Nokia Buys Trolltech

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."

Parent post is GMAA Final Measure

[tomhudson]

Gee, I haven't seen that one in ages.

Last time was from zoy.org.

Warning - if you're a windows user, don't click on it - it steals your browser's clipboard contents.

Perspectives on the deal...

[webword]

Browse through Google News [google.com]

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

[Bralkein]

This being Slashdot, the summary's pretty light on details like for example what will happen to KDE and Qt's relationship with Free Software at large. Well, there is an open letter to the community, so you can read it here [trolltech.com]. The letter's pretty encouraging insofar as it reaffirms the Qt team's commitment to the current symbiosis, and it says that Nokia is going to become a "Patron of KDE"(TM). Additionally, the Free Qt Foundation [kde.org] offers protection in case a buyout turns things nasty.

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.

Re:KDE Qt Free Foundation

[bytta]

They have a whole page [trolltech.com] of announcements 'n' stuff, including an Open Letter to the Open Source Community, and a letter to QT customers.

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

[Lumpy]

Why? Nokia does not make OS'es or IDE's. They make mobile phones,

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

[sjbe]

Nokia does not make OS'es or IDE's.

Nokia doesn't make operating systems? What do you think their phones run on? Nokia owns nearly 50% of Symbian [wikipedia.org] which is an operating system. They also have other cell phones that run on different operating systems [wikipedia.org] developed by them. Cell phones are just a specialized computer. True, they make use of some open source stuff but they develop a LOT more of what they use themselves or via subsidiaries. I attended a presentation made by the CEO of Nokia [wikipedia.org] and he indicated that Nokia had over 14,000 software workers (this was about 5 years ago) alone. Now I can't verify that claim but I have little reason to doubt it. He made the claim that Nokia basically is a software company that happens to make cellular phones. A bit of an exaggeration perhaps but only a bit.

Re:KDE Qt Free Foundation

[Mechanik]

Nokia does not make OS'es or IDE's.

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:Nokia does develop software and lots of it

[i.r.id10t]

Not to mention the Linux distro that they ship on the 770, 800, and 810, and maemo, etc.

Re:KDE Qt Free Foundation

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see Nokia as interested in the Linux desktop

Are you kidding. Why not go and take a quick search on Nokia Internet Tablets such as the 700/N800/N810 and you'll see they are very active in linux development. Also check out Maemo.org, which is developed by Nokia and is debian based. You might say that is specialized and not the "desktop" but it is very end user and it would be in Nokia's best interest to keep the development rolling.

Re:Symbian GNOME?

[BlackCreek]

How will Symbian react? Will they switch to using GNOME so they have parity? I'd doubt they'd adopt Qt with one of their customers controlling its license back to them. Does this move mean Symbian will always use its own proprietary GUI SW?

I am not sure I understood your post. But if I did, then you are missing the information that Nokia owns 48% of Symbian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Symbian_OS [wikipedia.org]

Re:Nokia does develop software and lots of it

[blosphere]

Nokia doesn't write THAT much of their OWN software, they usually just outsource it.

After the vendor fucks it up then they try to fix it, usually with not-so-good results.

Disclaimer:
I work for the company.

Re:Greephone

[chiui]

The Greenphone died because other hardware capable of running Qtopia became available (eg FIC 1973); they didn't want to sell phones, they wanted something you can develop for Qtopia on.

Re:KDE Qt Free Foundation

[gral]

Nokia is actually doing a lot with Open Source. Their Maemo platform is open. Of course, it is based on GTK+.

The Internet Tablet n810 is based on Linux and GTK+, which is where Maemo is running.

Re:NOK is Norwegian Kroner

[sveinungkv]

NOK is the ISO 4217 code [wikipedia.org] for Norwegian Kroner, the currency of Norway. Nokia vil pay 16 NOK [google.no] pr share for Trolltech.

Re:Just prooves - your data is worth more ...

[Curtman]

However, GTK+ is what Nokia is currently using on its N-Series tablets [nseries.com]. I hope they stay that way.

Re:I've been waiting for *someone* to buy TrollTec

[civilizedINTENSITY]

At that point BSD was clouded by FUD surrounding ATT's lawsuit. This provided the vacuum that the Linux kernel swelled to fill. Solaris (or, really SunOS then) didn't have any such problem. If Sun had gone open source early with their Unix, they would have stole the show. Its nice to make a hero out of a developer, but this really didn't have anything to do with the history.

Just incorrect

[Enderandrew]

Going down the Distrowatch list:

PCLinuxOS - pretty much the opposite of Ubuntu. They release KDE primarily, and then do a Gnome version seperately.
Ubuntu - Again, the opposite, but they do both.
openSUSE - KDE predominately.
Fedora - Again, supports both. Fedora 9 will use KDE 4.
Mint - Basically Ubuntu, but they release for both.
Sabayon - KDE by default, and all the theming is for KDE.
Mandriva - KDE primarily.

You can go down the list, but you end up getting small distros that either ship with neither by default (Gentoo, Arch) or stuff like DSL use neither.

Ubuntu is growing in popularity, and they are Gnome primarily. But that doesn't mean every distro switched to Gnome. It just isn't true. With KDE 4 using even less memory than KDE 3, I think KDE looks more and more promising all the time.