, this will not affect upcoming releases of KDE's platform, workspaces and
applications.

In the longer term, the loss of the Nokia-employed workforce would obviously
hurt the Qt Project considerably. Hopefully, however, this loss would not
actually be quite that complete: It's unclear at this point whether Nokia
might try to sell Qt, which could preserve the workforce entirely in the best
case scenario. Alternatively, many of the developers who spent much or all of
their professional careers working and loving Qt would likely band together
and go on in some way, or find new homes at any of the Qt-focussed software
development consultancies out there, which might also band together with us
and others in the community to form a new home for the project in Nokia's
absence.

For the cynics and skeptics in the audience, it also always pays to remind
everyone that for the worst case, the community does have a poison pill in
place:
[http://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.p...](http://www.kde.org/community/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.php)

------
Derbasti
I would wager that Qt's chances of survival are greater than Nokia's. With
Nokia's current Microsoftian strategy, the earlier they part ways, the better
for Qt.

------
mirkoboehm
Hi! This headline is wrong, and out of context. I made the post more clear in
that regard. Also, our server broke down under the requests, so please be
patient :-)

Cheers, Mirko.

------
mariusmg
Did Nokia even made money from QT ? Because it seems to me it paid 700 devs
(the article mentions 10000 !!! people laid off) + Accenture (for Symbian
development) without really making any real money from this.

------
CrLf
This is unfortunate for what it means for future Qt development (which is
uncertain).

I only used Qt briefly, but it was the only time I actually had fun
programming in C++.

~~~
HorizonXP
RIM has contracted KDAB to port Qt 4.8 and Qt 5 to the BlackBerry PlayBook and
BlackBerry 10. I think we'll see RIM react to this announcement by hiring more
developers. We've already seen that happen, see the postings below.

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:QAwzH5I...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:QAwzH5I-oIoJ:careers.rim.com/virtual-
deu/software-developer-qt-mf/27011119/job/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ca)

<http://qt-project.org/forums/viewthread/17584>

~~~
Tichy
How much longer will RIM exist?

~~~
HorizonXP
You can keep trumpeting RIM's death, or you can do your own research and see
what they're working on. They're gaining a lot of points with developers,
especially in the Qt and FOSS communities.

Will they beat Android/iOS? Maybe. Are they better to develop on? In my (and
many others) opinion, yes.

But don't take my word for it, find out yourself.

------
abrahamsen
Any chance the team will stick together and recreate Troll Tech? Kind of like
the Ximian/Mono team formed Xamarin after being fired from Novel?

~~~
forgotusername
There's little need, Qt bootstrapped a new community-lead process a few months
back, the project is independent of Nokia already (and there is sufficient
critical mass in the user base to keep the project alive).

As for major new development, well, what is lost is a matter of opinion.
Already with Qt5 the focus is no longer on native widgets (it's vaguely
shocking how the project's path while at Nokia has got so distorted and
diverged from the story that made Qt a success).

~~~
mkl
It is a long way from independent as yet. By far the majority of the code
still seems to be coming from Nokia. See here, for example (a few months out
of date, not sure how much has changed):
[http://labs.qt.nokia.com/2011/12/22/qt-5-%E2%80%93-a-look-
ba...](http://labs.qt.nokia.com/2011/12/22/qt-5-%E2%80%93-a-look-back-at-the-
numbers/)

------
mbq
I think it will be beneficial for Qt; for a few recent years Nokia is a sort
of anti-Midas -- whatever they hold or touch turns into junk (Symbian buried,
phone Meego wasted, computer Meego demolished...). Plus it is a chance for Qt
to finally end with this commercial burden dangling since TrollTech.

------
nicholassmith
I've read quite a few comments about what happens to Qt next. Short answer is,
well no one knows. Long answer is that it's all open source, there's a lot of
people using it for commercial products (myself included) who are committed to
it.

Will the pace of progress slow down? Sure, you're going to be losing a lot of
developers all in one go, who made the majority of the commits. Is it game
over? Well, no, it will end up community lead by the very smart cookies in the
community.

It's hugely sad Nokia has gotten rid of it, but if they hadn't it wouldn't
have made any sense. They don't use it and they'll struggle to find uses for
it now unless they ported it to Windows Phone 8, but that's a whole other
level of interesting fantasy.

------
stewie2
That's so sad. In fact, in my opinion, Qt was the most valuable thing of the
entire Nokia.

Google should buy Qt. if Android was based on Qt/c++, not java, then Android
would be the perfect platform!

~~~
Macha
> if Android was based on Qt/c++, not java, then Android would be the perfect
> platform!

No, it wouldn't. It's significantly easier for bad developers to make mistakes
in C++ than in Java (one of Java's few advantages). Manual memory management
alone would account for a significant increase in crashy apps. And while
afaik, iOS has manual memory management, it also has Apple's App Store review
process to at least ensure apps don't crash from a segfault every second
launch, or similar issues.

~~~
zura
In mobile platforms, be it iOS or Android, the main problem is the SDK/API
itself, not the actual language. For me, Qt is much more pleasant to work with
than over-engineered Android platform.

~~~
stewie2
can't agree more! I won't even use C++ without Qt.

------
p_o_l_o_s
The positive side: Nokia made Qt LGPL. Full stop.

Thanks and goodbye, but thanks!

------
zokier
I don't think this is all that sad. I think it is good to see that Nokia is
focused on its new main strategy, and at least attempting to save itself.

Consider the alternative; continuing internal struggles between the Windows
and Symbian/Qt teams, funding all sorts of frivolous projects while strapped
for cash. With Windows Nokia has a chance of surviving (although it doesn't
look all that brigh right now), but without focus and determination death is
certain.

------
invaderzim
you can read the news there.. since the main site is down.

<http://planetkde.org/>

------
mseepgood
This was foreseeable.

------
mlitwiniuk
It's very sad, but after signing partnership with M$ what did they expect?

------
taligent
Sad but unsurprising. And there are quite a few points I would disagree with
the author on:

1) Implying that Elop is not competent or responsible because he fired the
team rather than "talking to them" is ridiculous. It is the only sensible
option. Qt developers are not .Net developers and retraining so many at one
time is impossible.

2) Finding developers for Nokia's strategy won't be a problem. There are lots
of .Net developers around. And I am sure more than a few would be interested
in the mobile space.

3) I fail to see what possible benefit Qt brings to Nokia's future strategy.
They are unquestionably a Microsoft shop now. It is irrelevant how great Qt is
as a technology.

4) The blame for Nokia's current woes does not lie with Elop and his current
strategy. It lies with the previous one. And those employees need to start
taking some responsibility for letting Nokia lose control of the industry. And
it is not just CEO level it is product manager and engineer level.

~~~
fpgeek
Of course the blame is Elop's. Putting all of Nokia's chips on Windows Phone
was stupid no matter how it turned out. Lowering Nokia's risk by doing an
Android phone or two was a no-brainer. The smarter play was doubling down on
Qt. Not just Symbian, Meego and the desktop - we know they could have added
Android (demonstrated), iOS (community projects existed and still do) and
Windows Phone.

And don't say Microsoft wouldn't allow it. Windows Phone was irrelevant and
Nokia was Microsoft's few chances to change that. And more than that,
Microsoft needed access to Nokia's patents (to keep up the pressure on
Android, among other things). Nokia was in the driver's seat and could have
written their terms. Instead, they let Microsoft effectively acquire them for
peanuts. If Nokia had only kept their options open and jumped on what worked,
today's mess was entirely preventable.

~~~
recoiledsnake
>Lowering Nokia's risk by doing an Android phone or two was a no-brainer

Have you looked at Android OEM's financials lately? Samsung is the only one
making any profit, HTC is barely ekeing out one, LG, Sony, Motorola etc. are
running in losses.

And bringing out an Android phone would cut off the $1B/yr lifeline platform
support from Microsoft, which Nokia knew it would need in the painful
transition. Nokia did approach Google for a similar deal, but Google told them
to take a hike. Also, they're licensing maps etc. to Microsoft for a huge
amount too.

Also, people seem to be ignoring that Nokia's signature cash cow feature phone
business is collapsing because of ultracheap Chinese clones and white label
phones being dumped into the market. Nokia trying to start their own ecosystem
with QT would've been foolish in the face of entrenched competition.

I don't understand the notion that QT is some magical technology that's so
much leaps and bounds ahead of other GUI APIs like iOS, Android, WinRT etc
that developer would automatically flock to it. QT is definitely nice though.

In short, Nokia knew that they were going to go through extremely tough times
for a couple of years regardless of what they pick, and they chose a partner
with deep pockets($60B cash in the bank) rather than going solo.

~~~
fpgeek
First, it doesn't matter if Microsoft's "platform support" was contingent on
giving up other options. There is one and _only_ one circumstance under which
a company like Nokia should be willing to give up their strategic flexibility
like that. And that's if Microsoft were willing to acquire them (then-and-
there not a few years later when they're cheaper).

Nokia's market cap was over $38B at the end of 2010. It was just under $32B at
the end of Q1 2011 (after the "burning platforms" memo). It is under $9B
today. As you note, not all of that is Windows Phone, but plenty of it is.
Microsoft's $1B/year is peanuts. To put it another way, how much was avoiding
the "Nokia rejects Windows Phone" headline worth to Microsoft? Plenty more
than $1B/year, I bet.

Second, Nokia's feature phone business is one big reason to have an Android
project going. Low-end Android phones are one of the big things eating feature
phones. Until recently, Nokia had been spending plenty of effort (e.g.
Meltemi) trying to create something to compete with Android at the low end.
They shouldn't have been re-inventing the wheel. They should have picked up
Android and leaned on some of their other strengths (e.g. manufacturing,
distribution, etc.) to win low-end devices.

Third, I don't think Qt is a magic elixir. Establishing a Qt ecosystem easily
might not have worked. But it was a way to transition off Symbian without
immediately deprecating those devices (and we saw how immediate deprecation
turned out). And it was a decent story to tell developers: "Build with Qt and
you can make your app available on every mobile platform you care about
(except maybe Blackberry)". Of course the devil is in the details and it
wouldn't be that easy, but plenty of developers want a cross-platform mobile
story. It could have been the hook that got an ecosystem off the ground, so it
was at least worth trying. And if it didn't work, you'd have been offering
devices from each of the alternative platforms you could consider. It would be
a lot easier to pick if you could see how those devices were doing in the
marketplace.

Fourth, the measure of success of including Android (and I'll emphasize again
that I didn't say don't do Windows Phone, too) isn't whether they would have
remained profitable while doing so. It is whether they would have had better
options today and would they have lost less money along the way. I think the
answer is obviously yes on both counts. If nothing else, being able to point
to a more successful Android line and a less successful Windows Phone line
would have driven up their eventual acquisition price.

~~~
jbooth
The market cap measures sentiment, not reality. It's not that Nokia's
underlying value went from 38 billion to 9 billion in that time, it's that
people figured out they're only worth 9 billion and sold down the stock. The
fundamentals affecting Nokia were already in play long before that 'burning
platform' speech.

------
dakimov
I perceive Qt's ownership by Nokia as negative, as Qt in fact is the only
crossplatform UI framework for C++ that is up to date with the current
industry demands in the field of UI, graphics and animation, and Nokia of
course ignored the platforms of their competitors. Instead I would like to see
Qt as a crossplatform framework for all the important mobile and desktop
platforms, then I could use it for my projects. So I hope Qt will go on as
completely free software not belonging to any particular capitalist.

------
somepony
Sad to hear. :( I hope they will continue their work without payment.

