Motorola's Linux Phones Frustrate Developers

n8willis writes "Three years after Motorola first announced it was migrating its smart phones to Linux -- and a dozen models later -- there are still virtually no third-party applications for them, much less open source ones. Symbian and Microsoft both give away free SDKs to all willing developers, but Motorola seems to be putting up hurdles instead. An article on NewsForge asks why is this the case?" NewsForge is a Slashdot sister site.

Comments

How is this unusual?

[lifeisgreat]

Knowledge-hoarding and incompetence from a big company? It's likely the move to Linux was made to either save money or as retribution from a manager/VP that was displeased with the previous supplier.

Motorola's customers are NOT we end-users, but the phone companies that buy the phones and get people to sign up to contracts with them. Unless it's those companies kicking up a fuss, Motorola probably couldn't care less. Why should they? Motorola never sold a phone to an individual buyer, only to companies looking for features like locking the phone into a specific network.