Today Nokia announced the start of the open governance model for Qt, known as the Qt Project. The Qt Project allows both companies and individuals to contribute to the development of Qt. KDE supports this move and is excited about the possibilities it brings. We have been waiting for opportunities to take a more active role in Qt's future for a long time and open governance will make this easier. KDE has been working closely with Qt during its 15 year lifetime and the Qt Project promises to bring this collaboration to a new level.

Olaf Schmidt-Wischhöfer (KDE Free Qt Foundation) and Martin Konold (co-founder of KDE) said: "We fully support the work being done with the Qt Project. An openly governed Qt is in the best interests of all Qt developers. The Open Governance structure of the Qt Project empowers developers to influence the direction and the pace of Qt development. Stakeholders in the future of Qt, such as KDE, can now contribute according to their own priorities and take ownership over areas of Qt that are of particular importance to them."

To ensure the fairness of the contribution terms to individual developers, two lawyers were contracted by the KDE Free Qt Foundation. We thank Nokia for taking their feedback into account, and for working with a number of other interested third parties so that the Qt Contribution License Agreement 1.1 is widely supported.

The purpose of the KDE Free Qt Foundation is to ensure that Qt will always be available as Free Software (LGPL 2.1 and GPL 3). The legal agreements between KDE and Nokia ensuring the freedom of Qt remain valid and can now act as solid legal footings for Qt as a community-developed Free Software project.