Nokia to acquire Trolltech

[Eduardo Robles]

So let's see the facts: Nokia is pro software patents [1]. I belive the
trolls are not. GPL 3 requires all copyright holders to "free" their patents
to others creating derived work from them [2]. And let's take a look at
history and its order:
1. Trolltech changes Qt to GPL 3
2. Oficial announcement: Nokia to acquire Trolltech

So I can only but guess that there were some concerns in the trolls about
being acquired by Trolltech and putting Qt in hands of a patent encumbered
of software patents and that's why they hasten up to change to GPL 3. But..
what about Qtopia? Or QSA?  they seem not to be under GPL v3. In general, if
Nokia doesn't make an statement against Software patents, which seems rather
unlikely, I won't trust Nokia as much as I trust Trolltech. Nokia is not
doing any favor to open source and the community by fostering software
patents and that should be taken seriously when analyzing this acqusition.

--
[1] http://swpat.ffii.org/gasnu/nokia/index.en.html
[2] http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-3.0.html
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