so, the million dollar question..

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so, the million dollar question..
by jmk on Monday 28/Jan/2008, @03:13

If this was done to..
a) to get a better product than gtk+/maemo and to actively develop it, or
b) to wipe out competition?

Hmm, Nokia to unify Linux userspace?

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Re: so, the million dollar question..
by Segedunum on Monday 28/Jan/2008, @04:17

"a) to get a better product than gtk+/maemo"

Nokia's development is Symbian. GTK/Maemo is irrelevant really.

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Re: so, the million dollar question..
by Apollo Creed on Monday 28/Jan/2008, @04:56

Perhaps they're planning to port Qt to Symbian? Symbian (IIRC) has several different UIs available to it already, and perhaps Nokia thinks that Qt is much nicer than any of the others.

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Re: so, the million dollar question..
by Anon on Monday 28/Jan/2008, @05:06

They would have been absolutely free to do this without the huge legal, administrative and social headache that comes from acquiring another company.

I'm really not seeing a single advantage to Nokia here unless they want to stifle development of Qt. The only thing I can think of is that they do indeed want to use Qt (remember that they expressed dissatisfaction with the development of GTK? - http://www.osnews.com/story/18444/Nokia-Pushes-for-GTK+-3.0/) and will license Qt for development of apps intended to run on *Nokia* devices to commercial parties *for free*, or maybe a heavily discounted rate, and thus obtain a top-notch toolkit that has the number one strike against it (the need for closed-source software writers to pay a fairly hefty fee) removed, or at least mitigated. Money would continue to flow into Trolltech from the Windows app-writers side.

I'm sure though that even if this is what they are planning, there would have been easier ways to accomplish this than outright purchasing Trolltech - brokering some kind of special deal with TT, perhaps - so again, I really question what they have to gain, here.

On the plus side, TT are neither stupid/ naive nor desperate for cash, so there is presumably a good case for embarking on this path.

We'll have to wait and see, I guess :/

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Re: so, the million dollar question..
by Aaron Seigo on Monday 28/Jan/2008, @14:50

> unless they want to stifle development of Qt.

that has not been my understanding of the strategy.

> The only thing I can think of is that they do indeed want to use Qt

this is closer to it.

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Re: so, the million dollar question..
by Segedunum on Tuesday 29/Jan/2008, @06:03

"I'm really not seeing a single advantage to Nokia here unless they want to stifle development of Qt"

I don't see how that would be an advantage. TT is doing nothing to hurt Nokia right now.

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Re: so, the million dollar question..
by Hank Miller on Tuesday 29/Jan/2008, @06:34

Greenphone. I know it is a non-issue today. However if Nokia sees derivitives as a future problem (compitition) they may want to buy TT now, just to make sure the greenphone never is a problem.

As I've said elsewhere, I can come up with many different explinations. I can't tell you which are correct. I wouldn't be surprised if all are wrong.

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Re: so, the million dollar question..
by Henrik Pauli on Monday 28/Jan/2008, @14:39

http://www.kdedevelopers.org/node/3233 -- Lookie this one.

And yes, Symbian has a couple UIs already, UIQ (Sony-Ericsson and recently also Motorola-owned) and the S whatevers (S60 right now) of Nokia.

Developing on Symbian seems like a total pain in the bum (at least from what I’ve seen so far), so having Qtopia/Qt/whatever on Symbian would be unspeakable awesomeness.

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Highly unlikely
by Drol on Monday 28/Jan/2008, @10:39

How could they get a better product than gtk+/maemo but purchasing QT? It makes no sense as QT is worse option. Not technically but in the big picture. Technically QT is respectable. It just attracts people who do not have the slightest clue about GUI designing - KDE folks and alike :-(

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Re: Highly unlikely
by Anon on Monday 28/Jan/2008, @10:47

" It just attracts people who do not have the slightest clue about GUI designing - KDE folks and alike :-("

Don't be ridiculous. What possible property of Qt could make it unappealing to companies with a usability team?

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Re: Highly unlikely
by jospoortvliet on Monday 28/Jan/2008, @11:18

Your nick says it all - drol = shit in dutch... Makes sense, as you talk like that.

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Re: Highly unlikely
by Henrik Pauli on Monday 28/Jan/2008, @14:42

I’ve seen quite a few terrible UIs written in… well, every toolkit, so whatever. Yes, Gnome has problems too, believe it or not.

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