[Interest] the path forward - that 7 year thing - was willy-nilly

[Thiago Macieira]

On Thursday, 25 March 2021 12:38:56 PDT Roland Hughes wrote:
> > Qt's horizon is about 7 years.
> 
> That's 8 years too short.

For this industry, sure. But it's not Qt's promise. The fact that some 
industries require a higher standard of support or coding practices or 
stability does not immediately mean that it must be done in all software.

It doesn't make economical sense for Qt to provide support for 15 years. If 
you need Qt for that long, you should engage a consultancy that will sell you 
that contract, the same way that Red Hat sells support for RHEL 6 for 14 years 
total (2010-2024).

> > Anything coded to Qt 3.x needs to ported first to 4.8, before going to
> > 5.0.
> > Once you're in the 5.x series, port to 5.15 and fix the warnings. Once
> > you're clean in a working build, port to Qt 6.
> 
> There is no one who went to a good school for their IT degree where they
> made the person take Cost Accounting ever going to utter that as a valid
> path forward.
>
> There is no MBA, even from a shit school like Keller, that is going to
> sign off on such a project.

That might be, but they may have a bigger cost instead when they need to port 
to what is current at the time.

> > people when those releases were made and the warnings added?
> 
> Watching production systems continue to run and generate revenue or save
> lives, sometimes both. Until management makes a decision to update,
> there is nothing for them to do.

I call that shortsighted: failing to learn from innovation and predict future 
changes. It saves money in the short term, as you readily state, no doubt.

> That is spoken like someone who has always worked in the
> x86-wanna-be-a-real-computer-when-I-grow-up hacking on the fly world. In
> the regulated world, whether you ship a product or not doesn't matter.
> The development process requires you create The Four Holy Documents up
> front.. You have a full QA team with a formal and documented as executed
> testing plan. Full formal code review with secretary and official form
> filing. A full formal test by an authorized third party of the device
> off the actual and formally certified production line. It can't be a
> one-off or a "pilot" line. It has to be *the* line that will produce
> units for sale.

I've never doubted that what you're saying does happen, in some industries.

I'm saying that there are a lot of others where what you're saying does not 
happen. Those generate far more money for the actors involved here.

And if you look at my email address, you'll realise that "x86-wanna-be-a-real-
computer" is insulting.

> > Like I said, I can't help if feedback wasn't given at the time that there
> > was time to accept such feedback. You may say that going away for 15
> > years and then complaining is acceptable in some industries. It clearly
> > isn't in this.
> It clearly *is* the case and the reason companies are abandoning Qt
> wholesale.

That's not a valid conclusion.

I can accept that in some industries what you're saying is true. I can even 
accept that in those industries Qt was in use and now some companies in that 
industry (even all of them) are abandoning Qt.

But you're making a generalisation to all industries. That is not a valid 
conclusion from the facts stated. In fact, you yourself are saying that there 
are "wannabe" industries where it isn't the case.

> > So stop the FUD.
> 
> It's not FUD as others have pointed out. You didn't even know the stuff
> Andre' needed was shot out of the saddle so quit claiming FUD. The
> process is far more Willy-Nilly than measured. The decisions aren't
> based on polling the customers and stuff is shot out of the saddle
> without any viable replacement.

It's not done polling customers because that is not the process. But there is 
a process. Again, you may not like the process, but there is one and therefore 
it's not willy-nilly.

I do not deny we've removed stuff. I am asking that you stop calling it willy-
nilly because:

> https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/willy-nilly
> 
> 1*: *by compulsion *: *without choice
> 
> 2 *: *in a haphazard or spontaneous manner

Neither applies.

> >Wikipedia says RHEL 6 ELS will be supported through 2024. Red Hat must be
> > making a good chunk of money from customers like yours to still support
> > kernel 2.6.32.
> 
> This is another huge section of the market you don't take into account when
> deprecating.

Not exactly. We took them into account and concluded that the cost of 
supporting RHEL 6 outweighed the benefits. I know it's painful for those who 
can't upgrade.

> The embedded systems world ***has*** to have a long life stability path.
> Right now you are chasing the phone market where six months is ancient
> history. *That* is why companies with deep pockets are abandoning Qt
> wholesale.

The embedded systems world is also evolving into IoT. Not all companies and 
devices, clearly, but there's a very big industry that does connect to the 
Internet and therefore must keep up-to-date on their security.

("must" here should be read as "needs to be done", not "is properly done by 
everyone")

-- 
Thiago Macieira - thiago.macieira (AT) intel.com
  Software Architect - Intel DPG Cloud Engineering