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Well, the title says it all:

What does the takeover of Nokia by Microsoft mean for the Ubuntu SDK, as the Ubuntu SDK relies on Qt which is (was?) a Nokia project?

Braiam
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Gx1sptDTDa
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1 Answers1

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Microsoft appears not to own the business assets (such as copyrights) associated with Qt, because Nokia sold them (i.e., "sold Qt") to Digia before its merger with Microsoft.

See also the Wikipedia articles on Qt and Digia, and the references therein.

Therefore, the takeover should have no impact at all on the Ubuntu SDK.

Furthermore, even if Microsoft did have any Qt copyrights or other assets--which does not appear to be the case--all released Qt code would still be licensed under the LGPL, and the rights conferred by the LGPL are not revocable by the copyright holder. So we could still use it, though it's possible they might choose a different license for future versions. Again, even this is probably not a concern as Microsoft doesn't own those copyrights.

Eliah Kagan
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    I somehow missed the sale of Qt. Yay Nokia for caring about the rest of the world. :) – jrg Sep 04 '13 at 02:42
  • Just to add: The Digia press releases on the acquisition (still to be completed at the time) says they plan on continuing to develop and support both the free and non-free versions of QT. http://www.digia.com/en/Home/Company/Press/2012/Digia-to-acquire-Qt-from-Nokia/ – Joe Sep 04 '13 at 21:37
  • @Joe Note that it's really the *licenses* that differ rather than the software itself. The most feature-complete of the "commercially licensed" versions is equivalent to the version provided under the LGPL. – Eliah Kagan Sep 04 '13 at 21:59
  • Totally cool. I didn't know that. Sometimes the non-free versions of things have more features, etc. I think Star Office was like that. – Joe Sep 05 '13 at 22:46
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    You may find the [Requiem for Nokia Phones](http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2013/09/requiem-for-nokia-phones-worlds-most-widely-used-brand-and-europes-most-admired-tech-company.html) interesting. – Paddy Landau Sep 10 '13 at 11:28