"There's nothing easier" -- you say -- about packaging and deploying SQLite. "Just take the software with default settings and package as a shared lib plus SQLite shell".

It's not that simple.

With 2010 we've started to employ identica (then connected to Twitter and Facebook) as an channel for our live changelog at the {power}user level. Here's the dump for the past ~30 days (oh I should have used an XSLT).

• We're replacing serialized QFont attrs with ODF equivalents in Kexi Reports file format; e.g. fo:font-family; it's extension of OpenRPT
• Finally we're still embedding SQLite as many options are not set in distros, e.g. SECURE DELETE should be the default http://bit.ly/amZfJ3

I have self-backed policy of not mentioning competition if not really necessary, let it be G or M. So as a minimal effort I just quote these carefully selected bits (bias included!) instead of commenting the recent story:

[..] I think there is no reason to work on another package which is equivalent to Qt. If you want something like Qt, use Qt.

  --Richard Stallman, September 5, 2000 about then-disappearing need for creating Qt replacvement (aka project Harmony) after GPLing Qt

Today we enjoy 11th anniversary of disclosure of Microsoft's best business and development practices:

Recently a number of nice coincidences happened: I received my second-hand Intuos3 A5 tablet just day before the new shiny Qt 4.6 has landed with QTouchEvent (among many other features). Also I conducted my 3+ hours of trainings on APIs designing to my coworkers (based on Jasmin's document) just week before we had some essential KOffice APIs discussions based on the same material thanks to Olivier Goffart (QtDF).

Many small fixes are a building block of the Kexi porting effort - the goal is joining the KOffice 2.2. Many of the fixes and refactoring is related to forms. Much more left and we're scheduling works on crazy features even up to Kexi 2.6 already.

Ladies and Gentlemen, introducing Adam:

As Maemo Summit 2009 starts in a few hours. While I am not there, for me one of the most interesting parts is the Handheld Glom: Easy database applications presentation. Glom is a desktop database developed by GNOME friends using gtkmm (C++). Originally bound directly to PostgreSQL, recently (early 2009) has gained SQLite file database support (default engine in Kexi since 2004). That was a must I guess if someone wants to cover needs of mobile devices; just imagine how easier it is going to be to share data files between various apps one day. While Glom offers somewhat simpler feature set than than Kexi, a gnomedb library db layer has been also developed in the meantime, having partially similar goals as the KexiDB library and (its new awfully delayed incarnation) Predicate in the Qt/KDE world.

Shocked by the title? So I am.

Would you like to see Qt supported on this platform? Just two days ago the answer was like "But it's close to impossible".
Now with NDK 1.6 the "little robot" OS opens more to C/C++ native code. I am eager to read some analysis on the topic.

While explaining the story behind his great ppttoxml tool, Jos also mentioned

Since about a year, Microsoft has, after significant political pressure, put documentation for their file formats on-line.

That's fine and solved some issues. But there are MS Access proprietary file formats (mdb, accdb) that remain to be secret. These are not planned to be replaced by XML formats (what would be overkill in databases). I guess there was no pressure to open the formats, what looks like an overlook in EU and the USA (correct me if there's another reason like patents). If you google for that, it is hard to find even a single mention of file format specifications in the above meaning, and even explanations from MS employees or backers show that they do not fully realize one thinf: MSA formats are not covered by the process of said "opening of the legacy formats".