[Development] state of Qt's Australia office

John Layt jlayt at kde.org
Wed Aug 1 19:43:56 CEST 2012


On 1 August 2012 04:00,  <lorn.potter at nokia.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> We have received word that the Brisbane Australia office, consisting of the teams working on Qt3D, QtDeclarative, QtMultimedia, QtSensors, and QtSystems modules, as well as the CI/QA team for Qt, will be shut down. Our last day is August 31.
>
> The individual developers still retain their status within the Qt Project. Whether they choose to remain working on Qt is up to them.  Personally, I will continue is possible because I still have plans/research I want to do.
>
> Except for the CI hardware. which still has employment in the EU.

Firstly, commiserations to the Brisbane guys, while not entirely
unexpected it's still not a nice experience.  Best wishes and good
luck to them all.

Secondly, I think it's pointless to prolong this thread with endless
speculation on the future of Qt within Nokia, we on the outside just
don't know enough and it diverts energy from our primary focus right
now, getting Qt5 out the door while we still have the Nokia resources
to help with the push.  Postings here also get picked up by a wider
audience and carry some weight as a consequence, so lets try keep it
positive.

However, there are a few obvious questions here affecting the release.

Firstly, how does this affect the CI/QA/Release process if the
Brisbane guys responsible have been let go?  Will any of them be kept
on, or will the valuable work they do be picked up by paid people in
Europe?

Secondly, what is the status of each of the affected modules?  Are
they ready for the 5.0 release?  What is their bus factor?  Do we
still include them in the 5.0 release if we have doubts about their
future maintenance?  Are there any development artefacts
(documentation, feature branches, etc) that we need released if the
community is to pick up maintenance?

It comes down to the individuals involved, and I'm hopeful most will
choose to stay with us, at least to see out the 5.0 release.  It's a
big ask of them and probably too soon to be asking them today, but we
need to be prepared either way.  I'm sure Lars is working with them to
figure that out.

John.



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