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Motorola's Linux Phones Frustrate Developers

Posted by Zonk on from the play-nice-with-the-penguin dept.

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.

9 of 143 comments (clear)

  1. not surprised by Keropipi · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Motorola's UI department is seriously THE WORST in the industry. Having owned numerous Motorola phones I really think they need to stop hiring artists to design their phones and employ some UI engineers.

  2. This is because consumers are not the customer by houstonbofh · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The real customer is Verizon, or Voda, or whomever the cell provider is. And the providers want to sell the crap they make, not good and free alternatives.

    1. Re:This is because consumers are not the customer by garcia · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yup and in addition...

      The big question is, what does Motorola gain by obstructing willing developers from bringing software to their platform?

      Well, it keeps the development in the hands of the mobile phone companies using the phone who then will charge their customers to download songs, applications, etc. If they phone is wide open and anyone can develop for it why would anyone pay $2.50/song, $5 to $10/application, etc?

      Exactly, they wouldn't and that's why phones with great development environments (like the T-mobile Sidekick) are dead in the water.

  3. In a word by Jordan+Catalano · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The big question is, what does Motorola gain by obstructing willing developers from bringing software to their platform?

    Control.

  4. Who ever though it would be native apps? by Timesprout · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I though it was blindingly obvious at the announcement that Mototola only saw Linux as a free os to run a Java VM on, if they had a hardware chip they could run the VM on Linux would be in the bin for the next product release.

    --
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  5. The reason... by maxx_730 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Well as i said on Osnews already, i'm one of the moderators/editor from motorolafans.com, and have been since the beginning, and it's true that motorola hasn't been exactly helpfull with getting the sourcecode and they still owe us the bootloader code, too. The reason that they are so unhelpful is ofcourse really obvious. Who are their customers? The big telco companies. Where do big telco companies make their money from? From their customers calling with their phones. If you start giving out the kernel source and encourage hacking on these phones (with sdio hardware and a mini usb host controller), the users will be voiping in no time, which would piss of their customers, the telco's.

  6. This is simple by finkployd · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Verizon, Cingular, etc. : "Hello Moto, we make a significant amount of money charging total idiots for the right to license crappy ring tones, useless apps, games, and backgrounds. If you release a phone to our customers that allows them to install their own apps, music, and images we will stop buying your phones. Speaking of which, make sure we can lock out DUN and OBEX on your new line of bluetooth phones."

    Motorola: "Yes sir, sorry sir."

  7. Two words: Customer Support by Xonstein · · Score: 3, Insightful

    They dont want native applications because they are more likely to brick the phone, causing warranty and customer support nightmare for carriers.

  8. I call bullshit here. by ashridah · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I definently have to call bullshit, at least based on what's in the summary in this article.

    The Motorola SDK for their mobile phones is available right now, both the linux and non-linux varieties of phones.

    This article is discussing, of course, the availability of the linux source code itself, not the SDK. You do not need the linux source code in order to develop applications for their linux-based mobile phones, and to be perfectly honest, having to jump through hoops to get the kernel source really isn't that big a deal, since getting the SDK is as simple as signing up at www.motocoders.com

    ash