Breaking this off into its own topic. Roping in some of Andre' and Scott
Bloom too.
On Wednesday, 24 March 2021 09:58:50 PDT André Pönitz wrote:
The exact opposite is the correct thing:
- deprecation messages while compiling the source code are correct
- messages to the mailing list are not sufficient
Sorry, this assumes that "user" people constantly compile their application
against Qt dev branch to notice. That is obviously not the case. And once it
is already merged or even released it's practically to late.
On 3/25/21 6:00 AM, interest-requ...@qt-project.org wrote:
On Wednesday, 24 March 2021 04:48:08 PDT Roland Hughes wrote:
On 3/24/21 6:00 AM,interest-requ...@qt-project.org wrote:
The exact opposite is the correct thing:
- deprecation messages while compiling the source code are correct
- messages to the mailing list are not sufficient
No, it's not. It only seems correct if you live in a world where nothing
lasts six months.
Out in the real product world you create some product using Qt 3.x or
4.2. That product goes to production where it remains for 7-15+ years.
I stand by what I said and I live in the real world. You clearly live in a
different, also real world. I don't doubt any of the claims you make are true.
I do doubt that they are the majority or even significant. The majority of the
uses I am familiar with last much shorter than 7 years. At the very least,
there are opportunities in those 7 years to do incremental progress or keep up
with the latest.
According to the FDA fact sheet.
https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/fda-basics/fact-sheet-fda-glance
There are currently 25,864 registered FDA medical device facilities. Not
one of them can change a single approved process without going through
the FDA approval process for said change. That is __NOT__ a sprint nor
is it cheap. Within the past 18 months a drug manufacturer in high
priced California put out a cattle call for a PDP 11/44 (might have been
24) system manager. Those machines were last made around 1978. There is
a group of them still making necessary drugs in California.
Once something is in place it stays there because it is incredibly
expensive to replace.
Qt's horizon is about 7 years.
That's 8 years too short.
Anything coded to Qt 3.x needs to ported first to 4.8, before going to 5.0.
Once you're in the 5.x series, port to 5.15 and fix the warnings. Once you're
clean in a working build, port to Qt 6.
There is no one who went to a good school for their IT degree where they
made the person take Cost Accounting ever going to utter that as a valid
path forward.
There is no MBA, even from a shit school like Keller, that is going to
sign off on such a project.
You've got all warnings you needed to make progress in each of those steps.
You may not like some of those changes. Then I suggest that you should have
complained when Qt 5.15 became available with those warnings. And do note
about half of the warnings were introduced before 5.15, so where were those
people when those releases were made and the warnings added?
Watching production systems continue to run and generate revenue or save
lives, sometimes both. Until management makes a decision to update,
there is nothing for them to do. That PDP 11 story I told you earlier,
it's not a one-off. They aren't the only ones maintaining FDA approved
manufacturing lines established in the late 1960s to mid 1970s.
Confidentiality agreements will force people to clam up, but just about
every pain reliever and antibiotic ointment you take for granted being
on a store shelf from aspirin to cold formula has such a line. If it has
been on the market 30+ years, unless the production was sent off-shore,
the same line will be making it.
Until management makes a decision to update/replace something, there is
nothing for them to do.
Now the product needs to be redeveloped/enhanced because the benefits
now outweigh the costs of spin-up.
That's why you need to do it incrementally and you shouldn't wait to do it.
Keep up to date in those 15 years, even if you don't actually release a new
product with those updated versions.
That is spoken like someone who has always worked in the
x86-wanna-be-a-real-computer-when-I-grow-up hacking on the fly world. In
the regulated world, whether you ship a product or not doesn't matter.
The development process requires you create The Four Holy Documents up
front.. You have a full QA team with a formal and documented as executed
testing plan. Full formal code review with secretary and official form
filing. A full formal test by an authorized third party of the device
off the actual and formally certified production line. It can't be a
one-off or a "pilot" line. It has to be *the* line that will produce
units for sale.
Every iteration whether you ship it or not.
Why?
Turn on an old episode of NCIS and watch when Abby hands Gibbs or one of
the other members an evidence bag. They've got to sign and date it to
maintain the chain of custody. Basically the same thing. **If** you want
to release a second generation of a product with updated software via
the enhancement path it has to be a *direct* improvement on a previously
FDA certified device. You can't go "iterative" unless every iteration
goes to full production even if you never sell one. That is *not* cheap.
At that point it is ludicrous to not ship it and that is part of the
reason behind the onerous process.
The very first time you find out everything that got nuked is today.
Like I said, I can't help if feedback wasn't given at the time that there was
time to accept such feedback. You may say that going away for 15 years and
then complaining is acceptable in some industries. It clearly isn't in this.
It clearly *is* the case and the reason companies are abandoning Qt
wholesale.
You may not like that statement. It's true nonetheless.
Given the current state of Qt and the willy-nilly nuking of things, both
of these companies are going to have to go with CopperSpice or some
other competitor. Qt 6 isn't usable and Qt 5 has no LTS unless they want
to support the ex-wife in a manner she would like to become accustomed to.
We are not nuking things willy-nilly. You may not like what we removed, you
may not like the process, but it was documented, over a period of time, all
the removals were for a reason.
So stop the FUD.
It's not FUD as others have pointed out. You didn't even know the stuff
Andre' needed was shot out of the saddle so quit claiming FUD. The
process is far more Willy-Nilly than measured. The decisions aren't
based on polling the customers and stuff is shot out of the saddle
without any viable replacement.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/willy-nilly
1*: *by compulsion *: *without choice
2 *: *in a haphazard or spontaneous manner
Andre' and much of the customer base was impacted by compulsion without
choice because the customer base was not polled.
Wikipedia says RHEL 6 ELS will be supported through 2024. Red Hat must be
making a good chunk of money from customers like yours to still support kernel
2.6.32.
This is another huge section of the market you don't take into account when
deprecating.
DOD and NSA supplier contracts as well as alphabet soup itself.
That's where 2024 came from. It's a massive installed base. You __really__ need to
talk to the boys & girls in charge of RHEL and find out the next really long
support life version and when that support life ends before nuking support for that
version.
That would be why, according to what I hear, so many defense contractors
dropped Qt. People can't even mention it as a possible tool anymore I hear.
Same as for the medical device world.
The reason most of the users don't care about the security of the OS is because
the systems either aren't connected to squat or they are using military only
communications methods.
What about your customers Scott? Without violating any non-disclosures, are
your customers all air-gapped?
The embedded systems world ***has*** to have a long life stability path. Right
now you are chasing the phone market where six months is ancient history.
*That* is why companies with deep pockets are abandoning Qt wholesale.
--
Roland Hughes, President
Logikal Solutions
(630)-205-1593
http://www.theminimumyouneedtoknow.com
http://www.infiniteexposure.net
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http://www.logikalblog.com
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