KDE assures users they can depend on Qt

KDE contributor and openSUSE community manager Jos Poortvliet has written a blog posting on the KDE news site, explaining the KDE project's stance on the future of Qt. According to the statement, the KDE leadership believes that their agreement with Nokia will ensure that there will be a competitive open source version of Qt for the foreseeable future. Their plans see the open source community around Qt collaborate with Nokia's development teams and continue to build KDE software with the toolkit.

Poortvliet says that KDE will definitely keep using Qt as it is "the best UI development toolkit available". Qt, which is owned by Nokia since the company acquired Trolltech, is now stewarded under an agreement which stipulates that Nokia has to release regular open source updates to the Qt toolkit or face a clause whereby the KDE community is allowed to release the latest version of the toolkit under the BSD licence.

After Nokia struck a deal with Microsoft to distribute the Windows Phone OS on its hardware, the company discontinued its MeeGo-based products in most European and American markets. They also scaled down their Qt development and outsourced its commercial support. With this statement, the KDE community is making clear that it sees a future for Qt even if Nokia discontinues its development.

Speaking to The H, Poortvliet said "The Qt ecosystem is far bigger than one or two mobile vendors. In the automotive industry as well as movie industry and medical areas, Qt is a strategic component for software development for the next 5-10 years. We stand behind Qt, as one of its biggest supporters and we have confidence in the ecosystem behind it, and we want the community to know that."

See also:

• Final Qt 5.0 release delayed until August, a report from The H.
• Qt Software U-turns, offers an LGPL licence option for Qt 4.5, a report from The H.

(fab)