New domain for Qt announced: qt-project.org

Lars has just announced on his blog that the Qt Open Source Project, under the Open Governance, will be moved to a new domain: qt-project.org (don’t bother copy/pasting, there’s nothing there yet). At the official Nokia Qt Blog, Daniel Kihlberg gives us the date for the launch: October 17th.

The moving to a new domain name has always been in the plans. I remember registering a domain when we started discussing Open Governance, in April of last year. That was, of course, before I knew how long it would take to actually get off the ground and that tranferring domains would be a hassle.

This domain, along with all the infrastructure required to run the project, will be owned by a non-profit foundation. It will not be owned by Nokia, nor any other company. This is to be absolutely clear that the project is neutral, independent of its uses by the companies. Lars is also clear in his blog that decision-making is done by the community, following the guidelines that others and I have been talking about for months.

From the launch point forward, we will say “the Qt Project releases version x.y”, or “the Qt Project has decided to do Z”, where we understand “Qt Project” to be the community decision.

What does this mean for other projects using Qt, like KDE and MeeGo (the “downstreams”)? More access to the decision-making, to the inner workings, directing Qt to their needs; learning from Qt’s good and bad, also finding out where Qt isn’t going, so they can go. In fact, this topic was the subject of my my Camp KDE presentation in April.

Both KDE and MeeGo have begun doing that, to some extent. MeeGo’s goals of a Wayland-based installation, with much improved graphics performance, rhymes with Qt’s. MeeGo has been helping drive the Wayland project. KDE, for its part, has begun the “KDE Frameworks” project, to refactor the KDE Libraries from KDE 4 and make them part of the Qt Ecosystem.

I’m glad to be part of all three projects, helping them see and help each other. Shameless plug: alone, I can’t do much, but together we can do a lot. Join us!