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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.

4 of 143 comments (clear)

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

  3. 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.

  4. 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."