In blog postings after the Microsoft announcement Nokia Qt technical leaders stated that Qt desktop development had pretty much reached the end. They would concentrate new work on the mobile releases of the framework.
This sale is an attempt to extract value from the desktop part of the framework. The alternative was to be left with a worthless asset after a few years of withering on the vine.
If I was a commercial Qt developer I would consider the desktop portion of the framework in permanent maintenance (fee) mode. Yes they said development would continue but that is what is always said in this type of situation. There is I suppose a chance that this company means it but that would not be the typical situation.
If that is the case, that it would seem it is time to activate the agreement they have with KDE (ie, release Qt with an even more open license).
If Nokia has mandated an end to Qt Desktop development and we can reasonably expect an end to Qt Mobile development given Nokia's priorities, well then we can expect an end. (that's a period after end)
If Nokia had actually sold all of Qt to an actual software house, it would have been good. This looks much more like a "fragment to destroy" strategy instead.
"Qt desktop development had pretty much reached the end"
That might have been Henrik Hartz. I think he meant that there's nothing revolutionary happening right now on the desktop so they only have to keep up with new OS versions.
This sale is an attempt to extract value from the desktop part of the framework. The alternative was to be left with a worthless asset after a few years of withering on the vine.
If I was a commercial Qt developer I would consider the desktop portion of the framework in permanent maintenance (fee) mode. Yes they said development would continue but that is what is always said in this type of situation. There is I suppose a chance that this company means it but that would not be the typical situation.