Hi Lars, Thank you for the ride !
The road has seen some bumps but your teams and you have managed to keep Qt moving forward in interesting ways through all these years. It has been a pleasure to work with you on some of my contributions. All the best for your new journey ! Samuel > On 18 May 2022, at 10:27, Lars Knoll <lars.kn...@qt.io> wrote: > > Hi all, > > Let’s take the big news first. I’ve resigned from my position at The Qt > Company. More on that and what it means for the Qt Project further below. > > > But as I’ve spent almost exactly 25 years in the Qt ecosystem, 22 of those > working for the various companies owning Qt, I hope it’s ok if this gets a > bit longer and I spend some paragraphs looking back into history. > > As said, it’s been almost exactly 25 years, since I first heard about Qt. At > that time, I read an article in the German C’t computer magazine about a new > Desktop project for Linux called KDE. The underlying technology being used > was Qt. As a person that used Linux extensively during his studies, I > immediately got interested and it didn’t take long until I started my first > steps learning Qt. > > As some of you might know I got involved rather deeply about a year or two > later, when I started the KHTML project to create a new HTML engine for KDE > in 1998/1999. That project was later forked by Apple to form the basis for > their WebKit project, the Safari browser and Google’s Chrome browser. It's > cool to think that the browser engine(s) that most people use today started > off as a Qt based project all those years ago. > > I remember getting to know some of the people working for Trolltech back then > at KDE conferences. In the winter of 2000, they invited me over to Oslo to > have a look at Qt. The company was at that time still tiny with 11 or 12 > employees. I got a great tour of Oslo including the ski jumping tournament at > Holmenkollen and signed up for the job. > > I was originally expecting to spend 2-3 years at Trolltech and then at some > point move back to Germany. As you all can see, that’s not how it went > though. I ended up staying in Norway and have been working with and for Qt > ever since. > > Starting with Qt 1.0, Trolltech released the source code to Qt (at that time > only for Linux/Unix), and the Open Source nature of Qt played a big part in > its success. I’m very happy that we could continue on that path, by over time > making all platforms Qt supports available as Open Source as well as moving > over to more standard and freer licensing (first GPL, later LGPL). > > At the end of the Trolltech years, we started looking into how to make it > easier for the community to contribute to Qt, and first had a model where our > users could submit patches to us. That never really worked very well, and I’m > really happy that we moved over to our current governance model in 2011. > Since then Qt has truly been an Open Source project. > When Qt got sold by Nokia in 2012, many people considered it a dead > technology. But I and many of you believed in the technology, and together > we’ve managed to turn this into a great success. > > As you all know, Qt is a dual licensed technology. That Qt has the backing of > a commercial business behind it, is what made the required investments > possible to keep the technology competitive. > > I’m extremely proud of what we achieved with Qt over the last 10 years. It > happened because everybody on this list put in a lot of work into making Qt > one of the best development frameworks on this planet. > > Qt is something that I care deeply about. I’ve been with it all the way and > through all the ups and downs from when Trolltech got its first larger > investment to now. But seeing what you all are doing, I know it’s in very > good hands moving forward. > > > > Leaving The Qt Company and in the future spending most of my time outside the > Qt ecosystem has been a difficult decision. But in the end, after those 25 > years, it does feel very much like the right decision for me. I want to try > out something else. > > So I will be joining a small Norwegian startup with one of the founders of > Trolltech. While still in Software, it’ll be something rather different, not > related to C++ or developer tools. > > > > So how do things continue from here? > > First of all, I’ll still be working for Qt until my summer vacations at the > end of June. > > After that, I will have significantly less time for Qt, but I certainly won’t > be completely gone. I will continue to read the Qt project mailing lists and > maybe come by for events such as the Contributor or World Summit. Also, feel > free to send me a mail at any time, I’ll try to help where I can. > > I will also keep my position as a maintainer for Qt Multimedia. I believe the > module is now in a decent shape, and I should be able to spend some hours per > week on it. > But a few hours per week will certainly not be enough to fill the work I’m > currently doing for Qt. So, I have decided to resign from my position as the > Chief Maintainer of the Qt project. I’ll send more details around this in a > separate mail. > > > I’d like to thank everybody whom I’ve worked with over the years. I’ve made > many friends in Qt and through Qt. It’s been a fantastic ride and will always > be grateful for the time I could spend on the technology and with the people > developing it. > > Cheers, > > Lars > > _______________________________________________ > Development mailing list > Development@qt-project.org > https://lists.qt-project.org/listinfo/development _______________________________________________ Development mailing list Development@qt-project.org https://lists.qt-project.org/listinfo/development
