The Latest Details On The State Of Qt & MeeGo

Yesterday's announcement of Microsoft and Nokia hooking up over Windows Phone 7 on Nokia's smart-phone has rattled the free software / Linux communities. There's more than 100 comments in our forums about this announcement and this isn't the only tech community where there are outraged customers and other parties disappointed in Nokia's decision. In particular, many are upset because with Nokia's decision it basically pushes the MeeGo Linux operating system and the Qt tool-kit to the back-seat.

In this Nokia Qt blog post by Daniel Kihlberg, the impact on Qt in regards to Nokia's platform switch is downplayed. Daniel says that Qt will continue to play an important role in Nokia for the existing Symbian base, there's still going to be one Nokia MeeGo device shipping this year, Qt Quick / Qt SDK 1.1 will still be delivered, Nokia will continue to hire Qt developers, and the director of the Qt Ecosystem adds that Nokia isn't the only company behind this tool-kit.

Qt is increasingly popular. During 2010, we had 1.5+ million downloads at qt.nokia.com (alone) – twice as much as during 2009 – and with the up-coming innovation and additional investments in Qt combined with the introduction of open governance, I believe Qt will be used more than ever before.

In regards to MeeGo, the Moblin-Maemo bond by Intel and Nokia, the situation looks worse, according to this blog post. "Basically by all accounts MeeGo is stopping all work on the Netbook UX. Yup, all our hard work is now almost for nothing :-(" That blog post was dated prior to Friday's Microsoft-Nokia announcement and outlines that MeeGo for the netbook looks to be discontinued.

More thoughts on this platform shift by Nokia can be found in all the forum comments.