KDE Issues Statement Regarding Future Use Of Qt

The KDE development community has issued a statement concerning future use of the Qt tool-kit within the KDE desktop environment.

The statement, which is entitled KDE: Rely on Qt, protect Qt's freedom, contribute to it, reaffirms their commitment to Qt.

They issued the atatement this morning due to "recent strategy changes within Nokia—the largest contributor to Qt, there is uncertainty about the future of Qt that concerns KDE."

The KDE position is that they will still rely upon Qt, cooperate with Qt upstream, protect the freedom of Qt and KDE, and improve/contribute to upstream Qt. Qt will continue to be used by KDE Frameworks 5. "KDE software is built using Qt, and will continue to be so. Qt is the best UI development toolkit available, and its quality and continuous innovation have helped tremendously in making KDE successful."

KDE views the free software version of Qt as being fine for the future. "The biggest threat to the future of Qt is fragmentation due to forking. Another risk, a growing difference between the Free Software and commercial versions, has already been anticipated and addressed in existing formal agreements between KDE and Nokia. KDE will work actively to make sure that the Free Software and commercial versions of Qt remain identical and continue innovating, by this reducing the incentive to fork."