Qt Project launches; Qt now under open governance
There are many levels of openness that a project can espouse, from simply dumping open source code at regular intervals, to actually fostering a community and letting the community dictate the course of development the project should take. It can be endlessly debated as to what level of openness is better and for what project or under what conditions. Regardless Qt, the popular open source cross-platform framework used by KDE, is now a little more open with the launch of the Qt Project.
This is a planned transition that will finally rest power to influence the future direction of Qt under the hands of the developers who actually use it, such as the KDE project. In fact Martin Konold, the co-founder of KDE, and Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer, of the KDE Free Qt Foundation released the following statement:
“We fully support the work being done with the Qt Project. An openly governed Qt is in the best interests of all Qt developers. The Open Governance structure of the Qt Project empowers developers to influence the direction and the pace of Qt development. Stakeholders in the future of Qt, such as KDE, can now contribute according to their own priorities and take ownership over areas of Qt that are of particular importance to them.”
Qt is in use by many commercial / non-OSS applications as well; these include Autodesk Maya, Adobe Photoshop Elements, Amazon Kindle desktop apps, EA Origin, and many more.
Nokia has had significant positive contributions to Qt in spite of the whole mess of moving to Windows Mobile from MeeGo. With KDE’s added support for mobile and tablet devices, it is likely those features will see continues support from them as well. With the framework in the hands of the Qt community, it remains a good choice for developers making cross-platform applications.