One of the more drastic changes in the latest Gnome release is a change to the back-end engine of the built-in Epiphany Web browser. From using the same Gecko engine found in Firefox and related browsers, Epiphany will switch to WebKit, the KHTML-based rendering engine found in Apple's Safari and Mac OS X, KDE's Konqueror and other applications.
WebKit is integrated with the upcoming Qt v4.4 application development framework. Qt could soon become more widespread in embedded devices following Nokia's acquisition of Trolltech, Qt's developer.
Qt forms the basis of many well-known desktop applications, such as Google Earth, Opera and Skype. Qt is used to develop graphical user interfaces (GUIs) and is the main GUI toolkit for KDE.
Qt's derivative, Qtopia--also a Trolltech product--is already used in millions of consumer-level mobile phones, notably in Asia and through the manufacturer Motorola.
Gnome is going to officially include QT 4 in it's product, just as Nokia has acquired QT's patents and rights. The big question is, will Nokia let OSS use QT without charge or will Nokia decide to enforce it's royalties? If it's the latter, then we will have SCO all over again, so I don't know why Gnome chose this of all times to start using QT. SCO's claim was obscure and hard to prove. If Nokia goes this route, QT is well documented, I'm sure Trolltech did all the correct steps for it's patents, and it won't be hard to prove who uses QT as they advertise the fact. So their case would be much stronger than SCO's was. If this happens, KDE will have a LOT more problems than Gnome.
Now bear in mind I'm not a lawyer, and I really don't know under what conditions Trolltech let KDE use QT in the past. But QT is now under Nokia's control and I'm merely pointing out what could happen. Hopefully it wont.
Pudge
