Today, I am really happy to celebrate Qt’s 20th anniversary. On May 20, 1995, the first Qt version, 0.90, was released! I am really glad to have been part of the Qt journey since 1997, when I first got in touch with Qt through the KDE project.

Qt immediately fascinated me. It not only made development of applications a lot easier than anything I'd seen before, but it was actually fun to develop with. So I started doing quite a bit of work where I used Qt within the KDE project. In the spring of 2000, I got so lucky to be offered a position at Trolltech. I joined the company a few months later and moved to Norway.

Working with the founders of Qt, Eirik Chambe-Eng & Haavard Nord, as well as the other people we had in the company at that time was an amazing experience. Over the next few years, Trolltech grew from around 15 to 250 people. We developed new versions of Qt, worked on a mobile phone stack called Qtopia, and also started to extend Qt from being a toolkit to develop UIs to a much more comprehensive development framework, including all required tools.

From the beginning, Qt has been released with both open source and commercial licensing options. Over the years, we have worked on expanding this model, and nowadays, Qt is actually developed as an open source project. In this sense Qt is actually in a rather unique position, having a strong ecosystem with passionate people, as well as a commercial entity behind it, which backs up and funds most of the development.

The last 20 years have been an exciting ride for Qt. I've had the pleasure to be part of most of these, and I have had the great opportunity to work with the many passionate and driven people all with the common goal to make Qt a leading technology. I am pleased to know that some of the world’s most innovative companies we know today have built their product with Qt.

Thanks to all the amazing colleagues at Trolltech, Nokia, Digia and The Qt Company who have believed in our technology and have put their best efforts forward to make Qt the best cross-platform software development framework. To our community of engaged contributors, developers and Qt fans, we wouldn't be around without you. I am grateful for your passion, your will to spread Qt everywhere, and your selfless drive to develop Qt together with us.

A big special thanks to our partners and ecosystem comrades who have been with Qt since the beginning. Thanks to you for sticking with us and for guiding us through the ups and downs.

Qt was created by developers for developers. Making developers’ lives easier was the reason for its birth and what Eirik and Haavard wanted to provide to the development world. This goal has not changed and throughout Qt’s history it has remained at the core. Code less. Create more. Deploy everywhere.

Please join me in wishing Qt a wonderful anniversary and a big congratulations to the Qt ecosystem! Here's to 20 more years!