Is Nokia pulling the plug on Symbian? (About time!) And will it use Windows Phone 7?

[high_flyer]

Based on this article, Nokia is about to take a huge gamble.
In my personal opinion, Nokia will either live or die by this decision.
http://www.nytimes.com/external/vent...er=rss&emc=rss

[javimoya]

is the most interesting company memo i've read ever.
this is the entire memo:
http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/08/n...honest-burnin/

I completly agree with his words. Nokia is losing all the market... because Symbian and Meego is shit compared with iphone and android ecosystems.


They are going to change to android ...
so....
what happen with qt??

I bet this:
they are going to change to Android....
Qt is dead.
(nokia it's only interested in qt because they wanted to make a nice and easy developer enviroment for their mobile ecosystem)

[high_flyer]

I wouldn't be so pessimistic.
First, I understood more that Nokia is about to go with MS Phone 7, and not Android - they need something different than the others, and it seems they are betting on MS.
Second, no matter what platform they will be going on, they will still need a strong GUI framework, so Qt is going to stay around (in my opinion).
If they choose to go with Android (what I don't think is the case) its even better, since they will port Qt officially to support android to, which should not be a big deal.
There is an open source projects that is doing Qt port to android by the way.

So what ever OS Nokia is going to go with, Qt is not dead as long as Nokia needs strong GUI framework - and it does.

IMHO.

[javimoya]

Windows phone 7 == shot in the foot
is the loser horse

In the full memo he talks about iphone and android.... not much about win7...
Android is free and open... is the way to go.

since Nokia control over qt.... qt 4.8... qt 4.7... qt 4.6... it's all about improving qt to facilitate symbian and meego development...

If they go to Android (or win7) I think that Nokia doesn't need to maintain a strong QT.
(of course they are not going to close QT... but they are not going to invest strongly on Qt)

[nish]

i wish nokia sell Qt to some third party. So that Qt can start adding new things to its Desktop version instead of stretching the stupid things like QML.

[hashb]

i wish nokia sell Qt to some third party. So that Qt can start adding new things to its Desktop version instead of stretching the stupid things like QML.

Strongly agreed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[TorAn]

It is quite sad to see how several top managers can destroy shareholder's wealth with just a pen. I am fortunate enough not to own Nokia or Microsoft shares (Bill apparently thinks the same way, he is known to drop 1/8th of his MSFT holdings this year), but I am invested in Qt. This alliance is bad news. Microsoft is known for killing the technologies that they consider to be threats. Just remember a wholesale purchase of Borland team.

My prediction is that the bulk of Qt team will be bought with salaries and hired to VC teams or elsewere in M$S.

[javimoya]

Now it's official...
Nokia joint with Windows Phone 7...
And they are not going to adapt QT to develop for Win7Phone.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/11/n...s-phone-devel/
Qt is dead for Nokia.

[high_flyer]

Now it's official...
Nokia joint with Windows Phone 7...
And they are not going to adapt QT to develop for Win7Phone.
http://www.engadget.com/2011/02/11/n...s-phone-devel/
Qt is dead for Nokia.

Dead - not yet at least, based on what I read in the link.
However:
In the statement, it is clear (to me) that Qt is not going to be used for the new Win7Phones.
This means, that Nokias main energy (==money) will be invested in using Win7.
Based on this link, they are not planing to use Qt for that - but what ever MS tool kits, and they will allow Qt to live for the sake of Symbian (as wasota correctly noted, they have too many devices out there to just ignore them).
However, if Nokia will stop producing new Symbian phones (which I think is likely), then its just a matter of time, (2-3 years?) when Symbian wont be a strong enough reason to keep Qt alive.
My guess is that porting Qt to W7Phone is going to be a rather easy port - so there are good chances a community port is going to appear soon.
I wonder, if the community will then sway with Nokia and MS and leave Qt, or will Qt still continue to be a major player for the Nokia phones - by the community.
I think the community will have to brace its self for the day, that Qt is officially abandoned by Nokia, and probably it will have to turn to be a pure community project.
Thank god, Qt is GPL and now the LGPL licensed, so that MS wont be able to take away (legally) what is already available.

But, we'll have to wait and see, these are turbulent times for sure.

[wysota]

Remember the "Qt poisson pill" scheme is still in effect so Qt will certainly not be dead nor will it be hijacked or somehow ruined by partnership with MS. This is a much stronger guarantee than the LGPL licence.

[high_flyer]

Remember the "Qt poisson pill" scheme is still in effect so Qt will certainly not be dead nor will it be hijacked or somehow ruined by partnership with MS. This is a much stronger guarantee than the LGPL licence.

Well, yes and no, and depends :-)
The KDE poison pill is in effect very similar to the GPL/LGPL license, its just a stronger legal form of it, and its good.
But it only means what I said - that IF Qt gets abandoned by Nokia, at least the community gets to keep what is already there - so its not conflicting with what I said, just making it stronger.
But, even though it allows the community to keep Qt (which is very important) it does not guarantee that any major player (Trolltech/Nokia) will continue to develop it - and that I call "dead".
Not in the sense that its not there and available, but that it will not be actively developed.
But there are live community project which live quite good - for example WxWidgets.
However, even KDE is dependent on companies to give it is power for a quality and steady development and maintenance.
So "Dead" here is a relative term.

[TorAn]

"Qt poisson pill" scheme is still in effect

I would not be so sure. It is only a matter of legal budgets between parties that are going to the courts. Nokia vs MSoft? It is not even funny.

I am not following Qt development outside official Nokia-supported branch, but may be someone here can comment on what is going on with Qt outside of Nokia. Is KDE team developing core Qt or they are using Nokia Qt?

["BumbleBee"]

Does all these mean,that Qt apps may not be cross-platform anymore,or?

[javimoya]

Microsoft OF COURSE is interested in killing QT.
Because QT is bringing awesome multiplatform apps (win, linux and mac).
And Microsoft doesn't like that.

That's the reason because in the agreenment Microsoft forces Nokia to use their development system.

And of course QT is dead.
¿are you going to develop to a deprecated system -symbian-?

QT desktop development is dead since Nokia adquisition...
and now QT mobile develepoment is dead too.



I love QT... and these are terrible news.

[high_flyer]

@javimoya, and others:
please, when you write such things, use the term "in my opinion", when things you say ARE you opinion, and not facts you can back up.
Readers of such a post that know very little about the subject can get all kind of wrong ideas.

That's the reason because in the agreenment Microsoft forces Nokia to use their development system.

This is probably not true, since otherwise MS would have bought Qt long before Nokia, and could have then pull the plug on it, which it didn't.
The article is saying what MS interest is - which is gaining a strong foot in the moblie market, which so far they have been lagging behind in.
MS actually (in my opinion) doesn't care much about Qt, as long as their OS is on the phone.
Qt is more an interest of Nokia, since they have invested quite a bit in it so far.

Don't jump to conclusions so fast.

Wait and see.

[aamer4yu]

if they are not gonna use Qt..
I do agree with high_flyer and nish. Its hard Qt will die, and if Qt port for android happens, it will be best for developers and business.

[nish]

so the story is-

restart symbian
sudo kill -9 symbian
start meego
sudo kill meego (no -9 coz we can hope with intel)
boot win
BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH

---

Added after 5 minutes:

My prediction is that the bulk of Qt team will be bought with salaries and hired to VC teams or elsewere in M$S.

and they will turn Qt into Qt.net and kill linux and mac ports.

[wysota]

Let's wait for an official statement from Qt/Nokia without heating the atmosphere too much, please.

[SixDegrees]

is the most interesting company memo i've read ever.


I completly agree with his words. Nokia is losing all the market... because Symbian and Meego is shit compared with iphone and android ecosystems.

Losing all what market? Nokia phones are among the most popular phones on the planet. They haven't done well in the US market, but in Europe and Asia they rule.

Impact on Qt: near zero. All significant portions of Qt are under open source licenses, and can move easily and without impediment to a new home. Whether that home will be good or bad for Qt remains to be seen, but there's enough momentum behind Qt on the desktop (it hasn't really generated much traction as a phone OS) to ensure its survival for quite a long time. Qt is now being used in major universities as a cross-platform GUI development toolkit, as well.

I think this is bad decision on Nokia's part, but I don't see it having much of an effect on Qt.

[mhoover]

This is exactly what MS did with Novell:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.co...www.google.com

(and for the same reason: cross-platform competition).

A good business model is to start a cross-platform software provider (since there is always demand for this since Microsoft is always vacuuming up the last one) and develop it until it has a small profile. Then Microsoft will buy it.