Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Why should I be optimistic about Trolltech and Nokia?

I know, I know.  Pessimism just isn't very attractive.  But sometimes an optimist can't find anything to say.

A couple of weeks ago, Trolltech announced that they are being acquired by Nokia.  I decided to simmer for a couple weeks before making any comment, but my perspective has not changed.  I just can't see this as good news.  Bluntly, I assume this will be the death of Trolltech.

And that would be a shame.  Trolltech is on my short list of software companies that I admire.  Their product, Qt, has an amazing reputation.  Technologically, it seems to be the top dog in a space which is crowded with lots of people trying to offer solutions to a very tough set of problems.  Trolltech plays well with both the open source world and the commercial world, and they make a heckuva lot of money doing it.  I'm impressed.

(But I still wish they would put the pricing back on their website.  Yep, the unnamed company in my Sales Guy Tantrum last month was Trolltech.)

I have no affiliation with Trolltech (or Nokia).  I am not even a customer (of either one).  As someone who is very interested in the business of software, I just hate seeing a good software company morph into a bad one.  Nokia is a great company and I'll be happy to see them prove me wrong, but in general, when a software company gets acquired by a non-software company, it immediately begins a steep and steady decline.

Managing a software company, especially one that sells to developers, is not like anything else.  It's just different, and that's that.

• If you're great at the business of software, there's an excellent chance you would be incompetent as a business manager in any other field.
• Similarly, anybody who is excellent in another field is almost certainly going to struggle if they take the reins of a software venture.

Nokia is a great cell phone company.  None of their skills are going to apply very well to the development, maintenance, marketing and sales of a C++ portability framework.

So maybe I'm jumping the gun a bit, but I like to beat the rush.  I'm ready now to mourn the loss of Trolltech, yet another great software company destroyed by a BigCo who assumed that managing a software business should be easy.

If I'm wrong, tell me why.