Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

Yes, that clause is well known. What I'm asking for are plausible examples of what Nokia could do to screw things up with Qt.

I think the flap wouldn't be the same if the community at large would be aware about what Nokia is doing and contributing in the free software community.

Of course is not their fault. It shows that we at Nokia have to improve on our communication to this community at large. I might feel uncomfortable about words, but I'm totally comfortable with the actions Nokia is doing in open source.

Re: Business case.
 

Actually, if they linked against LGPL libraries, they need to distribute their object code to allow relinking.

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

I believe what he is alluding to is if Nokia were to stop developing and distributing Qt under the GPL. It would then, under the agreement with KDE Foundation, KDE could then revert Qt to a less restrictive license, BSD.

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

One scenario is coming to my mind and was mentioned by Ari (although in another context): big dump of un-announced code into Qt codebase.

Generally Qt is developed in fairly open way, of course there is "secret" cooking before things are included into public tree but time between disclosure and release of stable version is relatively long so all open-source developers can test new features, develop for them etc. Also those new features are advertised before publishing so there is additional time for preparations. Big dump would break workflow of open-source working. Why? Because Qt packages in most distributions aren't coming straight from Trolltech. This is so called qt-copy maintained by KDE which are TT sources + some KDE specific tweaks. [1]

In case of such big dump KDE developers would have to make tough decision - work overnight and include unreviewed code (risking breaking of core KDE functionality) or shun it. Consequences of both outcomes would be grave. Such situation would really undermine position of Qt by Trolltech in open-source world.

[1] This is because Trolls rarely accept direct patches from outside world (copyrights). Usually they are coming with their own solutions but that can take time while KDE needs solution NOW.

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

Which leads again to the question: What would be the business reason to do that? What would be the benefit for Nokia doing so?

To those still concerned about Qt in the hands of Nokia: big successful businesses might be evil or not, but if they are indeed succesful is because the steps they make generate benefits & profits. When thinking about evil possibilities make sure you find a potential business benefit tied to it. If you can't, then perhaps that evil possibility is unlikely to happen.

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

Fair enough, it is sensible that some people not knowing what has been said and what is going on could be worried about this possibility. Let's look at it then.

Quoting the press release on January, when the acquisition process was announced:

And from the Open letter to KDE and the Open Source community:


That was the promise of Nokia to the Trolltech team and Qt users in the industry and the open source community. The current open development model has been good enough to produce this technology interesting to Nokia and many customers, in the commercial and community contexts. Break this promise, break this development model and... What would Nokia win? What would Nokia lose? What would be the business benefit?

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

I commented on AriJ's blog, but I'll put in my 0.02 euros here.

DRM *could* be USED fairly - i.e. a proper statement by the media author/publishers of how the DRM affects the customer, so that the customer can make an informed decision to accept the product or not.

DRM *could* be IMPLEMENTED fairly - i.e. so that the media data was protected or watermarked without impeding the customer's fair use, and using a standards based codec or open source playback software.. e.g. encrypt the data using a published/standard algorithm so that the consumer can back up the data and also back up the encryption keys. That would mean the consumer would NOT lose access to the media if they changed device (upgraded, replaced after breaking etc), nor could the publisher arbitrarily revoke access to the rightfully-paid-for media. Since the media data was keyed to an individual, that person would want to take care to not leak copies to the world!

So far all DRM schemes in real world use fail the above tests, many are astoundingly unreasonable! Worst of all, many consumers do not understand the situation - I am amazed Sony survived their various exploits with root kits etc, personally I will never touch another of their products. I see the situation as a time bomb waiting to go off!

sorry for the long rant.

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

@qgil

Problem with Nokia and Trolltech is that we don't really know why Nokia bought TT.

There are several possible reasons:

1) Qt will be Next Big Thing in Nokias ecosystem and company wants total control over toolkit - this possibility was mentioned on margin of some of press releases; problem with OS is - for that Nokia doesn't need open-source - completely irrelevant.
2) Nokia wants to buy company which is going well financially to improve its own profits - this one is impossible because TT had financial problems as was revealed by digging around Oslo stock exchange (nothing big but...)
3) Dive into open source while investing next to nothing (AFAIK it was ca. 1.5% of yesteryear profits - comparing with my 'finances': several bags of peanuts).

Third cause was mentioned in letters quoted by you but this doesn't hold. The biggest engagement of Nokia into open-source so far were things connected with Internet Tables. Overwhelming majority of contributions linked earlier are related to tablets (OMAP support for X, D-BUS, etc.). But Internet Tablets are done in GTK! Also there were quick assertions that ITs will stay in GTK land.

So, why Nokia bought Trolltech and what is long term strategy for it in its portfolio?

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

As with any complex system, the answers are never simple or obvious unless you make simlifying and sometimes invalidating approximations.

There is absolutely no debate as to the way Nokia is moving currently (or has moved in the past). I appaud them wholeheartedly for their vision and courage in trying to move the whole industry in a more open direction. It is also obvious that they are leading the pack in making these steps in a very concrete way. They also are heavily contributing (often without any fanfare) behind the scenes in key upstream projects (X, bluez and kernel in particular). For these reasons I am supporting them with my wallet.

However, the debatable thing is the direction they are pointing in for the future thrust. Ari's last several comments contain statements that indicate a mismatch between the direction Nokia's drifting vs. the direction it is pointing that is sending a few people into a panic. The reason that people are negatively vocal is not because they seek to damage Nokia but rather they want to make sure Nokia keeps steering the the more open course and does not cater to the likes of DRM/locking and instead steers around those icebergs (to completely abuse an analogy).

Re: Ari Jaaski says OSS must play nice with DRM and locked parts
 

Maybe the problem is that some people don't really believe the reasons Nokia is putting in clear words. They go down to conspiracy theories, don't find clear answers and end up saying that the move is unclear. But... what about just trusting the sensible explanations of Nokia? :)

Again from the press release:

So, what is this Nokia Software Strategy about? Quoting the press backgrounder:

You remind the fact Maemo has a UI layer powered by GTK+. Why not reminding the also obvious fact that S60, Series 40 and Series 30 have different, non Qt based UI layers as well. These platforms run the big Nokia numbers, so you better think of them and not in Maemo alone to understand the move with Trolltech.

Considering the size of Nokia and its business, and considering the role "Qt Everywhere" would play in this software strategy, adding the team that develops Qt to the Nokia software units makes a lot of sense. Is this so hard to understand or believe?

Think in the wider context and think in the long run and you will understand why acquiring Trolltech makes more sense than anything else. The code (open or not) is just a product, and if Nokia was looking only after the code then buying licenses would have been enough. What counts is the people and ways of working that were able to produce that code.

By the way, to make Qt work on Maemo in addition to GTK+ is a rather simple issue compared to that. In fact, the community has almost done it already. Two weeks ago we explained how Qt is going to enter in Maemo from now to Harmattan.