[Interest] The willy-nilly deletion of convenience methods (was: Mixing Commercial and Open...)

[Roland Hughes]

On 3/19/21 9:08 AM, Volker Hilsheimer wrote:
> Ok. API stability on the one hand, and keeping things maintainable and un-bloated over a long time on the other, is of course a tradeoff. Different industries will have different preferences, but the path we have chose for Qt over the last 25 years seems to not have been completely wrong, even for folks building safety critical systems.
>
> That there are long threads on controversial topics is often a good thing. esp if they are followed by code contributions from the people that care. Many of the discussions we had last year about e.g. the APIs of container and string classes (most of those on the development list where the development OF Qt is discussed [1]) have definitely resulted in better decisions for Qt 6.0.
>
> Volker
>
> [1] https://lists.qt-project.org/listinfo/development

Well, over the past two years it became wrong because I (and others in 
here) have been watching a massive exodus. Companies that were firmly 
entrenched with Qt have now banned and most have completely removed it 
from their product lines. Cable set-top boxes and medical devices used 
to provide no end of high paying Qt jobs. Licensing combined with API 
changes have the major players banning and removing Qt. The few 
automotive people I have any communication with say they are also 
looking at full redevelopment with RDK. Unless something drastically 
changes, from where I'm sitting the only market Qt will have left at 
year's end is phones.

By-the-bye, customers aren't going to hang out in the development list, 
usually. The IT industry standard is to not delete things from an API 
until customers have been queried. It has to do with keeping customer's 
code maintainable.

At any rate, it has been a perfect storm.

Licensing FUD + death-of-perpetual-license + death-of-OpenSource-LTS + 
Qt-6-rolling-out-incomplete + deleted-convenience-methods = 
customers-leaving

If you've already got to go through a full re-certification you might as 
well jump to a platform that promises not to do that to you in the 
future. There was no way the above math was going to lead to more 
licenses and support contracts being sold.

Maybe Konrad is seeing something different where he lives? It sounds 
like we travel in much the same industries. In America the stalwart 
industries of Qt use appear to be abandoning it wholesale.

-- 

Roland Hughes, President
Logikal Solutions
(630)-205-1593

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