Nokia Buys Trolltech
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Mon Jan 28, 2008 09:51 AM
from the what-bubble dept.
from the what-bubble dept.
egil writes "Trolltech announced this morning (CET) that they have accepted a bid from Nokia to buy the entire company. The bid was for 16 NOK per share, which values the company at an equivalent of approximately 150 million USD. The stock currently trades at 15.70 on the Oslo stack exchange, up from around 10 on Friday. The offer has already been accepted by the Trolltech BOD."
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Ask Slashdot: Desktop Environment for Proprietary Applications? 146 comments
nushoin writes "Gnome and KDE are the two major desktop environments used on Linux today. However, Gnome is growing more and more affiliated with Microsoft's proprietary technologies (Mono, OOXML). Targeting the Gnome desktop environment could prove dangerous in the long run, assuming that one would like its applications to run on distributions other than SuSE. On the other hand, TrollTech is being bought by Nokia, whose commitment to the desktop world remains to be proven. Assuming that one would like to develop a desktop application (either free or closed source), which desktop environment would you target, and what widget tool kit would you use?"
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Just prooves - your data is worth more ... (Score:5, Insightful)
TrollTech: $150 million
MySQL: 1 BILLION!
KDE Qt Free Foundation (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:KDE Qt Free Foundation (Score:5, Interesting)
I assume that means as long as Nokia continues to develop Qt in the same manner (keeping Qt Free available for KDE), then the agreement doesn't apply.
Re:KDE Qt Free Foundation (Score:5, Interesting)
I assume that means as long as Nokia continues to develop Qt in the same manner (keeping Qt Free available for KDE), then the agreement doesn't apply.
I don't see Nokia as interested in the Linux desktop, so I presume that part of Trolltech's work will not continue exactly as before; why pay the salaries of several KDE developers, for example - not sure Nokia will see the point in that. I don't predict immediate firings, though, but if I was one of them I wouldn't count on long-term job security. What I do see Nokia as wanting from Trolltech is everything related to mobile devices, Qtopia, all that stuff. So overall Qt may continue to be developed, but I'm not sure its focus won't move to one that is less useful for KDE.
Of course, this risk with KDE basing itself on Qt was obvious all the time due to the licensing model there. It is probably part of the reason why all major distros have moved to GNOME.
Re:KDE Qt Free Foundation (Score:5, Informative)
Wireless in five years (Score:5, Interesting)
While I understand your arguments it would now be a relatively easy way for Nokia to sneakin to that business. Before this buyout it would have been "impossible".
Don't forget that the margins of the mobile phone industry may be diminishing and that the distinction between a mobile phone and a laptop is blurred more and more. Nokia is spreading its risks. Who knows what a laptop's wireless connection will look like in five years. I don't, but I guess Nokia now is better prepared to not only know, but also to adapt and dictate.
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KDE is important for Trolltech and Qt (Score:5, Insightful)
You're missing an important detail here. KDE is important for Trolltech and the continued development of Qt. The CEO of Trolltech explained a few weeks ago in fact that Trolltech became a successful company because of KDE, not despite KDE.
Trolltech profits from the tons of feedback and publicity they get through KDE. In their first years they didn't have to do marketing at all! Qt has credibility in the commercial world because a complete desktop environment is built upon it. New Qt features or API's are pushed to their limits due to their immense use by KDE. This improves the overall quality of Qt, ability to reach enterprise customers, and we're back to square 1.
Destroying that upward spiral would hurt Qt development. Trolltech knows this, and so does Nokia.
* KDE also benefits from the relation with Trolltech, since they get an enterprise-quality toolkit in return. Trolltech also does the boring stuff which is typical for toolkit development (they can pay people to work on it!), and sponsors some KDE core-developers full-time.
Re:KDE Qt Free Foundation (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:KDE Qt Free Foundation (Score:5, Insightful)
One does not buy a toolkit company to build one application. Nokia could easily already "create multiplatform PC software for synching their phones to Any OS(TM)". Qt is already plenty good enough to do this and there are even perfectly reasonable alternatives.
Nokia are buying Trolltech for Qtopia, the mobile phone platform, which happens to be their core business. Therefore it is completely reasonable to question their commitment to desktop Qt, which at the moment has little to do with their core business.
Re:KDE Qt Free Foundation (Score:5, Informative)
Do you not know what Nokia does?
They make networking gear, computer equipment and yes, DO write software along with their phone thing.
You better learn about the company you think only makes cellphones.
Nokia does develop software and lots of it (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Nokia does develop software and lots of it (Score:5, Informative)
Re:KDE Qt Free Foundation (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, they do [nokia.com]. And, it's Eclipse and CDT based, so I would say that anyone that claims Nokia is not a friend of open source is mistaken. I am a committer on CDT, and I can vouch for the fact that the Nokia folks that work on Carbide have been making some significant contributions to CDT... enough that they have a committer on the project as well.
And let's not forget that they own a controlling interest in Symbian, who does make OSes.
Re:KDE Qt Free Foundation (Score:5, Informative)
Seems like they really want to give the impression they don't intend to screw anyone over. Time will tell.
Re:KDE Qt Free Foundation (Score:5, Interesting)
company. It forces a fork of licensing, etc. making a BSD licensed version possible at the KDE Qt Free Foundation's
discretion under those circumstances. At that point you'd have a version of Qt that was GPLed, BSD, and the completely
closed license version that the new owners had.
In this case, I doubt that Nokia would take it private- they know what Open Source is and seem to have few issues
with it in general. I'm not quite sure why they're picking Trolltech and Qt up, to be honest, considering how
well Maemo and Hildon works on things like their N770/N800/N810, but perhaps they're picking them up because they
want another option choice on the UI and applications suite front.
Lovely (Score:5, Funny)
Can't wait.
Re:Lovely (Score:5, Interesting)
It was a shock to find out, while being in an auditorium, listening to a beautiful classic guitar concert, and suddenly a phone rang from the guitar... or so it seemed.
Smart move! (Score:5, Insightful)
Damn (Score:5, Funny)
Perspectives on the deal... (Score:5, Informative)
Trolltech Acquisition to Position Nokia in Featurephone Space
(What's "Featurephone Space"?)
Helsinki shares drop midday, led by Nokia
(Ahh, so Nokia stock takes a hit, eh?)
Nokia Dishes Out $153 Million for Trolltech
(We know how much, exactly)
What other perspectives on the deal are you finding?
A Few Interesting Things (Score:5, Informative)
Having said all of the above, I can't help but remain a bit concerned about this turn of events. I was under the impression that Nokia have a rather tarnished reputation in the eyes of the Free Software world, since they seem to be pro-patents for software and there was that opposition from them concerning Ogg Vorbis as a web standard or something. Things like this make me worry. On the other hand, it seems like there is still a large gap between the cultures of proprietary software and free software, and maybe Nokia will gain a more balanced standpoint by getting involved with GPL projects like Qt. Ah well, I suppose we'll have to see how things turn out, but I don't really think a project the size of KDE can be killed so easily as this.
Some other people have remarked that it's interesting that Nokia should acquire Qt, seeing as how they use GTK in a few of their products. It seems fine to me though - I reckon heterogeny is a pretty big part of what Free Software is all about.
So what happens to Maemo (Score:5, Insightful)
And how will Nokia's competitors that currently use Qt for their mobile products take this?
Re:So what happens to Maemo (Score:5, Funny)
"Up the ass", I guess.
Underlying Implications (Score:5, Interesting)
The only obvious reason I can see for this decision is that Nokia's Mobile OS technology has been gradually falling behind for a number of years. Buying Trolltech gives them all the tech that went into the Zaurus devices and Trolltech's mobile environment (as seen on the green phone).
I assume that over the next day or two an official announcement will be made about Nokia's intentions for the Qt licensing. In the mean time we all have to sit on our hands and anticipate a fork. On one hand this is a bit of a slap in the face to the Gnome/GTK teams that seems to imply Qt was the superior technology. On the other hand it also justifies Gnome's existence as a project to begin with, there have always been concerns that Trolltech would take it's ball and go home. KDE is extremely dependent on paid developers at Trolltech for much of the code that is written, it will also be interesting to see if Nokia ends up becoming a major sponsor to both projects. Only time will tell.
Parent post is GMAA Final Measure (Score:5, Informative)
Gee, I haven't seen that one in ages.
Last time was from zoy.org.
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