[Qt-interest] Qt future ...

[BRM]

----- Original Message ----

> From: Ross Bencina <rossb-lists at audiomulch.com>
> 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]
> 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!).

Well, you still have a Digia and others that may take a seat as well. But likely 
it is the start of KDE/FOSS that way too - I can see that.
 
> 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.
> 

Remember, KDE now has a stake in the Qt Windows port as well as KDE on Windows 
(windows.kde.org) is coming along quite nicely.
I use if from time to time, but it's a little behind at the moment and some of 
my favorite parts (e.g. plasma) are still coming along - perhaps in newer 
versions that are not quite available easily yet.
While they don't say they support 100% Explorer API (and why should they) when 
in Explorer-replacement mode, it will make a great environment.

And of course, any support you show - through $$, etc - will likely help as well 
as I said earlier. (Again, I am not affiliated with Nokia or Digia; so this is 
just from a community perspective.)

Ben