[Qt-interest] The argument for Qt

[Till Oliver Knoll]

Am 18.10.2011 um 21:04 schrieb Nikos Chantziaras <realnc at arcor.de>:

> 
> KDE.  Just like Gtk can't die because of Gnome, .NET can't die because 
> of Windows, Cocoa can't die because of Mac OS X, Qt can't die because of 
> KDE.  Nokia could even try to actively kill Qt, but nothing will work 
> against it, because of KDE

Uncertainty. Just like Gtk could die because of Mono, .NET could die because of HTML5, Cocoa could die because of iOS, KDE could die because of Qt.

Someone get me that shiny glass sphere over there! :)

> It's as simple as that

Unfortunatelly not. But the possibilities are manifold! :)

As for the actual question: I don't have an answer. My best bet would be that in the worst case Nokia would stop development, QtQuick would die (or not), the best things from Qt 5 would be merged with Qt 4 and a community, somewhat driven by commercial (Digia, and yes, there ARE some big player customers heavily dependent on a QWidget based Qt for the oncoming years!) and KDE interests would continue to support and develop Qt 4/5. But that could also mean a split between commercial and open source interests ("stable and bug-free, well-known QWidget paradigm API" vs "fancy QML Apps").

I found an interesting conversation in some forum archive about "Open Governance" in around April/May this year. The topic was also about whether that would cover 4.8.x or even a 4.9.x (as of now very unlikely to appear). The reasoning was that KDE would not be able to pick up Qt 5 development (give or take a few desktop apps) until at least a year after Qt 5 is out, as Qt 5.0 won't be QML desktop ready! That means 2 to 3 years no new Qt features for KDE, as all new development will initially go into QML. Besides it remains to be seen how easy it is to port an existing QWidget onto Qt 5 and what the performance will be on systems without hardware OpenGL acceleration and virtual desktops such as Citrix - more and more common in "home office" environments.

But personally I don't believe Nokia will stop Qt development. You kill a product, but not invention and research! Besides rumours say Nokia is developing its own Linux based mobile OS!

You know... rumours ;)

Oh and on another note: what are your other options? Mono/.NET? Windows only? Java?

Cheers,
  Oliver