What could be the impact on RIM with the deep integration of Qt into the BlackBerry 10 Cascades framework for devs? I very much hope that this new owner of Qt (Digia), doesn't take steps to cut RIM and BB10 out on the behest of Apple, Google, and/or Microsoft.
Something to bear in mind after the Scalado Camera acquisition matter a while back...
Qt is open source, and that's the license RIM is using it under. Even if Digia tried to cut out RIM it wouldn't change too much, RIM could keep on using and developing Qt under the open source license. Digia also couldn't cut out RIM without cutting out the rest of the open source world, and KDE's access is protected by an old agreement with Trolltech (company that originally developed Qt).
This is actually fairly good news for RIM. If it becomes a popular iOS and Android framework that means more apps that can easily be ported to BB10. Digia also isn't in the smartphone business themselves, so they have no reason to cut out RIM. RIM could potentially be one of their largest customers.
What could be the impact on RIM with the deep integration of Qt into the BlackBerry 10 Cascades framework for devs?
from the press release:
Deploy Everywhere
During the past year, Digia has worked together with leading RTOS vendors to enable Qt on INTEGRITY, QNX and VxWorks. These are very important platforms in the real-time and embedded market and most of us have used systems based on these at some point � likely without a graphical UI. We plan to continue our work with these and keep Qt as the number one choice for building modern and interactive UIs for mission critical systems.
Qt is open source, and that's the license RIM is using it under. Even if Digia tried to cut out RIM it wouldn't change too much, RIM could keep on using and developing Qt under the open source license. Digia also couldn't cut out RIM without cutting out the rest of the open source world, and KDE's access is protected by an old agreement with Trolltech (company that originally developed Qt).
I think the ideas of cutting people out of using Qt are baseless speculation. It wouldn't make sense from a business perspective. What did the Scalado acquisition do to the parts RIM licensed for BB10? Or is this just more FUD?
