During Easter 2019, I got a message from Lorn Potter, asking if I could write a foreword for his book about mobile and embedded development with Qt 5. I said, "sure, I'd be happy to," knowing what a skilled guy he is. Then he told me that the deadline was in a few hours. Challenge accepted!
I think he probably chose me because I've known him for a very long time, and maybe also because I am one of the two founders of Trolltech and also one of the first two Qt designers and developers.
Back in the stone ages, when Trolltech re-licensed Qt for Windows, to make it available for the development of open source software, we got an email from a guy called Lorn Potter. He wrote to us: "Trolltech, if you were a woman, I'd... I'd... Well, I'd take you out for dinner and a movie!". A bit later we worked on putting together some marketing material and someone thought it would be cool to use that quote. Marketing asked for permission to use the quote and contact with Lorn was established. Another story is that that quote created quite a controversy internally and was later removed.
Lorn was the creator of a desktop app called Gutenbrowser and quite a rock star in the open source community. When we needed a community liaison for our Qtopia product in mid-2003, Lorn was offered the job and took it. He then moved from the US to Brisbane, Australia, to work at our office there. Qtopia was basically a complete platform and application suite for mobile devices and was built with Qt.
Lorn was heavily involved with the open source developed version of Qtopia. Other duties he had at Trolltech included creating the Qtopia Greenphone SDK for our only hardware product, the Trolltech Greenphone:
He also ported Qtopia to run on other devices, such as Nokia's N770, N800, N900, Siemens SIMpad SL4, and Openmoko's Neo 1973 phone.
Lorn has decades of experience in using Qt for mobile and embedded development. Here is a picture of his collection of devices running Qt, just to give you an idea:
I haven't read this book, so I cannot guarantee its quality, but I can guarantee the quality of Lorn as a communicator and a very talented developer. You are in the best of hands.
Now read on and use Qt, my baby who has grown up to be a very powerful adult.
Eirik Chambe-Eng, Co-founder, Trolltech