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Measuring the Size of a Developer's Community?
Travelr9 asks: "I am engaged in a project where upper management is deciding whether to use Linux or Palm OS on a new device. Leaving aside the technical merits of each [in the context of this decision, either could work well] a key question is the size of the developer communities (for both OS and applications) of Linux vs. Palm. I have searched for info on this topic, and have come up blank aside from vague assertions. Is anyone capturing real numbers and stats? This also brings up an interesting conceptual question -- how do you measure the size, quality, impact, etc., of a developer community? Number of bodies isn't enough. Number of apps? Number of lines of code? Frequency of major releases in core application or platform categories? Can you measure a concept like 'quality of developer community' usefully?"
Perhaps an easier thing to judge would be the quantity and quality of development tools to facilitate the community. I for one liked the idea of using Visual Basic on my WinCE device because it's so easy to create quick and dirty applications to meet a particular need. I never found such an easy tool for palm.
I assume from the context that the new device you mentioned is PDA-like? I think that what you should not forget in the case of Linux is that you do not only have to look at the Linux PDA developers community. A big percent of what is done by the "desktop linux" developer's community can be utilized easily also in PDA -like environment. I can show you no hard facts, but I believe this is a big difference in favor of Linux. I guess, you should try to see your device and the applications & other software you fancy running on it taking this aspect into account as well.