On Monday 09 March 2009, Mathias wrote: > Gentlemen, > > having followed the recent discussions on the prospects of Qt Jambi in this > list pretty closely I cannot help but share my point of view on this. > > IMHO Trolltech Qt Jambi has had and does have one serious problem. > However, this problem is not of a technical kind. Technically Jambi is an > extremely valueable addition to the Java world, it's simply the best > desktop UI framework available for Java. Swing is a nice try but has never > really been used by it's creators/maintainers for anything but small demo > apps, and it shows. SWT can match Qt for performance but falls behind in > every other dimension (elegance, extensiveness, extensibility...). > Trolltech has been developing Qt for many years, lots of software has been > written on top of it, it has matured and is well maintained. > Using the existing Qt C++ codebase to fill the Java desktop UI framework > void was an excellent idea and I think (even though there might still be > some bugs here and there) Gunnar, Eskil and the others have done a really > good job making it work. >
Qt Jambi is excellent. The Qt Software people also. These words say it all. > The reason that Qt Jambi is facing problems is not a technical one. > IMHO Trolltech has done a truly terrible job with Jambi MARKETING. > Being a software development company it seems Trolltech has not put enough > focus on selecting the right people for its marketing/PR functions. > Let me give you three points to support my case: > [...] > 2. Creating visibility, fostering adoption, seeding a community > Three crucial marketing tasks. Three complete fails. > Jambi has been released more than 1.5 years ago and I bet more than 98% of > Java developers have never heard of it. If you look at java forums, blogs > and the ever recurring "SWT vs. Swing" discussions you will not see people > pointing to Qt for rescue. Not because they think Qt is not up for the > task. Simply because they don't know about it. What has Trolltech done to > create visibility for Jambi? Apart from good old advertising (both on- and > off the web) I could think of visiting and speaking at big java events, > organize contests, give out prizes for the best Jambi app, recruiting and > supporting "lamp post" projects, embracing the java centric academia, ... > whatever. Jambi doesn't even have its own proper website. It has a > reference documentation pages. If it does have a "reference projects" list > somewhere I haven't found it. > There is no community. As some of you have pointed out, traffic on this > list is extremely low for a project with the punch potential of Qt for > Java. This is not the fault of Gunnar or Eskil who I think do an excellent > job on their end. It's a MARKETING job to reach out to the target group, > get them excited and bring them on. > Well, I strongly disagree here. Qt Jambi is definitely known to the majority of Java developers whom I talked to in the last year. And these people told me they were interested in taking a closer look, but never found the time. Therefore, my impression is that the markert for Java GUI toolkits is saturated with solutions that are good enough for most applications. Especially SWT is of that kind. And with Eclipse RCP and the huge variety of products already built on top of this platform a lot of professional work is done with the Eclipse RCP (and therefore SWT) as a target. Qt Jambi simply arrived late. This was an uphill battle from the start. > 3. Communication. > The prime example for the serious lack of professionalism in Trolltech > marketing/PR is the press release issued on Feb. 19th (and now featured > prominently on second place in the google results for a search for "Qt > Jambi"). The content consists of three main points: > - Trolltech will reduce resources dedicated to Jambi. > - Jambi will be put under LGPL. > - Trolltech will "host and help maintain a community-driven Qt Jambi > implementation" > To me this sound like two good news and one bad one. The second point is > excellent news! > Now, if you had to choose a title for that press release, what would it be? > I would think something like "Qt Jambi opened up to community" or "Qt Jambi > community to receive more focus" or anything else highlighting the positive > points. > Instead Trolltech decided to go for "Qt Software to discontinue Qt Jambi > after 4.5 release". > To me this reads like bad news. Really bad news. A tomb stone. Over and > out. That's it. Done. > Whoever in their right mind and interest in seeing Jambi prosper would > issue a press release with that title? > This is a stab in the back of all the Trolltech developers who have spent > many months building the great Qt Java bridge available today. And it's the > most effective countermeasure to any effort put into the third content > point. It will take an enormous amount of work reverting the damage done by > that PR title. > The title is directed at the people who have the money, not devs. And it gives them the right message: Qt Jambi as a commercial product that you can rely upon and get support contracts for is going away. I don't see anything wrong with that, sad as it may sound. > IMHO there are a lot of opensource projects that do a much better job in > marketing themselves than Trolltech has done with Qt Jambi. > I can understand that a tech company has a tech focus (and I do think the > Trolltech people know their stuff with regard to anything related to code) > and that they might lack some competence in non-tech functions. However, I > would think that maybe Nokia, being the mother and a consumer brand company > with HUGE marketing experience, should be able to offset at least some of > the deficiencies. > Again, I disagree. Trolltech has been doing great as company. Qt is a very successful product that is used widely. So you can't tell me that they don't know their marketing. I think they know it quite well. > Now, what does it all mean for the ones of us who have decided to adopt Qt > Jambi despite its name and because of all its great qualities? > I for my part will continue to use what is available and work around any > bugs that I might still be discovering. The existing versions offer much > more to me than any other Java alternative. And as long as this continues > to be the case I will continue to use Qt Jambi. With a potential Jambi 5.0 > or without. > I hope Gunnar, Eskil and the others will manage to leave the codebase in a > stable state with most of the known bugs addressed. In that case there is > no reason not to use it. However, officially it will be dead, murdered by > marketing incompetence. > Qt Jambi may be in an ill health. But that doesn't mean that it is really dying. We'll only know for sure when it's dead and rotting away and not a day earlier. Actually, I will counter your argument about marketing here: If you think that open source projects do a better job at marketing than Trolltech/Nokia did, then you might have a chance to show us how you believe it should be done properly when Qt Jambi becomes an open source project because then it's up to the community to do the marketing and you can be part of it :). Regards, Gregor
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