Qt-interest Archive, February 2008
Re: Nokia to acquire Trolltech - and close the office in Norway?
Message 1 in thread
On Friday 01 February 2008 03:38, Eckhard Jokisch wrote:
> Dear developers at Trolltech,
> before you decide please think.
> When will it happen that the Norwegian salaries for developing QT are to
> expensive for Nokia's shareholders? At nokia this means that the costs in
> Norway may not exceed some percentage of the whole QT-branch in Nokia.
> Two years, three years?
> I bet they are already setting up development resources in India or China
> to continue developing QT in *the Nokia way*.
> So it will be just a question of time when the offices in Norway will be
> closed.
>
Nokia wants Trolltech's knowledge and expertise, which includes everyone in
the organization. To move any team would mean loosing people, which
means "brain drain". They don't want that. Plus it would be very costly to
replace Trolltech's awesome developers in training, etc. Not to mention there
is no way Nokia could ever replace Trolltech's developers, as we are the
experts in Qt and Qtopia development.
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Message 2 in thread
On fredag den 1. Februar 2008, Lorn Potter wrote:
> On Friday 01 February 2008 03:38, Eckhard Jokisch wrote:
> > Dear developers at Trolltech,
> > before you decide please think.
> > When will it happen that the Norwegian salaries for developing QT are to
> > expensive for Nokia's shareholders? At nokia this means that the costs in
> > Norway may not exceed some percentage of the whole QT-branch in Nokia.
> > Two years, three years?
> > I bet they are already setting up development resources in India or China
> > to continue developing QT in *the Nokia way*.
> > So it will be just a question of time when the offices in Norway will be
> > closed.
>
> Nokia wants Trolltech's knowledge and expertise, which includes everyone in
> the organization. To move any team would mean loosing people, which
> means "brain drain". They don't want that. Plus it would be very costly to
> replace Trolltech's awesome developers in training, etc. Not to mention
> there is no way Nokia could ever replace Trolltech's developers, as we are
> the experts in Qt and Qtopia development.
There are more points to this. I run a Qt consulting company in Denmark which
means pretty much the same salary level as Norway. Higher than south east
asia. But companies still hire us because we are worth every single euro they
pay us because of our skill level.
In the case of Nokia, the Norwegians needn't be scared. Nokia has around 2.500
people in their Danish office and many more over all of Scandinavia. They
definitely understand that money is not the only parameter when it comes to
coding. Maintainability, effectivity, productivity and creativity are all
much more important than salary.
There are other reasons I'm a bit worried (although also slightly optimistic)
about this deal, but the trolls being fired because of salary levels is not
one of them.
Bo.
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Message 3 in thread
> Nokia wants Trolltech's knowledge and expertise, which includes everyone
in
> the organization. To move any team would mean loosing people, which
> means "brain drain". They don't want that. Plus it would be very costly to
> replace Trolltech's awesome developers in training, etc. Not to mention
there
> is no way Nokia could ever replace Trolltech's developers, as we are the
> experts in Qt and Qtopia development.
>
>
> --
> Lorn 'ljp' Potter
> Software Engineer, Systems Group, MES, Trolltech
As far as I know, nobody is irreplaceable. I've seen this over and over
again with these corporations. Don't kid yourself that you are an "awesome
developer" and you are indispensable, it is not a healthy way of thinking.
Corporations can always take decisions that might not make any sense at all
at the micro levels (i.e. programmer's level).
But let's hope for the best for Qt and their fans/customers!
PS. Do you think they will increase the prices for the commercial licenses
and maintenance?
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Message 4 in thread
On Monday 04 February 2008 11:05, B.C. wrote:
> As far as I know, nobody is irreplaceable. I've seen this over and over
> again with these corporations. Don't kid yourself that you are an "awesome
> developer" and you are indispensable, it is not a healthy way of thinking.
> Corporations can always take decisions that might not make any sense at all
> at the micro levels (i.e. programmer's level).
I meant as a whole - _WE_ are not replaceable. There are some people in
Trolltech that have worked here for ~10 years. I seriously doubt any one of
those people can be easily replaced.
Closing Trolltech Oslo would mean a big brain drain, Nokia are going to do
that. No one is going to get layed off.
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Message 5 in thread
Mandag 4. februar 2008, skrev B.C.:
> But let's hope for the best for Qt and their fans/customers!
I think there are reasons to be optimistic about Nokia's plan to acquire
Trolltech. Nokia got a software strategy to enable rich cross-platform
development on phones, embedded and pc. Trolltechs Qt enables
application development for multiple platforms from a single source
code base, which fits really well with Nokias software strategy.
When going forward, Trolltech will continue in its current
organisational with full operational alignment with Nokia R&D,
continuing supporing new and existing customers, and the open source
community activeties. When it comes to open source, this effort will
increase. Nokia will be applying to become a patron of KDE e.V. and the
FreeQt foundation is being maintained to guarantee the continued
freedom of the toolkit KDE depends upon.
Trolltech will bring open source expertice and a strong culture to
Nokia.
Maybe I must eat my quotes of the Nokia/Trolltech audiocast[1] two year
from now. But I honestly don't think that Nokia would spend 16 NOK per
share in cash just to split or weaken Trolltech. A major focus when
aligning with Nokia R&D will be to continue development, sale to new
and existing customers, and open source effort. In my view something
else would be commercially unwise, making uncertainty amongst
commercial and open source developers.
1. http://www.nokia.com/A4813580
To sum it up. Nokia's acquisition is about next evolution of software,
expanding across platforms. Trolltech enables Nokia to accelerate its
cross-platform software strategy and focus on areas where Nokia can
differentiate and add value. Trolltech is a key part in Nokias cross
platform effort for the future.
Of course, the acquisition is in a very early stage. We don't got all
the answers. What will happen is that Nokia and Trollech employees will
form a working group to identify ways to further improve our
relationship with the open source community. We would really appreciate
your comments and ideas on how to achieve this at
opensource@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Best regards
Knut Yrvin
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