Palm has just announced a number of changes its webOS development platform that should really be welcomed by developers. They are fully blessing application distribution outside of the App Catalog, open source developers will no longer have to pay a dime to have their applications in the App Catalog, and Palm will also open up all their analytical data for developers to use. Instant update: the official press release is out too.
The announcements were made during a meeting Palm gave to allow its newest employees,Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer, who both came over from Mozilla, the chance to talk about the current state and future of the webOS development platform. The key theme? Open, open, open.
The biggest news is probably that Palm is officially blessing the distribution of applications outside of its own App Catalog. “What this means is that developers can simply submit their apps to Palm, and Palm will return to them a URL that they can then blog, tweet, do whatever they want to share it. When a person then clicks on that URL they can easily install the app, bypassing any kind of store,” writes TechCrunch, who attended the event, “And while Palm is providing the URL, it is not going to be reviewing the apps in any way – a clear dig at Apple’s approval process.”
This moves the webOS much closer to Android territory. Palm has always been permissive about the so-called homebrew community, which distributed applications outside of Palm’s App Catalog. However, the developer agreement was still ambiguous about the practice – this is now resolved.
The second big change is certainly one that can be attributed to Galbraith and Almaer’s history at Mozilla: application developers who want to release their application as open source inside the App Catalog will no longer have to pay the 99USD admission fee, nor the 50USD per application. These two changes combined should make the webOS a very tempting platform for open source developers.
Lastly, Palm is opening up its analytical data to developers, so that they can use it to improve their applications. This data contains, among other things, crash logs and information on application usage. This is in contrast to Apple, who keeps all this information to itself.
The meeting ended with everybody in the audience getting a free Pre and wireless Touchstone charger. It is clear now that Palm wants to take the open route. While the company had been hinting at that, it is great to see this commitment made official.
This could potentially propel WebOS into being serious competition to other platforms and boost sales of Palm phones.
I would seriously consider developing for this platform now.
I think the main advantage of Android over Palm is that anybody can come up with a phone running Android, and google wants that, since they just develop the software. We already have multiple choices of phones running Android, and many more will come soon. While WebOS is only available from Palm, with only two flavors and they are not present in every country. And since they are the ones selling hardware, I don’t think we will see any other company selling phones running WebOS…
But I’m really happy to see the current status of the smart-phone scenario. We have Android, Limo, WebOS, Maemo (N900), and a few others (like some phones from motorola) all running Linux! And even iPhone, somewhere really deep inside of it, there is some open-source code there (Darwin/FreeBSD).
Cya.
The cost for including an open source app was not one that will impede most projects (we can all find £100 quid I am sure. However it shows an understanding of the ecosystem and the mindset of the developers they are trying to woo to the platform.
The WebOS platform is certainly winning in the (developer) PR department over Apple at the moment. But, at the end of the day, who they develop for will be influenced by the marketshare.
Marketshare = no. of potential customers = more potential revenue = happy developer buys an island somewhere
I’m sure most people could come up with the money if they knew they would soon get it back in sales, but would you, as an open source developer, really want to pay $150 without getting anything back?
it depends on the product to be honest. Just because something is open source does not mean it cannot generate revenue. Directly or indirectly.
Good, but I am worried that Palm will treat this ‘alternate’ install mechanism as second class. If they promote their app store and not this, then what?
It’s not exactly a level playing field for open source if a customer buys a webOS phone, goes to the app store and cannot find any open apps. Most people wont ever try to search the web for apps.
Yes, it’s good that a mechanism exists to easily install non-approved software. But, this is a feature which should always have existed with or without an app store, open source or anything else.
This ‘solution’ to the problem is not good enough.
Well, reading the press release it indeed seems to suggest that the cost of being in the store app isn’t waived. Still, any open source project which feels that getting that prominent placement is all that important probably could scrape together the $50 to get added to the store.
Actually, hopefully one of the first open-source apps on the official store will be a open-source-“store” listing app. So that users interested in open source software can fetch that alternative store which lists interesting free applications without them having to pay the $50.
The way I read it they are specifically saying that the rules have not changed and Open Source apps are still not allowed in the app store for exactly the same reasons. All they have done is provide an alternate distribution mechanism.
You are wrong on a lot of different levels.
Open source applications have always been allowed in the App Catalog. All they changed was that open source apps can be included in the Catalog FOR FREE, whereas before, they had to pay the same fees as closed source applications.
All of the major platforms vary in the degree of openness.
Windows Mobile
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Developer – a very open platform for developers. MS provides easy tools to develop WinMO apps – Visual Studio.
Platform – Obviously, unless you are an OEM platform builder, the platform is closed.
User – 3rd-party apps are easy to install. Synchronization is mostly limited to Windows, although there is some progress in the SynCE world, albeit somewhat clunky.
Classic Palm (E.g., Centro, Treo-P)
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Developer – many tools available, including SDK from Palm/Access. Many good 3rd-party developer tools (e.g., Orbworks Orbforms).
Platform – essentially a closed platform, but low-level access to API’s is available (e.g., Hacks)
User – 3rd party apps easy to install, even on Linux (just transfer PDB/PRC to device). It synchronizes easily with Windows, Linux, Mac and others.
Palm WebOS
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Developer – excellent SDK available from Palm. You can develop from any major platform (uses VBox images).
Platform – somewhat a closed platform, except when placed in developer mode. This enables remote access to the underlying Linux platform.
User – 3rd party apps available for user install. As far as synchronization, I don’t believe it synchronizes with anything but Windows, although I believe it shows up as a USB drive for manual music synchronization.
Google Android
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Developer – obviously a very open platform for developers. An excellent SDK is available, and I believe even native C++ applications are possible.
Platform – the most open of platforms, although as some discovered, the Google Apps themselves are not open. 3rd-party ROM images are available.
Users – not really made for synchronization, but can be mounted as external drive.
A couple other items to note
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I am not familiar with the Symbian world, so I did not include it. Also, even though I gave details about syncing your device, that probably is not a very big requirement these days as most apps move to “the cloud”. Also, corrections are welcome!
I dont want to be picky but i think symbian should be included in that list as a major platform.
I do to, I just don’t know much about Symbian. I was waiting for you to fill in that section!
I personally like the symbian dev tools, and symbian has the largest userbase of all phone operating systems thus more market (and that means more incentive for developers) for native apps.But it may be irelevant with native apps as the most apps nowdays uses the web for most new functions.
The openness of symbian is somewhat similar to classic palm in my oppinion.
Third party apps can easilly be installed, but not as easy as classic palm though. but if the app is a proper symbian app it should be just to copy the .sis file to the memory card, hotsync or download from the net.
The disadvantage is the interfaces wich the symbian players hasnt agreed upon where nokia uses several different and so does ericsson and all the others.
just and addendum:
The most lovely phone app ive ever used was for symbian, but only works on some phones (those with speakers with enough hz) and that was a mosquito repellant. On my old n-gage it made this barely audible sound that actually scares away all mosquitos in a one meter radius. That is a very useful thing to have when you live in northern sweden, i can assure you as we have whole swarms in the summers.
Wonder why noone made such an app (atleast for what i know) for some other phone?
This is what spurred Palm into action on this (well probably not this blog entry in particular, but the events leading up to it):
http://jwz.livejournal.com/1096401.html
I submitted this to osnews back on the 30th I think, but for some reason it was rejected or I did something wrong (I had never submitted a news item to this site prior to this so I may have just done something wrong).