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I am new to PalmOS development (possibly just in time for the finale?). I went to the Palm Developer Conference in February, and here is my perspective on some of your questions.

(1) If you're referring to Usenet mailing lists: I perused the comp.sys.* newgroups that pertained to Palm development a while back (I don't recall the specific newsgroups). I concur, they have become stale. I think this is one of the weaknesses of Usenet as opposed to the way Slashdot keeps things interesting. In Usenet, you troll through so many newbie questions and bitter, irrelevant flamewars and just give up. At least I did.

(2) I think there are some weaknesses in the way Palm 3rd party software is marketed. It seems as though everything is marketed almost like shareware instead of the way it is sold in the PC world. Given the very low prices, that probably makes sense. But I suspect things would be better if there were some consolidation: some big boys should probably just buy out some of the crapware vendors to clear the decks and increase the signal to noise ratio. Just my perception, but I think there are a lot of basically sameware that makes the market worse.

I think that Cobalt may result in some interesting new categories of software coming out. Path graphics, multitasking, better security, schema databases, and better multimedia support are coming. Some basic info is here.

(3) PalmSource reorganized the developer documentation recently. Try it again and see if you think it's better. Here it is.

(4) I get the impression that a lot of developers still like PRC-tools. But there is a new Eclipse-based developer suite now. I haven't used it, because I think it is Windows only (ah, the lack of Mac support... sigh). Here is the link.

(5) I don't know. I was able to get a ROM by registering on the PalmSource site, and after clicking on a few legal agreements (eternal soul, first-born child, etc). Then again, ROMs are under the control of the PalmOS "licensees" (device makers). So it might be more difficult if you want a ROM for some specific device. I don't know.

As a new developer, I saw some reasons to be optimistic but also I have a lot of doubts.

Optimism:
1. The Palm Developer Conference was apparently well attended, according to people who had attended previous ones.

2. There are lots of interesting devices out there. Sony, Tapwave, Garmin and PalmOne have built some slick devices that I think are very impressive. While Slashdotters find it easy to yawn at gadgets, when I compare my HP-11C calculator (ca. 1981) with my Sony Clie TJ37, I'm not sure which is more impressive: the longevity of the HP, or the amazing level of technology integration in the Clie. Take your pick... I may still be using the HP in 20 years, but the Clie will be long gone. (These two devices are about the same size and weight by the way).

3. The new OS. I don't know if it will put them at parity with MS, or ahead, but right now they are behind, so this is absolutely necessary.

Pessimism:
1. I heard some of the same arguments from PalmSource execs that I used to hear from Apple in the mid 1990s: we're better than MS. I trust that these execs understand that they are whistling past the graveyard.

2. Hand-waving about sales stats. PalmSource execs said that handheld sales figures don't tell the whole story -- that they omit smartphones, which are splitting the market. OK, maybe. I haven't seen the sales figures for smart phones.

3. I think the biggest question is the value equation. One post referred to the paucity of storage on PDAs as a problem. I have to agree, though there i

AstroDrabb has made the contention five or so different times in this forum (mostly below this one) that Linux maintains a 2.8% share of the desktop, thoughtfully providing a link to ITfacts, a IT news outlet of dubious reliability in some of its other assertions. Following the link given by IT Facts, the 2.8% figure is actually from a story in Telegraph.co.uk, which is itself citing a new study by the research and marketing firm IDC. A pretty convoluted chain of evidence, to say the least.

If you actually care to read the study on which the whole house of cards rests, which AstroDrabb evidently has not, you would find that it relied in its figures on a survey administered to a geographically isolated population in North America, and does not claim that the 2.8% figure is extensible to the global market; rather, it is provided to demonstrate Linux's proliferation over time in a very circumscribed market. Moreover, the survey relied on self-reports, and admits that its results are not empirically sound; they are intended to provide a "snapshot of Linux's market presence." Finally, the study does not discriminate between various implementations of Linux, nor does it even differentiate well between Linux and UNIX users in its questionaire. The authors concede that the sample "may include some UNIX platforms as well."

In short: The 2.8% figure AstroDrabb has posted over, and over, and over again in this forum is simply incorrect. It relies on a information collecting method that the surveyors conceded is unsound and certainly not globally extensible, and embraces not only mutually incompatible implementations of Linux, but some UNIX users as well.

Well-meaning Slashdotters should check their data more thoroughly before relying on it as naively as AstroDrabb has. Or perhaps he did so because it was simply what he wanted to hear.

There's a lot of contention among surveys. For example, while AstroDrabb's precious study found that 25% of the new servers bought ran Linux, The Register reports that the figure among servers actually in use is 8.6%. (The author of the piece is a NewsForge columnist and a Linux user herself.

My point is simply to remind everyone of Benjamin Disraeli's famous aphorism: "There are three kind of lies: lies, damn lies, and statistics." You can always find a percentage that makes you right and/or happier, but that doesn't make it true. Linux is a fine OS that is on the grow, but Apple is quite right not to consider it a direct rival to its core business at this stage. All of the percentages in the world aren't going to change that.

How about Gartner:

Quoting, so in case you don't want to follow that link and leave the comfort of slashdot:

• Keep a low profile and do not divulge details on Linux deployments.
• Until a judgment in a case would unequivocally warrant it, Linux users should not pay SCO the license fees it has asked for to settle its allegations of infringement of intellectual property rights.
• Do not permit SCO to audit your premises without legal authorization.

Admittedly, Garner does recommend delaying new high-performance deployments for a few months to see what happens with SCO.

Or how about IDC's August 2003 survey. Again, quoting:

Linux can survive the current dispute, but only on its own merits

Or perhaps you want to know what IDC really thinks rather than just a survey result. Well, quoting once more (though you could easily follow the link to see this same text):

"The Unix market continues to struggle with competitive pressures from both Windows and Linux operating environments. While the decline in 2002 was less severe than the decline we saw in 2001, Unix vendors are faced with challenging market conditions," said Al Gillen, research director for the System Software service at IDC. "Looking ahead, we don't see a significant recovery for the Unix operating environments market during our forecast period."

Notice that this was written only last month. Apparantly they don't think SCO's going to have much impact. Saddly, there any many other IDC documents where you have to pay to even find out their opinion... the abstracts are so generic you don't even get a hint until you pay. But I suppose that's how the stay in business.

How about Gartner:

Quoting, so in case you don't want to follow that link and leave the comfort of slashdot:

• Keep a low profile and do not divulge details on Linux deployments.
• Until a judgment in a case would unequivocally warrant it, Linux users should not pay SCO the license fees it has asked for to settle its allegations of infringement of intellectual property rights.
• Do not permit SCO to audit your premises without legal authorization.

Admittedly, Garner does recommend delaying new high-performance deployments for a few months to see what happens with SCO.

Or how about IDC's August 2003 survey. Again, quoting:

Linux can survive the current dispute, but only on its own merits

Or perhaps you want to know what IDC really thinks rather than just a survey result. Well, quoting once more (though you could easily follow the link to see this same text):

"The Unix market continues to struggle with competitive pressures from both Windows and Linux operating environments. While the decline in 2002 was less severe than the decline we saw in 2001, Unix vendors are faced with challenging market conditions," said Al Gillen, research director for the System Software service at IDC. "Looking ahead, we don't see a significant recovery for the Unix operating environments market during our forecast period."

Notice that this was written only last month. Apparantly they don't think SCO's going to have much impact. Saddly, there any many other IDC documents where you have to pay to even find out their opinion... the abstracts are so generic you don't even get a hint until you pay. But I suppose that's how the stay in business.

Last year I was at a Citrix conference and one of the speakers was Dan Kusnetzky (System Software research Vice President of IDC) Before things got started I had a chance to sit down with him and talk about GNU/Linux. To my surprise, he told me that Linux Desktop Users had already surpassed Macintosh.
I would tend to believe him since he is the foremost knowledgeable (in my opinion) person in the field about such things.

Ah, stupid me. The IDC figures were servers only. And I can't find workstation figures, other than these IDC 3Q2002 unit shipment figures for workstations. Still, if the average selling price for "Personal Workstations" (ie Intel-based) is $8k, 70K units for HP would be another $560 million. If Linux is half of that (which would be surprising, an upper bound), that's an extra $280 million which still leaves my conclusions intact, with a missing $1 billion or so.

Would service contracts + openview agents really double the cost of the hardware? Seems unlikely. With Dell, a next-day service contract adds maybe 10-20% or so for a 3-year term in my expereience. But my attempts to reverse-engineer the figures here are getting a bit flimsy, I admit.

--LP

Who said about Microsoft: "It's an amazing machine. I admire these people, who were far sighted enough and bold enough to do what they have done," "Microsoft is not afraid of change. It will cannibalise a weak product to launch a stronger product."

Who said about Windows 2000:"The general trend for client operating environments continues to be consolidation around 32-bit operating systems and applications," "Unfortunately for competitors of Microsoft, this consolidation also means a general movement to Windows platforms."

You mean that Dan Kusnetsky? The "world's most prominent Linux analyst"? Well, that's good enough for me.

• When was the last time you heard of a strike at the MS factory? Microsoft treats their employees a hell of a lot better than American Airlines or UPS.
• How do you think you got your shiny new ride, and your cool apt. during our last big ecomomic boom? On the back of Microsoft. Whether you used their products or not, they legitimized client/server and internet development. They provided a lot of the tools and infrastructure you whiners used to make big bucks. I don't want to hear "I never use MS products, I only use blah-blah-blah to write software". What do you think the users that buy from your e-commerce store use? What do the IT drones that use your intranet apps use? That's right, suckas: Microsoft products.
• Apple, Sun, IBM, et al... these are not the "little guys". They had their chance, and still have a chance to innovate. They blew it, and they're still blowing it. They let their egos get in the way of making good (or at least popular) software, and it cost them the game.

A Dick and a Bush .. You know somebody's gonna get screwed.

Interesting article, but there's some comparisons going on here that aren't quite as clear-cut as they seem at first glance.

Figure 1 - Worldwide, 1999 Client and Server Operating Environment Revenues by Platform ($B)

Well, DUH! Ain't much revenue for an "Operating Environment" that can be downloaded for free, so no wonder Linux lags behind 32-bit windows.

Figure 2- Worldwide Client Operating Environment New License Shipment Shares 1999 and Shipment Growth 1999-2004

Now that's better, as they are now comparing the number of Licenses instead of Dollars, but what do they define as a "client"? Does a TiVObox running Linux count? What about an IBM watch? Besides, I can just as well install the server version of Linux (or NT, for that matter) on my home PC.

Figure 3 - Worldwide Server Operating Environment New License Shipment Shares 1999 and Shipment Growth 1999-2004

Again, how do they define and differentiate between servers? I'd be willing to bet that a license for Solaris on a big Sun box is not really on the same par as a 486DX66 running a Linux server, but it seems that a license is a license is a license according to these stats.

Interesting article, but there's some comparisons going on here that aren't quite as clear-cut as they seem at first glance.

Figure 1 - Worldwide, 1999 Client and Server Operating Environment Revenues by Platform ($B)

Well, DUH! Ain't much revenue for an "Operating Environment" that can be downloaded for free, so no wonder Linux lags behind 32-bit windows.

Figure 2- Worldwide Client Operating Environment New License Shipment Shares 1999 and Shipment Growth 1999-2004

Now that's better, as they are now comparing the number of Licenses instead of Dollars, but what do they define as a "client"? Does a TiVObox running Linux count? What about an IBM watch? Besides, I can just as well install the server version of Linux (or NT, for that matter) on my home PC.

Figure 3 - Worldwide Server Operating Environment New License Shipment Shares 1999 and Shipment Growth 1999-2004

Again, how do they define and differentiate between servers? I'd be willing to bet that a license for Solaris on a big Sun box is not really on the same par as a 486DX66 running a Linux server, but it seems that a license is a license is a license according to these stats.

Interesting article, but there's some comparisons going on here that aren't quite as clear-cut as they seem at first glance.

Figure 1 - Worldwide, 1999 Client and Server Operating Environment Revenues by Platform ($B)

Well, DUH! Ain't much revenue for an "Operating Environment" that can be downloaded for free, so no wonder Linux lags behind 32-bit windows.

Figure 2- Worldwide Client Operating Environment New License Shipment Shares 1999 and Shipment Growth 1999-2004

Now that's better, as they are now comparing the number of Licenses instead of Dollars, but what do they define as a "client"? Does a TiVObox running Linux count? What about an IBM watch? Besides, I can just as well install the server version of Linux (or NT, for that matter) on my home PC.

Figure 3 - Worldwide Server Operating Environment New License Shipment Shares 1999 and Shipment Growth 1999-2004

Again, how do they define and differentiate between servers? I'd be willing to bet that a license for Solaris on a big Sun box is not really on the same par as a 486DX66 running a Linux server, but it seems that a license is a license is a license according to these stats.

--

I know there has been a lot of positive press, but just forget about it because Linux is a rehash of the old Share-ware concept, plus it [Linux] is Unix, a non-standard, fragmented operating system that no one uses and nobody wants that.

Selling Linux will do no good anyway because the product is too unstable and causes blindness in laboratory tests with Mac users.

Businesses will not buy Linux because there is no one to sue. Ignore the fact that anybody who has tried to sue Microsoft has typically ended up bankrupt, and wishing they had attempted something less risky such as using the money to purchase lotto tickets. End users don't want Linux because it is too hard to use, so it's generally a bad investment.

Besides, everyone who competes with Microsoft fails. Linux is just like the OS/2 thing and we all know where that ended up. Billy crushed it like a bug! He's going to do the same thing to these companies, just you wait. Never mind that under-cutting a free product is impossible. Billy will find a way to pay people to take Windows, and still make money.

Linux has failed to make serious inroads into the corporate marketplace. Just forget those fortune 500 companies that IDC surveyed. Forget that Linux had over 200% growth in 1998. Those International Data Corp. guys can't be trusted because they aren't independent like Mindcraft.Moreover, the system lacks the applications - graphics, word processing capabilities, databases - to compete with Microsoft's personal computer business.

People won't develop these applications anyway, because they will pay too much for the development tools.

Don't believe the stuff you read over at freshmeat.net. There's a lot of false Linux propaganda on that site that you can't trust. Also forget you saw Wordperfect, Star Office, The Gimp, Oracle, Informix, DB2, and a million other productivity and mission critical applications, free or proprietary.

You're obviously a Religious Open Source Cult member if you buy any of that stock. Never mind that I'm probably selling most of my Microsoft stock as we speak, and putting it in mutual funds because keeping it is getting too risky.

If you have comments or suggestions about this article, please feel free to flame^H^H^H^H^Hemail me at HERE.

- greg

I know there has been a lot of positive press, but just forget about it because Linux is a rehash of the old Share-ware concept, plus it [Linux] is Unix, a non-standard, fragmented operating system that no one uses and nobody wants that.

Selling Linux will do no good anyway because the product is too unstable and causes blindness in laboratory tests with Mac users.

Businesses will not buy Linux because there is no one to sue. Ignore the fact that anybody who has tried to sue Microsoft has typically ended up bankrupt, and wishing they had attempted something less risky such as using the money to purchase lotto tickets. End users don't want Linux because it is too hard to use, so it's generally a bad investment.

Besides, everyone who competes with Microsoft fails. Linux is just like the OS/2 thing and we all know where that ended up. Billy crushed it like a bug! He's going to do the same thing to these companies, just you wait. Never mind that under-cutting a free product is impossible. Billy will find a way to pay people to take Windows, and still make money.

Linux has failed to make serious inroads into the corporate marketplace. Just forget those fortune 500 companies that IDC surveyed. Forget that Linux had over 200% growth in 1998. Those International Data Corp. guys can't be trusted because they aren't independent like Mindcraft.Moreover, the system lacks the applications - graphics, word processing capabilities, databases - to compete with Microsoft's personal computer business.

People won't develop these applications anyway, because they will pay too much for the development tools.

Don't believe the stuff you read over at freshmeat.net. There's a lot of false Linux propaganda on that site that you can't trust. Also forget you saw Wordperfect, Star Office, The Gimp, Oracle, Informix, DB2, and a million other productivity and mission critical applications, free or proprietary.

You're obviously a Religious Open Source Cult member if you buy any of that stock. Never mind that I'm probably selling most of my Microsoft stock as we speak, and putting it in mutual funds because keeping it is getting too risky.

If you have comments or suggestions about this article, please feel free to flame^H^H^H^H^Hemail me at HERE.

- greg,

Here's the letter I sent him.

Subject: Errors in your 'from the ether column'

First I'll say I don't agree with the tone of your piece, have you actually run some of the new Linux distributions? Second in the next to
last paragraph there is a factual error. You say "All Unixes make up 17 percent, and Linux is a small fraction of that." According to this
IDC Report Linux alone makes up 17% of the server market now. This is up from 7% last year, NT's share grew significantly slower than linux's in the same period.

Some additional things to think about might be the stories at CNN and IDC. These talk about where NT is actually used in business settings.

Here's the letter I sent him.

Subject: Errors in your 'from the ether column'

First I'll say I don't agree with the tone of your piece, have you actually run some of the new Linux distributions? Second in the next to
last paragraph there is a factual error. You say "All Unixes make up 17 percent, and Linux is a small fraction of that." According to this
IDC Report Linux alone makes up 17% of the server market now. This is up from 7% last year, NT's share grew significantly slower than linux's in the same period.

Some additional things to think about might be the stories at CNN and IDC. These talk about where NT is actually used in business settings.