[Qt-interest] Qt future ...

[Ross Bencina]

Andre Somers wrote:
> Op Do, 28 april, 2011 3:01 pm, schreef Gustavo de Sá Carvalho Honorato:
> > One thing I am really worried is about Qt Desktop support.
> [snip]
>
> Actually, I think _that_ situation actually improved with Digia stepping
> in and taking over the licencing business from Nokia for Qt. That means
> Digia has an interest in making sure that the desktop keeps getting the
> attention it needs. Open government will make sure that that is possible.

I agree with both of you.

I contacted Digia about what was happening, they responded (which is great). 
>From what I was told, my impression is that the whole commercial support 
organisation is now employed by Digia. This is good news for people with 
commercial support contracts.

To my mind Digia is the only tier-one stakeholder with a serious commercial 
interest in Windows and OSX platforms now. It would be nice to hear from 
Digia people here.

Something that is less clear is how many Qt developers Digia now employ. 
Without sufficient development resources from each stakeholder Open 
Governance is not very meaningful. With all due respect to Thiago and KDE I 
fear that the whole Open Governance business will basically be a KDE/FOSS 
take-over since individual commercial stakeholders pay money precisely to 
let someone else manage development -- they vote with their $ and don't have 
time to sit on governance comittees (speaking for myself at least!).

It really is a fascinating political situation. To my mind the best placed 
stakeholder is KDE, with Nokia wasting resources on its dying platforms, and 
Digia being sold a viable support business, but perhaps not enough power to 
maintain a viable commercial library offering. In this sense I agree with 
Gustavo's concerns about Qt Desktop support on Windows and OSX. I _hope_ 
Digia do good things but I havn't seen any proactive development roadmap 
from them, only word of "business as usual" for commercial Qt support.

Best wishes

Ross.