Digia Buys Out Qt From Nokia

Digia has bought out Qt from Nokia. Uh oh?

Nokia has announced today that Digia is acquiring the Qt software technologies and Qt business from Nokia. Digia is completely taking over Qt. Digia is the open-core company that previously took over Qt Commercial and releases their special version of Qt to customers. Digia claims they will take care of the commercial and open-source versions of the new Qt and they also want to bring the popular tool-kit to Android, Apple iOS, and Windows 8.

With the Qt acquisition, a maximum of 125 people from Nokia will be joining Digia. Most of these people are from the Berlin and Oslo offices. This news comes just days after Nokia shut down their Qt Australia office, which already has made a negative impact on Qt 5.0. Lars Knoll of Qt said it was really sad to see this happen.

Around the same time is when I reported Nokia was looking to sell off Qt based upon comments made and my sources in Germany. It looks like that ended up being spot-on except for the fact this announcement was made prior to the Qt 5.0 release rather than afterwards. However, Digia says they'll be looking to ship Qt 5.0 as soon as possible.

Is Digia's acquisition of Qt from Nokia good or bad? Only time will tell. Obviously not everyone is happy with Digia's business model and their past Qt Commercial releases carrying large patch deltas against the open-source version. The focus on mobile platforms for Qt may also shift some of the paid development time away from the desktop version. For some Phoronix readers, they may be excited about Qt on iOS and Android, especially as that then presents some more competition for Mono. Meanwhile, other Phoronix readers are likely counting the days until Qt is forked. It will be interesting to see how a Digia-controlled Qt pans out in the coming months.

For more information on this acquisition, see today's press release and the Qt Commercial blog post.