[Development] New company name for Qt part of Digia and unified web site

[Jason McDonald]

On Thu, Sep 18, 2014 at 5:09 AM, Kuba Ober <kuba at mareimbrium.org> wrote:

>
> My only worry is that it seems like an idle exercise. Why spend all this
> time doing something that, ultimately, serves no real purpose? Qt’s image
> ultimately depends on the quality of the code and the documentation that
> comes with it, not on the domain name nor the amount of flashy
> css/javascript that went into the site’s design.
>

For developers like you and I, that's mostly true.

For the people in suits who might decide to invest millions of
dollars/pounds/euros in building a big project with Qt, the "complete
package" is important.  Those folks want to see that Qt is a serious
competitor in the commercial market, is professionally maintained and
supported, is keeping up with evolving technology, has a thriving
ecosystem, and that it is here to stay.  Those folks are the source of a
big chunk of the money that creates jobs for Qt application developers in
their own companies and for Qt framework and tools developers in places
like Digia.


> One of the reasons I loath to recommend to the management to go back to
> paying for Qt licenses is that we’d have been sponsoring what amounts to 2
> or 3 major rebrandings and “revamps”, and it seems like throwing money down
> the drain. As a user, I want good code. The website, as far as I’m
> concerned, can be text-only. Any money that the owners of Qt spend for
> anything besides the code is, to us as the end users, *our* money burned
> for frivolities.
>

If we want the Qt ecosystem to remain healthy and continue to grow, we need
to make sure that there are as few things as possible that might discourage
a potential new user from joining the ecosystem.

Like it or not, first impressions are important, and the Qt website is the
primary entry point for a lot of those folks in suits.  How many times have
you steered away from a product or company because its website seemed old,
unmaintained, unprofessional, buggy, or hard to navigate?  I've already
done that twice just today.

I think the new site looks good, and it's also rather pleasing to see the
examples of where some of my past work has ended up.  Even for someone who
likes to focus on deep technical details, it's good to see the big picture
once in a while.

Cheers,
--
Jason
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