Trolltech Going Public

An anonymous reader writes "After 12 years in business, Trolltech, the company whose founders created KDE, has filed an application for listing on the Oslo Stock Exchange (OSE). From the article: 'The OSE reports receiving the application the following day, and says Trolltech is now subject to disclosure of information requirements. IPO rumors sprang up around Trolltech last Fall, when the company hired Juha Christensen and Tod Nielsen in September, and then added Benoit Schillings and Dr. Karsten Homann in October. The company said in January that it doubled its design wins, among other significant 2005 achievements', particularly in the arena of using Linux as OS to power mobile phones."

Mod company down

[Rob T Firefly]

(-1, Trolltech)

Re:Mod company down

[Tackhead]

> (-1, Trolltech)

No, they're going public because they need the capital. For once it's OK to feed the troll!

Re:Mod company down

[Arandir]

They reason they are going public is because the owners are selling the company. Period. The type of business this is doesn't need huge influxes of capital to grow.

p.s. I just hope they don't become a huge impersonal amoral company, like Google did when it went public.

Actually, they are against trolls

[mangu]

They can be reached through this [troll.no] website. Need I say more?

Re:Mod company down

[Capt. Beyond]

ermm.. Canopy divested about a year ago. http://kdemyths.urbanlizard.com/myth/60 [urbanlizard.com]

Canopy invested in Trolltech before Caldera turned into SCO.

Re:Mod company down

[Rob T Firefly]

Where is the +1 lame joke mod??

In my pocket with my +1 dagger and no tea.

Re:Mod company down

[HeroreV]

Don't you mean -1?

Trolling technology to be patented?

[Orrin Bloquy]

GNAA's going to foul their drawers over this.

Re:If you mean....

[misleb]

Not if they foul their pants!

good for Trolltech

[FudRucker]

Kongratulations:)

Probably not good for Trolltech's users

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Unfortunately, IPOs rarely prove to be advantageous to the customers of the company in question. If I were making decisions about a cross-platform toolkit to use for development, Qt would just have gone way down the list. It's all very well having the source, but it's still much better if the guys who really know it inside out are doing the maintenance, and some of that maintenance may not be in the future shareholders' interests.

Do you mean Linux has a GUI?

[iXiXi]

Never knew that...

Re:Do you mean Linux has a GUI?

[JeanBaptiste]

even weirder, I just found out that windows has a command line.

Re:Do you mean Linux has a GUI?

[ENOENT]

s/Windows/Macintosh/g

Re:Do you mean Linux has a GUI?

[rdoger6424]

it's based off of BSD- of course it has a terminal emulator

Re:Do you mean Linux has a GUI?

[electrosoccertux]

"Never knew that..."

The correct reply is "Never _GNU_ that."

--RMS

Re:Do you mean Linux has a GUI?

[misleb]

Correction: "Never GNU/Knew that"

-The real RMS

Sweet!

[MoOsEb0y]

Let's do the QT4 Dance [trolltech.com] to celebrate!

THATS great

[WindBourne]

I guess that movies explains the diff. Ppl want to join in on the OSS approach, whereas only those with other interest join in on this dance. [flamingmailbox.com] Shoots; he even had to get after others to not sit down.

Re:THATS great

[pembo13]

Maybe there are side effect to air conditioning that we do not yet know about.

Re:THATS great

[llornkcor]

naaaa.. it's due to the lack of warmth and sunlight in the winter, and over abundance of sunlight in the summer. Developers in Brisbane are more moderate.

Bunch o' Dancin' Fools

[bdrasin]

Wow, that is about the dumbest thing I've ever seen.

Re:Bunch o' Dancin' Fools

[goarilla]

right on !!!
after that movie i've decided to only use gtk apps :D

Re:Sweet!

[Fordiman]

Unfortunately, that file is broken (ie: in a propietary format) - which is kinda weird for its subject matter.

requirements for being public

[Lord Ender]

Will it always be in the stock holders' best financial interest that new versions of QT for linux be licensed under the GPL? If not, they will be obligated to change licenses to something less free.

Re:requirements for being public

[stilborne]

if that were to happen, the Free Qt Foundation's agreement with Trolltech will kick in and Qt will be released under the BSD. that's a worst case and rather unlikely scenario, however.

it assumes that having Qt under the GPL is a bad thing for Trolltech. i really have to wonder how well known and popular Qt would be today if it hadn't been released as permissively as it have.

there have also been a -lot- of benefits to Trolltech with having Qt GPL'd including having a full desktop platform on UNIX and Linux that "Qt-friendly", the immense amount of testing and real-world feedback they get via the usage of the GPL versions, etc.

there are a lot of companies out there, several of whom are also public, that have released their primary software assets under a Free software license such as the GPL. so there's precedence for this in any case.

Re:requirements for being public

[Kjella]

it assumes that having Qt under the GPL is a bad thing for Trolltech. i really have to wonder how well known and popular Qt would be today if it hadn't been released as permissively as it have.

Not to get all paranoid, but there's a few other cases where previously GPL'd software has gone closed source. Some very above water "we need to make some money to keep going", some very much like a bait and switch. In an IPO owners could come in which feel this is the time to make a switch and capitalize short-term o

Re:requirements for being public

[SassyDave]

Plus, Trolltech releasing Qt under the GPL is almost exactly the same as any software company using a "free for personal use" license. I imagine that most (maybe all?) commercial software houses that use Qt, use the commercial license (mine does), instead of the GPL. For whatever reason (ignorance or otherwise), companies seem to shy away from the GPL when there's money involved.

Re:requirements for being public

[stilborne]

afaik, they'd have to be new plugins (the current ones have been shipped as part of Qt) and be a separate product altogether.

and it's not like having a GPL version of their code has hurt them, which is the base premise of your supposition. i believe it's actually -helped- their sales.

Re:requirements for being public

[Red Flayer]

Well, first, I'm unaware of public corporate law in Norway.

But WRT to public companies in the US legally being required to act in the best interests of shareholders, there can be limitations. Otherwise, any corporation that loses money (and there are plenty) could be sued for not just investing in profitable companies instead.

Provided that the executives act in a manner consistent with the published mission statement and other published corporate goodies, their actions do not necessarily have to maximiz

Re:requirements for being public

[10Ghz]

Red Hat publishes all their software under the GPL, I fail to see the difference here. And they seem to be doing very well with the GPL. and if the employees still retain majority of the shares, then the outside-stockholders can't really do much.

It would be very difficult for the stockholders to make demands regarding the licensing ofthe product.

Re:requirements for being public

[Lord Ender]

99% of what RedHat sells is stuff they DON'T OWN THE COPYRIGHTS TO.

Trolltech owns the rights to QT.

So they are VERY VERY different as far as IP goes.

Re:requirements for being public

[stilborne]

like the identity management software they recently GPL'd after buying it? or how about GFS after buying systina (sp?)? or all the stuff that red hat employees have written in house (which is non-negligable)?

no, Red Hat has a -policy- stating they release everything they do as free software.

Re:requirements for being public

[m50d]

They made a deal with KDE years ago, it becomes BSD licensed if anything like that happens.

Re:requirements for being public

[Arandir]

Nonsense. Trolltech cannot make Qt less free, according to a legal guarantee they made with KDE. http://www.kde.org/whatiskde/kdefreeqtfoundation.p hp [kde.org]

Qt model is very good

[mangu]

Will it always be in the stock holders' best financial interest that new versions of QT for linux be licensed under the GPL?

They have a dual license system which is the perfect answer for those who say no one can profit under the GPL. You can get Qt under the GPL and then, of course, what you do with it continues under GPL. But if you want to implement something using Qt and sell it without the GPL, you can buy Qt from Trolltech under a different license.

If they should stop releasing Qt under the GPL they

Re:Qt model is very good

[whoop]

I->think(Qt->developers(would_rather_quit(and->tak e->up(knitting)->than(have->to->figure_out(gnome's API)))));

Re:Qt model is very good

[fandog]

Mod parent up, that's the first time I've laughed out loud today...

Re:Qt model is very good

[HeroreV]

I didn't know the GNOME API had Lisp bindings.

Re:Qt model is very good

[drsmithy]

They have a dual license system which is the perfect answer for those who say no one can profit under the GPL.

I'm not quite sure how the answer to "you can't make money selling GPLed software" of "when you want to make money, don't use the GPL" is "perfect"...

Re:requirements for being public

[DragonWriter]

Well, if not, someone else will build their own version from the last free source and compete with them -- the threat of that, itself, makes it likely that it will remain GPL. If they can't make money that way, they may go closed source and try to compete with whatever the community does, or abandon it entirely, but in any case, the open source versions up to the last one released won't disappear, and will, unless the community has moved on to something else, continue to be maintained and developed.

That's,

Yes.

[babbling]

Can you imagine what would happen if they decided to release the code under a more restrictive license? The project would be forked quicker than you could say "fork it!" ... and then no one would be using their product. Bad idea. Even Microsoft knows that people using your product but not paying for it is better than no one using your product at all.

Founders

[JRiddell]

"the company whose founders created KDE"

That's incorrect, the founders of Trolltech are not KDE coders, although the founder of KDE was hired by Trolltech and now heads Qt development.

As usual, the summary is incorrect.

[Slithe]

Trolltech did not found the KDE project; Matthias Ettrich created KDE. Trolltech just created QT, the widget toolkit library used by KDE. God, don't the Slashdot editors know anything?!

Re:As usual, the summary is incorrect.

[chrismcdirty]

You must be new here.

Re:As usual, the summary is incorrect.

[Anonymous Coward]

God, don't the Slashdot editors know anything?!

This is God,

No they don't.

Re:As usual, the summary is incorrect.

[Senzei]

It figures God would be an Anonymous Coward. You have just validated everything that Catholic school inadvertantly taught me.

Re:As usual, the summary is incorrect.

[apathy maybe]

Actually I just didn't want to karma whore.

Re:As usual, the summary is incorrect.

[spasticus74]

How surprising that God is an Anonymous Coward.

Re:As usual, the summary is incorrect.

[Sleepy]

Trolltech did not found the KDE project; Matthias Ettrich created KDE. Trolltech just created QT, the widget toolkit library used by KDE. God, don't the Slashdot editors know anything?!

Slashdot made millions posing as a "Linux resource" during the .com bubble... fine, OK.
But you don't believe Slackdot editors actually use _use_ Linux (or know what the hell it is)... ... do you?

You must be young, idealistic, or have a 6-digit Slashdot ID. :)

Re:As usual, the summary is incorrect.

[Cheapy]

Yeah! Why don't the editors know all manners of useless trivia!

Re:As usual, the summary is incorrect.

[SassyDave]

No, you're mistaken. The summary says it accurately: "Trolltech, the company whose founders created KDE" (emphasis mine). Guess who Matthias Ettrich works for?

Re:As usual, the summary is incorrect.

[LizardKing]

Matthias Ettrich created KDE. He did not found TrollTech. The summary is incorrect. That is all.

Re:As usual, the summary is incorrect.

[stilborne]

he didn't.

Re:As usual, the summary is incorrect.

[whoop]

Slashdot has no editors. They edit nothing. Look at the summary again. It is just: An anonymous reader writes, "..." They just take a random user submission, and punch a button to make it published, copying whatever the user typed up. They don't check links, facts, duplicates, etc. It's all chocked up to, "well, the submitter got it wrong, not us." Even then, they only find time to submit a dozen articles perhaps in a day, out of hundreds/thousands submitted.

I wouldn't be surprised if the submissions

Re:As usual, the summary is incorrect.

[HeroreV]

Even I knew Trolltech didn't create KDE, and I use Windows by choice. Just a few seconds reading the KDE article at Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] would tell you that.

These /. editors really are morons. I knew they weren't the brightest, but shit!

Should I be scared?

[ajole]

Why is it that this doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling in the same that QObject(parent) does, yet I'm strangely compelled to take part in the public offering?

NYSE?

[SmileeTiger]

Does anyone know if we will be able to buy Trolltech stock here in the US through the normal firms we use?
Schwab in particular :)

Re:NYSE?

[sirinek]

I don't see why not... it should just be the stock symbol with .OL at the end of it, so you can track it on any stock site.

Re:NYSE?

[paulthomas]

For that to work you need a bank to issue American Depository Receipts for the stock. The bank (Bank of New York most commonly) buys a certain number of shares and then issues shares on the OTC market in the US representing the underlying foreign shares.

For example, if you want to own 0992.hk (Lenovo), you can not easily do so directly in a US brokerage account. However, you can own the American Depository shares which represent 20 underlying shares on the Hong Kong market. These depository shares trade on the Over the Counter market (quoted on the pink sheets) as LNVGY (.pk for pinksheets).

Some sponsored ADRs actually trade on established exchanges like the NYSE. For example, Sony has American Depository shares which represent their common stock trading on the NYSE as SNE. Hitachi does the same thing as HIT.

Whether you can buy a foreign issue (or an ADR representing the foreign issue) in a local brokerage account depends mostly on whether the company has taken steps to create an ADR or whether there is enough interest to create an underwriting profit for a bank to create an ADR.

There is no indication that an ADR (trading either on the OTC market or on the NYSE or other established exchange) will be created for the Trolltech common stock. If it is not, your only option is to use a brokerage which lets you directly buy and hold foreign stocks on foreign exchanges. Such an account is usually considerably more expensive than your typical discount brokerage account.

Re:NYSE?

[Reducer2001]

One little, two little, three little acronyms!

Re:NYSE?

[paulthomas]

I at least make an effort to define them (even if not in the most appropriate place).

For the record:

• OTC: Over The Counter. A market for stocks and other securities that do not trade on formal exchanges
• NYSE: New York Stock Exchange
• ADR: American Depository Receipt
• LNVGY, SNE, HIT: Stock symbols for ADRs (see above)
• US: United States (of America)

End of Transmission

Re:NYSE?

[the_womble]

It is highly unlikely that Trolltech will want to go to the expense of having ADRs [moneyterms.co.uk] listed in the US.

Most European firms with US listings want to cancel them them because the cost of a US listing is high - complying with US regulatory requirements were always costly and Sarbanes-Oxley has made it a lot worse.

Cable and Wireless is forcing Americans with small shareholdings to sell [investegate.co.uk] so it can end its SEC registration.

Re:NYSE?

[paulthomas]

So true. Even American companies are "going private" (below 300 shareholders) to avoid regulatory burdens.

Re:NYSE?

[paulthomas]

Schwab Global Investing Services [schwab.com] is the link you were looking for. I don't know what accounts it is available in, but I would guess it is not available in their regular accounts. There's a phone number there. See my other post in this thread for details re: foreign issues.

So....

[dracken]

are the employees dancing [trolltech.com] with joy again ?

The official OSE notification

[jmoen]

This is the official notification from http://ose.no/ [ose.no] (Oslo Stock Exchange) http://www.newsweb.no/index.asp?symbol=TROLL&meldi ng_ID=129065 [newsweb.no] .

Nice ticker symbol if anything :)

Re:The official OSE notification

[Orrin Bloquy]

Not to be confused with http://o.noes/ [o.noes]

Re:The official OSE notification

[LunaticTippy]

Actually, this one is even working [www.ono.es]

Will the be as honest as they currently are?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.trolltech.com/products/qt/licenses [trolltech.com]

You can't even make a prototype of a program with out paying TT - they require you to destroy all code and start from scratch. No code developed using the free version may be used in a for profit project.

" * Build commercial software and software whose source code you wish to keep private.

* Freely choose licensing for the software you are writing (Proprietary, Open Source or both).
* Get commercial supp

Re:Will the be as honest as they currently are?

[UngodAus]

According to the head honcho's, nothing is changing in this respect.

Re:Will the be as honest as they currently are?

[mindtriggerz]

This is a virility issue. AFAIK, the Open Source edition requires you to licence all code under a GPL(-compatible) license. Since incorperating any "prototype" code would taint the codebase, Trolltech is just warning their users.

Re:Will the be as honest as they currently are?

[DAldredge]

If I write the code, I am free to license it under any license I wish.

Re:Will the be as honest as they currently are?

[HeroreV]

As mindtriggerz pointed out, this is entirely due to the GPL and has nothing to do with Trolltech's commercial licensing terms. If you want to blame something, you should blame the GPL.

Re:Will the be as honest as they currently are?

[rm69990]

Ummm, the GPL doesn't contain clauses like that. Plus, even if it did, since Trolltech holds the copyrights to QT, Trolltech can waive any of their own rights and any requirements on the licensee as Trolltech sees fit for users of the GPL edition, so your point is bogus anyways. The only thing they can't do is impose additional restrictions on existing GPL licensees without their consent, and for the licensee it is a tradeoff (lose the rights granted by the GPL, but gain the right to make proprietary QT sof

Re:Will the be as honest as they currently are?

[rm69990]

Ummmm, YES! If Trolltech waives their own rights under the GPL, or grants a license that replaces the GPL's terms, the derivative code is no longer required to be GPL'd. If a copyright owner (Trolltech) and you enter into a license agreement that replaces the GPL's terms, the GPL no longer applies. Only a copyright owner may do this. Trolltech has full authority to relieve the restrictions placed on any licensee (any person modifying or redistributing Trolltech's GPL'd code), or, with their consent, placing

Re:Will they be as honest as they currently are?

[cbreaker]

I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that there's very little hope that this clause could ever be enforced. However, if you do write software, compile it with the GPL version, and it ever got leaked out.. it could cause some grief.

OSS true motivations

[Spankophile]

One common question about Open Source development is "How will programmers get paid?"

It has become quite apparent that software developers working in Open Source definitely want to get paid, they'd just rather do it via IPO and devil take the hindmost.

No-cost 3D software using Qt

[Un pobre guey]

DAZ Studio [daz3d.com] is one of many examples of commercial software that use Qt. It is also free as in free beer.

Re:No-cost 3D software using Qt

[Orrin Bloquy]

I wonder if this has influenced their backpedaling on initially referring to it as open source software. Perhaps they purchased commercial licenses and now cannot release their code without violating their Qt license.

Special deal with TrollTech

[Un pobre guey]

Not exactly. Here is something they posted on a DAZ Studio forum:

"Thankfully, we were able to get Trolltech to discount their SDK fee considerably since the package that we're offering is limited for use specifically with DAZ|Studio. We do not offer the complete QT package, if you're interested in that so that you can use it to develop items for other apps, then you'll need to contact Trolltech directly. It's been a very useful tool for our development team and we wouldn't have this cool cross-platform ap

Now that they're going to IPO

[kimvette]

Does this mean they are going to try to be more aggressive in trying to gain market share? The last time I checked Qt licensing the price was outrageous for each seat. Compared to developing apps using Qt, it is much, much cheaper to subscribe to MSDN and gain access to about $50K worth of development tools for around $2K, and if worried about cross-platform interoperability look at Crossover Office or .wine as either porting or runtime solutions.

The pricing for proprietary use of Qt is unreasonable (compare to other class libraries, especially in the Windows world. Even Stingray with its slew of libraries is MUCH cheaper) and until Trolltech brings their licensing costs down to more reasonable levels, you're going to see proprietary developers continue to use harder-to-code-for-but-up-front-startup-cost friendlier Gtk for proprietary applications, despite STUPID dumbed-down user-unfriendly dialogs like the GtK file dialog that nearly everybody hates.

Re:Now that they're going to IPO

[nigels]

The pricing for proprietary use of Qt is unreasonable

You get what you pay for. Go ahead and waste your time with mind-numbing API's such as MFC...

Re:Now that they're going to IPO

[Anonymous Coward]

MFC eh? Have you looked at a calendar lately to notice what decade you're in?

Re:Now that they're going to IPO

[ClamIAm]

If it's unreasonable, how have they survived all this time?

I have personally never coded with Qt, but I've heard that the ease of developing with it justifies the cost.

Re:Now that they're going to IPO

[Pete]

It really does, it's a fantastic API (with even better documentation). I did some commercial development with Qt (think it was version 2) back in 2000 - damn it was nice. Only minor problem is that it spoiled me for other kinds of C++ development, especially a few years later when I found myself working with MS Visual C++ (version 6, no less). The horror, the horror. :-)

Re:Now that they're going to IPO

[kabrakan]

Or waste countless man hours working with an unintuitive API, plus not being able to easily deliver a cross-platform product with considerable ease. So, develop for free with open source Qt and release under GPL, or if you are a real software house that doesn't want to waste time, invest a couple thousand in the initial fee. In most cases the investment pays off.

Re:Now that they're going to IPO

[Just Some Guy]

and if worried about cross-platform interoperability look at Crossover Office or .wine as either porting or runtime solutions.

How's Wine doing on OS X PPC, AIX, HP-UX, IRIX, Solaris, or non-Intel Linux [trolltech.com] these days? QT is directly supported on all those latforms, but I doubt any other cross-platform toolkit handles all (if any) of them.

Re:Now that they're going to IPO

[kimvette]

If that's the case, then their closing the GPL version (thereby forcing Qt3 and 4 into BSD land) would be a Good Thing(tm) for Linux developers.

Re:Now that they're going to IPO

[llornkcor]

you are free to do this, provided you also provide sources for your customers.

IPO=new interests

[recharged95]

Public? For profit? Shareholders?

[To keep the software free,] get ready to dole out all your personal information in the [difficult] registeration process--compared to today.

Re:IPO=new interests

[UngodAus]

Nothing's going to change in this respect according to the chain of command. Can't say much being an employee and all, but it's definately a good thing for the company, and for the community at large.

Re:IPO=new interests

[RickBauls]

You make it seem so negative. Need I remind you that Redhat [yahoo.com] and Novell [yahoo.com] have stocks? Even though they're corporations, both of them have distributions of Linux that are in distrowatch.com's top three.

Not 'Public'

[Macrobat]

It's PubliK.

Re:Not 'Public'

[CrosseyedPainless]

I'd mod you up for that.

Trolltechs source code is public...

[UngodAus]

so why not the company? :)

Buying shares ?

[pupeno]

How does one buy shares ?

Participate in IPO?

[arunkv]

Anyone know how non-Norwegians can participate in the IPO?

exclusionary

[m874t232]

TrollTech's behavior for mobile devices has been exclusionary: using Qt/Embedded ensures that other toolkits cannot run on the same device in any meaningful way.

This would be excusable if at least their claims were true that their embedded toolkits are faster than running an X11 server with an X11 toolkit, but, sadly, the reverse is true: not only are you locked into their software, Qt/Embedded is also slow and resource intensive compared to a good X11-based implementation.

Re:exclusionary

[llornkcor]

uhhhh, afraid not. http://blogs.qtdeveloper.net/archives/2006/04/07/b lazingly-fast-fud-busters/ [qtdeveloper.net]
http://blogs.qtdeveloper.net/archives/2006/04/10/f ud-busting-part-ii/ [qtdeveloper.net]