Friday, October 21, 2011

Qt moved to Open Governance: what do you want to do, Brain?

A wonderful news arrived just today: finally, the Qt toolkit has moved to an open governance model. This is a very important news for KDE, since it will (hopefully) mean that Qt will always be free software, indipendent from the businesses of a single company, and driven only by the community's heart.

This should mean also more platforms and systems supported natively. And since KDE is mainly made with Qt we will probably see KDE on many other devices: I dream of a KDE environment on Windows Phone, iOS, and Android (also if there could be problems with the programming languages used in these OS), gradually replacing non FOSS programs.
There could be a very big collaboration between KDE and Qt developers, with the aim to reach the most audience as possibile.

And that's why I'm quoting a cartoon I really liked when was a child:
"Pinky - Gee, Brain, what do you want to do tonight?
The Brain - The same thing we do every night, Pinky: try to take over the world!"




For more informations: http://www.qt-project.org/
http://labs.qt.nokia.com/2011/10/21/the-qt-project-is-live/
http://dot.kde.org/2011/10/21/kde-applauds-qts-move-open-governance

2 comments:

  1. "it will (hopefully) mean that Qt will always be free software, indipendent from the businesses of a single company"

    You should read the contribution agreements at some point. Every contributor is required to allow Nokia to "distribute Licensor Contribution(s) and any derivative works thereof under license terms of Nokia’s choosing" which means Nokia can make proprietary forks while anybody else can't.
    So expect your contributions in some proprietary Nokia software soon.

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  2. Since the whole toolkit is released under GLP, everybody can decide to fork the project, both Nokia, both everyone else.

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