Why should I be optimistic about Trolltech and Nokia?
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I know, I know. Pessimism just isn’t very attractive. But
sometimes an optimist can’t find anything to say.
A couple of weeks ago, Trolltech
announced that they are being acquired by Nokia. I decided to simmer for a
couple weeks before making any comment, but my perspective has not changed. I
just can’t see this as good news. Bluntly, I assume this will be the death of
Trolltech.
And that would be a shame. Trolltech is on my short list of
software companies that I admire. Their product, Qt, has an amazing
reputation. Technologically, it seems to be the top dog in a space which is
crowded with lots of people trying to offer solutions to a very tough set of
problems. Trolltech plays well with both the open source world and the
commercial world, and they make a heckuva lot of money doing it. I’m
impressed.
(But I still wish they would put the pricing back on their
website. Yep, the unnamed company in my Sales Guy Tantrum last
month was Trolltech.)
I have no affiliation with Trolltech (or Nokia). I am not
even a customer (of either one). As someone who is very interested in the
business of software, I just hate seeing a good software company morph into a
bad one. Nokia is a great company and I’ll be happy to see them prove me
wrong, but in general, when a software company gets acquired by a non-software
company, it immediately begins a steep and steady decline.
Managing a software company, especially one that sells to
developers, is not like anything else. It’s just different, and that’s that.
- If you’re great at the business of software, there’s an
excellent chance you would be incompetent as a business manager in any other
field. - Similarly, anybody who is excellent in another field is
almost certainly going to struggle if they take the reins of a software
venture.
Also see: JSR-203 more New I/O APIs - NIO.2
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Nokia is a great cell phone company. None of their skills
are going to apply very well to the development, maintenance, marketing and
sales of a C++ portability framework.
So maybe I’m jumping the gun a bit, but I like to beat the
rush. I’m ready now to mourn the loss of Trolltech, yet another great software
company destroyed by a BigCo who assumed that managing a software business should
be easy.
If I’m wrong, tell me why.
http://software.ericsink.com/entries/trolltech_nokia.html
