And this is why it is efficient to have fewer staff than users.

Actually earlier today someone used "got this news from fb already" and it took me awhile to understand it meant Facebook. I guess enough people use that service now that it's assumed that only dangerous outsiders avoid it. I'll go report to CENTRAL Central Intelligence now and turn myself in, will save time.

That is better, given the German origins.

Would you like that in Bitcoin or Zimbabwe dollars?

We can merge them and call it Mega Office!

I don't agree with this about how Android is safer. I plugged my USB cable into the wall socket and now have lost all feeling in my hand.

Well, they have widgets which are sort of non-maximized windows.

Then what should he do instead? Since he'll be called evil no matter what he does, should he keep the money and build a secret lair on a private island and build the ultimate doomsday weapon, or should he instead use the money for charity?

I fail to understand the problem of giving money to charity here; you can validly criticize the past actions by why criticize the current ones?

True. However that's very difficult, especially if the board is leaving investment decisions to other people. This sort of reminds me when people started actively boycotting South African investments in the apartheid era, and suddenly all sorts of entities were caught up in this unexpectedly and accused to being complicit; teacher retirement funds, charities, city governments, etc.

I have an android phone, and I can not possibly imagine in any universe using that on a desktop computer. But then, a year ago I probably would have said the same thing about the Windows Phone UI...

C is still a great choice though. Embedded systems are a very large market and Qt sells into that market. Simpler is better when you need to cram the code into something small, not everything is as large and luxurious as a smartphone or PC.

But most of the early UIs were built with C. Yes it was clumsy at times, but C is still the universal language, even today.

With C++ you bring in some baggage immediately; do you use STL (still not 100% uncontroversial) or rely on Boost (lots more naysayers)? Or are you object oriented or instead have heavy use of templates? Do you have a small embedded variety of C++ (no use of exceptions) or require full C++ standard?

A better thing perhaps is to have a basic C-compatible library (ie, easily usable without special bindings from C, Fortran, Pascal, assembler, etc). Then around that you have a C++ wrapper or utility kit. If someone wants Ruby or JavaScript or Lua bindings then separate wrapper libraries can be created without touching the base library. Yes, it's true that you could create the base library in such a way that other binding libraries become nasty messes, but libraries can be done better than that.

Overall, I think Gtk & Gnome were supported for so long was due to licensing. The chief competitor for a long time did not have a GPL license which made it essentially untouchable by GNU purists, or stuck in "non-free" side channels of linux distributions. It wasn't great but it was kept and supported because it was the only kosher toolkit. But then things changed when Qt got an open license.

But that doesn't make him a patent troll.

I agree. Even if the patent is invalidated, it does not make the wannabe patent holder into a troll. I think people are seriously misusing that term in their haste to label everyone a troll. A patent troll should be a set of lawyers attempting to extract license fees from a patent or invention they did not originally create, or an attempt to extort license fees through fear of litigation. However someone who did the work (or thought he did) and created the patent and is attempting to make money from that work should not be considered a troll even if the patents end up being nullified.

Basically there are several issues that need fixing with the patent system, and they shouldn't all be lumped together into a single "troll" category.