[Development] Leaving The Qt Company

[Tomasz Siekierda]

Many thanks for all your fantastic work on and around Qt! And good luck
with your new startup :-)

On Wed, 18 May 2022 at 10:30, Lars Knoll <lars.knoll at qt.io> wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> Let’s take the big news first. I’ve resigned from my position at The Qt
> Company. More on that and what it means for the Qt Project further below.
>
> But as I’ve spent almost exactly 25 years in the Qt ecosystem, 22 of those
> working for the various companies owning Qt, I hope it’s ok if this gets a
> bit longer and I spend some paragraphs looking back into history.
>
> As said, it’s been almost exactly 25 years, since I first heard about Qt.
> At that time, I read an article in the German C’t computer magazine about a
> new Desktop project for Linux called KDE. The underlying technology being
> used was Qt. As a person that used Linux extensively during his studies, I
> immediately got interested and it didn’t take long until I started my first
> steps learning Qt.
>
> As some of you might know I got involved rather deeply about a year or two
> later, when I started the KHTML project to create a new HTML engine for KDE
> in 1998/1999. That project was later forked by Apple to form the basis for
> their WebKit project, the Safari browser and Google’s Chrome browser. It's
> cool to think that the browser engine(s) that most people use today started
> off as a Qt based project all those years ago.
>
> I remember getting to know some of the people working for Trolltech back
> then at KDE conferences. In the winter of 2000, they invited me over to
> Oslo to have a look at Qt. The company was at that time still tiny with 11
> or 12 employees. I got a great tour of Oslo including the ski jumping
> tournament at Holmenkollen and signed up for the job.
>
> I was originally expecting to spend 2-3 years at Trolltech and then at
> some point move back to Germany. As you all can see, that’s not how it went
> though. I ended up staying in Norway and have been working with and for Qt
> ever since.
>
> Starting with Qt 1.0, Trolltech released the source code to Qt (at that
> time only for Linux/Unix), and the Open Source nature of Qt played a big
> part in its success. I’m very happy that we could continue on that path, by
> over time making all platforms Qt supports available as Open Source as well
> as moving over to more standard and freer licensing (first GPL, later LGPL).
> At the end of the Trolltech years, we started looking into how to make it
> easier for the community to contribute to Qt, and first had a model where
> our users could submit patches to us. That never really worked very well,
> and I’m really happy that we moved over to our current governance model in
> 2011. Since then Qt has truly been an Open Source project.
>
> When Qt got sold by Nokia in 2012, many people considered it a dead
> technology. But I and many of you believed in the technology, and together
> we’ve managed to turn this into a great success.
>
> As you all know, Qt is a dual licensed technology. That Qt has the backing
> of a commercial business behind it, is what made the required investments
> possible to keep the technology competitive.
>
> I’m extremely proud of what we achieved with Qt over the last 10 years. It
> happened because everybody on this list put in a lot of work into making Qt
> one of the best development frameworks on this planet.
>
> Qt is something that I care deeply about. I’ve been with it all the way
> and through all the ups and downs from when Trolltech got its first larger
> investment to now. But seeing what you all are doing, I know it’s in very
> good hands moving forward.
>
>
> Leaving The Qt Company and in the future spending most of my time outside
> the Qt ecosystem has been a difficult decision. But in the end, after those
> 25 years, it does feel very much like the right decision for me. I want to
> try out something else.
>
> So I will be joining a small Norwegian startup with one of the founders of
> Trolltech. While still in Software, it’ll be something rather different,
> not related to C++ or developer tools.
>
>
> So how do things continue from here?
>
> First of all, I’ll still be working for Qt until my summer vacations at
> the end of June.
>
> After that, I will have significantly less time for Qt, but I certainly
> won’t be completely gone. I will continue to read the Qt project mailing
> lists and maybe come by for events such as the Contributor or World Summit.
> Also, feel free to send me a mail at any time, I’ll try to help where I can.
> I will also keep my position as a maintainer for Qt Multimedia. I believe
> the module is now in a decent shape, and I should be able to spend some
> hours per week on it.
>
> But a few hours per week will certainly not be enough to fill the work I’m
> currently doing for Qt. So, I have decided to resign from my position as
> the Chief Maintainer of the Qt project. I’ll send more details around this
> in a separate mail.
>
> I’d like to thank everybody whom I’ve worked with over the years. I’ve
> made many friends in Qt and through Qt. It’s been a fantastic ride and will
> always be grateful for the time I could spend on the technology and with
> the people developing it.
>
> Cheers,
>
> Lars
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