[Interest] Semi-OT: Was Nokia net good or bad for Qt?

[Uwe Rathmann]

On Fri, 27 Sep 2013 11:20:24 -0700, Thiago Macieira wrote:

> The Qt development team grew
> considerably during the Nokia time (which is a good thing of that time
> too), faster than the commercial business.

The insane growth of the Qt development happened before - in the TrollTech 
days. From the outside it looked like the owner had made the decision to 
retire and sell the company - a situation, where size is more important 
than being profitable.

Finally Nokia was the one who bought it - otherwise it would have been 
someone else. IMO the business strategy of Digia today is better for Qt 
than Nokia was, but Nokia was better than many other options I was afraid 
of.

> We could have completely refactored the widgets and tried to make them
> work on all platforms again. The consequences of that would be:
>  1) a much-delayed Qt 5.0 2) a source-incompatible set of classes ("I
>  have to deal with 2 different
>     platforms")
>  3) a LOT of behaviour incompatibility, plus 4 years worth of fixing
>    regressions (remember Qt 3 to 4, anyone?)

Consider what the majority of the code of a user interface looks like: 
creating controls organizing them in layouts and setting up signal/slot 
connections. I don't see why this has to be different because of the 
scene graph.

If you would have released Qt 4.x versions with all other changes and a 
much delayed Qt 5 ( >= 2014 ) with a new graphics system ( offering a 
migration path better than a complete rewrite in QML ) - what would have 
been the consequence for today:

On the desktop none, as almost everyone sticks to the old system. On 
smartphones/tablets - not sure, Qt is not available on the relevant 
platforms yet.

I bet there are not too many projects - outside the now dead Nokia 
ecosystem - where having the scene graph one year earlier really had 
mattered.

And this is where I believe that the ownership of Nokia led into a less 
optimal situation.

Uwe