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People keeps repeating this "lowest common denominator" thing here.

First of, it is not a "use only what is available on Qt and nothing else" question. I bet most of people that used this argument here never used Qt or even wrote a multi-platform application. The real question is how much code you have to add on each platform to conquer your goals, i.e., your compromise on write more or less code, be more or less integrated on each platform and use more or less of its "sugar".

I have nothing against them picking Gtk+, is their project and if done right it will be useful to me, I guess, but lets face it, they will for sure write more code. And to the vocals gnome users here, remember, it will be a Gtk+ application and as so have implications on how well integrated it will be in your desktop. (I actually expend most of my time on low resources environments theses days, just to put things on perspective)

Now, what about long term maintenance of the code? Well, I can talk about my experience only. C++ GUI applications are more resilient to updates on underpinnings than C only and usually easier to extend when more features arrive (from a source point of view). I think this deserves a new thread and lots of data to see if it hold water on a larger audience, but it does for me, specially when dealing with Gtk+ and Qt.

And last, but not least: will them follow the OOo and Firefox path (i.e., create a new, "internal" layer to isolate most of differences they can on each system)? I they do, they will be creating the same kind of problems we face on former apps: new layer that will stuff the code and more errors to be squashed on doing so. Should them follow this path, I really would suggest them embracing Qt and help it improve its multiplatform characteristics fixing bugs and asking changes, this way lots of projects would be beneficed altogether.