Welcome to Siri. I'm still seriously surprised by some of the questions it can actually handle.

Not sure if you can come back to this, being an AC and all, but I used to be paid to write open-source software. You seem to think I come at this from the give-me angle but really I'm from the give-you angle.

Do you give the same rant to those who support the red-cross?

... is to cost IT jobs.

The whole point is so that you don't need to re-invent the wheel as much, because you can extend what you have been given instead. That any value any programmer gives to open source is available to all, not just the one company who paid the programmer. Less work to do is going to mean less jobs to do it.

Is this a bad thing? Hell No. Every time a job has been taken to benefit efficiency its gone hand in hand with higher quality of life across the board. Its bad for the individuals who don't or can't re-skill, but of benefit to society as a whole.

Quite frankly I feel that some of the software stack, from the core OS to the most common work programs, should be funded as open-source by governments. Its no different really than public roads. The government doesn't fund trucks, but it does fund the common infrastructure the trucks use. I don't think governments should fund games or media centers, but it would make sense to fund the OS and Office Suite.

I think you may need to provide some links to back the idea its about the icons as well. I'm looking at

http://allthingsd.com/20110418/apple-files-patent-suit-against-samsung-over-galaxy-line-of-phones-and-tablets/

more specifically the screenshot

http://mobilized.allthingsd.com/files/2011/04/apple-v.-samsung-2.png

I don't even see a sunflower or flower of any type.

The sms icon isn't green and doesn't have a cartoon bubble.

Its green, and that said it looks like a day planner calendar. Yes, this is similar but at some point you have to say "What else would look like a calendar and fit on an icon?" If the answer is only two or three things patenting one of them is absurd.

well, envelopes for email existed long before the iPhone. I don't see clouds or sky either in the email icons.

I'll give you this one... but again how many ways can you represent a 'note pad'.

So all in all we have one copied icon out of your list. I don't think your claim this is about the icons has merit given what I've been able to find. Obviously if you have some other links I'd be keen to see them and review my position.

I used to work at Trolltech, and one of the strengths (at least back in 2002-2005) was how close development was to support. When I started devs had to spend one day a week doing support. It meant you got direct feedback from the people who used your code about what was the major areas that needed fixing, and trust me, you need at least some of that to avoid becoming an ivory tower, feeding that even via one support person muddies the view. Even when dev no longer did support directly when I was there I still kept an eye on the longer email chains to see if I needed to be more directly involved, to the point of initiating a teleconference with a customer in one instance.

Now support isn't even in the same company.

Now I'm outside the company, and I find that even before this announcement some of the trickier support issues just get ignored. I can't give too many specifics as I'm working for a commercial project, but I've done maybe 60K AUD billed hours of work on Qt that hasn't gone back into Nokia and doesn't even give feedback onto why I needed to to so anymore just because of how ignored I found even the fixes I provided were treated. Thats patches for bugs folks.

Now support isn't even in the same company. Yes, worth repeating.

So explain how Digia can give "Top Service" when they have to themselves negotiate to get any fixes they do into Qt. When they by definition don't employ the people who are developing the current features. Sure, they can re-read the documentation... but thats only the support that gets you started, I wouldn't call that "Top Service".

The very fact that there is now an additional layer between Qt support and Qt Development is going to affect developing Qt. I can tell you though as an existing commercial licensee I do not find support a reason to renew my license with Digia, not in the slightest.