Qt's future in the light of Nokia-Microsoft partnership
- by Shinnok
In case you missed it, a lot has happened in the last two day that could potentially impact the Qt framework, for the worse. :-( It will impact the mobile sector in several and probably not currently acknowledged ways, for sure.
It started yesterday with Nokia's CEO Stephen Elop internal letter depicting Nokia sitting on a burning platform and the need for a big and aggressive shift in business.
A day later, at the Nokia World conference, Nokia announced the partnership with Microsoft , which at the moment resumes to Nokia adopting the Windows Phone 7 platform and development environment, dumping Symbian along the road and tagging Meego as R&D(a pretty dangerous keyword if you ask me), as for Maemo/N900 series i guess it's bye bye for good. I know what you're thinking but no, Qt is not going to be ported to the Window Phone platform. And i'm also scared about this. You can watch the Elop & Ballmer joint press release here.
Now after reading this huge thread on the Qt-interest mailing list i can't help but wonder, what is the future of Qt at Nokia, now that they aren't focused(at all?) on Qt anymore(remember the full focus switch on Qt as main development framework for all Nokia products(including Symbian, yes) back in October?).
I love Qt, in my opinion it is the only true cross-platform application development framework and one of the few to make C++ development a joy(to the extent possible) and good things has happened to the framework and considerable momentum while under Nokia, thus i am wondering, what are the chances that Qt might suffer a slow death at Nokia after this? Yes i know about KDE.org and the fact that Qt is easily spawnable, but i still feel uneasy.
It also must be horrible for all of the efforts either by Nokia employees or third parties that have gone into Symbian and all of the Ovi Store Symbian/Qt content and business and why not, Maemo/Meego. There are also massive layouts planned, i suspect Symbian techs and Qt?
I'd love to hear your input on this? Is Qt future safe&proof?
LE: The question as been gradually revised, improved and better referenced, thus you might want to throw a quick re-read to see what you might have missed.
