Qt C++ GUI library is now set to die, as a result of the MS takeover

[Jonathan M Davis]

On Sunday 13 February 2011 16:09:43 Nick_B wrote:
> Here is a comment by Jeff_S, near the bottom of the comments re
> Microsoft taking over Nokia.
> 
> I now worry that the wonderful Qt C++ GUI library, that Nokia now owns
> with it's acquisition of Trolltech a few years ago, will now founder in
> stagnation.
> 
> The optimist in me hopes that it will ported to Win Phone 7. But the
> realist in me says "fat chance". With this huge deal with MS, and Qt
> being cross platform, and MS being all about MS platforms and dev tools,
> Qt is now likely toast. Sad.
> 
> Good thing it's open source. It will still have life as a separate open
> source entity, but without the paid developers at Nokia working on it,
> it's progress will slow dramatically. There is only so much slack the
> community is capable of taking up.
> 
> I'm also scratching my head on this, in terms of what Nokia gets out of
> this. They are essentially trading a larger, more successful, more
> established, platform and ecosystem (Symbian) and large developer mind
> share, for a much smaller, much less successful, much less developer
> mind share platform and ecosystem (Win Phone 7 and Silverlight).
> 
> original URL here
> see:
> http://www.betanews.com/joewilcox/article/Nokia-swaps-one-burning-platform-
> for-another-in-Microsofts-silent-takeover-of-the-Finnish-phone-maker/129743
> 8206?awesm=betane.ws_yJ&utm_content=api&utm_medium=betane.ws-twitter&utm_so
> urce=twitter.com

There's no way that Qt is going to die, even if Nokia goes up in flames. It's 
open source and heavily used. _KDE_ uses it, after all, and is a major driver 
behind it. It could be that if Nokia were really to effectively drop Qt (which I 
have a _hard_ time believing) that fewer commercial products would be willing to 
use it, but it would still be used. I've frequently heard it called the best C++ 
GUI toolkit in existence.

No, even if Nokia stops developing Qt properly, the worst that that means is 
that the development slows down. But enough people have a stake in it that the 
slack would likely get taken care of to a large extent by either open source 
folks or other companies which use Qt. It would certainly be a major blow, and 
development might slow down, but it would be far from fatal.

Regardless, I think that it's too early to say where this is really going and 
what it means for Qt.

- Jonathan M Davis