After the Nokia-Microsoft deal, the future of Qt doesn't look very bright. Many developers think that Nokia has no interest in Qt for the desktop.

http://blog.qt.nokia.com/2011/02/14/update-on-qt/

And since KDE is based on Qt, and KDE is the (sort of) default desktop environment for Slackware...

What are your thoughts?

fgcl2k

It depends on the upstream IMHO
Pat doesn't decide KDE's future

KDE is not the default. It's just one of the many DE (Desktop Environment) provided/Supported within Slackware. It's your choice to pick one of them as your default

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There are so many possible things that could come of KDE if QT was completely dropped by all potential corporate sponsors.
Perhaps a group of KDE devs would spawn off and maintain it?
Perhaps KDE would transition to another GUI tool kit? If that was GTK, I think there would finally be a de facto standard for most gui apps on linux. It would be more interesting to see them use the Enlightenment libs.
However, the least likely thing to do would be creating a new GUI tool kit that's not even QT based.

But I don't even use KDE anyway so I don't know why I'm bothering to speculate.

Either way, Slackware needs a feature rich Desktop Environment and it's unlikely KDE is going anywhere. I doubt Gnome would come back to Slackware... but who knows what the future holds.

Qt's development repository is still getting several commits/merges every hour, so Qt's development hasn't slowed down (yet).

If Nokia does drop Qt, then it will obviously be forked. In that case, the best case scenario would be a company that has existing software written in Qt stepping up to sponsor it. Amazon (whose Kindle desktop software is Qt) and Google (Earth is written Qt) are candidates.

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QT is fully licensed under the GPL, and has other protections in place, so it's perfectly safe. If Nokia ever tries to do anything funny it will simply be forked and things will continue on as usual.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_%28f...k%29#Licensing

For precedent, look at the history of X11 and Xorg.

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KDE's main problem is not Qt licensing. Even if Nokia will abandon Qt, there are some protocols, that last option will be automatically Qt under the BSD license.

The problem is that KDE is a DE which is developed by professional programmers, paid by Nokia today. Do not imagine that KDE is written by a handful of geeks! It's a incredible complex thingy!

What will happen when Nokia will abandon KDE4? Look what happens with Qt3 and KDE3, which are already abandoned by their developers.

The idea is that today, although we like to play with open source applications, those that are very complex, like KDE, GNOME or Linux kernel, are developed by companies who have commercial interests.

I don't think Nokia was thinking of the desktop when it acquired Qt.

In any case, Qt won't even need to be forked if Nokia abandons it since there are strong safeguards built into its licensing.

Are you sure about this? It sounds completely wrong to me, and it's contradicted by KDE's Wikipedia article.

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Here you go:

Attached Thumbnails

 

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i'm not sure whether the article in DistroWatch is correct, since it's user's choice to pick up the DE being used. There are two big DE in Slackware, which are KDE and XFCE, but there are others too and Slackware never use "default" for DE selection. Everything is based on user's preferences

KDE is the default desktop. If you run the installer and just keep pressing ENTER to accept the default choices, you get KDE.

It's true that KDE is not the only desktop or WM supplied in a stock install, but that's not what "default" means.

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Try to find who is the members of The KDE Core Team, then try to find how many works full-time for KDE and which companies pay their bills, to do that ...

You'll be surprised.

BTW, you know which company develop Mesa/Gallium? Surprise! VMware Inc. Anyways, I found disturbing that Slackware don't ship the VMware Mesa/Gallium driver. It's funny, to exclude from The Game, right the main developer support!

I don't have to do that. If you've already done it yourself, post your links.

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Happen to know personally one of the developers / creators of Konqueror. And he explained to me how it works out the development of KDE. Also, why Red Hat has created GNOME, as an alternative to KDE. There is nothing wrong, of course. Some guys live writing OpenSource code, another guys live selling OpenSource.

In few words, the companies are heavily involved in OpenSource development because they have commercial interests. OpenSource is just another business model.

And, let's be realistic, but without those companies and their commercial interests, we can not develop/maintain highly complex application suites like we use today.

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You have claimed that most of the funding for KDE's development comes from Nokia specifically. You have not convinced me.

And no, this claim isn't worth anything.

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