Nokia Reportedly Selling Off Qt

While word crept out last night that Nokia would be closing down their Brisbane office where several of the Qt components are maintained and developed, it looks like the Qt infliction is going much further. Nokia's now reportedly trying to offload Qt entirely.

To not much surprise, Nokia doesn't want to do much these days with the Norwegian tool-kit now that they're on the Windows Phone bandwagon and letting Microsoft bang their drum. Nokia already parted ways with Maemo and MeeGo (and Symbian) and then last week they put a bullet in Meltemi, their last Linux effort. Now the failing phone company no longer has any use for Qt; Nokia bought out Trolltech in early 2008.

This morning on the Qt development list it was mentioned:

Folks:

I wasn't going to mention this but since the topic has come up...

A source I consider reliable has whispered in my ear that in the aftermath of Nokia recently shooting Meltemi dead*, Sebastian Nyström (the Nokia Senior VP in charge of Qt) has been given explicit direction to sell-off the Qt asset.

Nokia's great experiment in frameworks (mobile and otherwise) is over.

Atlant

* After having previously shot Symbian and Maemo/MeeGo dead

Nokia hasn't issued an official statement on the matter nor have the Nokia-Qt developers explicitly said that, but all indications are this is the case based upon this independent email, information I heard recently, and this news coming one day after Nokia announced they were closing down the Qt Australia office.

Last week in a biergarten in Bavaria I heard similar statements. What I heard from a useful German source is that Nokia will see the Qt 5.0 release out the door, but after that they hope to have an arrangement to get rid of the tool-kit that's long been known for its use within KDE or "radically shift" its development.

Let's hope if it is picked up by another organization, it's an open company like Intel or the Linux Foundation rather than Digia.