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Open Source Not Welcome At Palm App Catalog
davidmwilliams writes "It appears Palm is seeking to follow Apple's footsteps in gaining a reputation for inconsistent and spurious rejections and removals of iPhone and iPod Touch applications. In this case, Palm has resisted including a free application because the source code is attainable elsewhere."
In September Zawinski was called by Joe Hayashi from Palm, formerly Senior Director of Product Management for Yahoo!. Despite the treatment from Palm over this matter Hayashi said "We aren't asking that you remove the binaries or source of your apps from your web site, and we aren't restricting anyone from distributing their source code, open source license or otherwise."
Yet the Palm SDK License (as linked to in the article) states under section 4. Developers' Ownership and Ability to Distribute its Applications:
4.3 Applications Can Only Be Distributed Through the Palm Application Catalog. Developer acknowledges and agrees, that absent a separate written agreement with Palm, Developer may not distribute any Application except as allowed by Palm's formal approved distribution process and channel (the "Application Catalog"). Developer acknowledges and agrees that (a) distribution of Applications will be subject to further terms and conditions, which may include a share of the revenue generated from sale of the Applications to be paid to Palm by Developer, where such terms and conditions shall be presented to Developer upon or before Developer's request for distribution of any Application, (b) because of certain laws, regulations, as well as contractual or other restrictions, Palm may refuse to allow the distribution of certain types of Applications, and (c) distributed Applications may be viewable or inspectable by third parties, and Palm is not obligated to take any steps to obfuscate the code associated with the Applications or take any other steps to prevent third parties from viewing or inspecting Application code.
Now this is assuming Jamie Zawinski used the SDK to produce the Palm Pre programs (I'm not sure what the Pre can run and these programs seem to be merely ports). After searching around for the terms of service for the application store for the Palm Pre, I came up pretty empty handed aside from the Developer SDK License. The fact that it says 'Beta' on the app store may make this forgivable but I'm not seeing a clear distinction on the fine details and legal on what you may or may not do when submitting an application. It appears there may be some internal conflicting views also -- considering what Hayashi said and what Palm did.
My work here is dung.
jwz: My ongoing Kafka-esque nightmare of dealing with Palm and their App Catalog submission process.
Bonus: Ben Galbraith: Thoughts on Palm and Jamie Zawinski (Ben and Dion just moved from Mozilla to Palm).
I've released an open source password management app for webOS (http://www.precentral.net/homebrew-apps/keyring), and a rep from Palm contacted me to offer help in getting my app into the catalog. They have no issues with open source, and no problem with the code being available elsewhere. The problem here is that jwz got his panties in a twist, and he needs to take a few deep breaths.
Are you not even paying attention to that issue? Google sent the C&D because Cyanogen was distributing applications that are sold with the Google Experience. It's not so much that the users aren't allowed to download it as much as it is the distributor lacks a method for verifying that the users have the appropriate license to acquire such content. In fact, some Google employees are assisting with the project at this point.
What day is it? Could you please tell me?
The twitter app i use (spaz) is open source and it's in the app catalog. and they were able to do it before the SDK was even available to the public. they got permission from palm.
C'mon /. /. can and should do better.
Not only is this a rehash of an article posted before.
It is pretty clear from that article that Palm is doing nothing remotely deserving this title.
VLC Remote for iPhone and Android
Spaz, a twitter client, was on the pre from the launch, and it has been open source the entire time.
I dont see why Google would be considered a control freak. Android is probably the most open mobile OS available. That is the premise behind Google's "Open Handset Alliance" after all. Considering the fact that you can put any application you want on the market, without fear of rejection (unless it gets reported, which is mostly a community decision), and the fact that their OS is open source itself, I think they've gotten pretty close to being truly open as it is. I don't blame Google for trying to protect the applications they require a license for. They really have done everything they can to make the platform otherwise open. I agree with Bullfish. I think Android is going to reach critical mass soon. In my opinion, it's the only phone that has a chance to close the gap between the iPhone and every other phone on the market.
Considering the fact that you can put any application you want on the market, without fear of rejection...
I hate to be pedantic, but I'm in fact helping your case when I inform you that you don't even need to put it on the Marketplace if you choose; you can just point the browser to an .apk file hosted somewhere and the phone will offer to download and install it without problems (after you confirm you really want to do so).
Demanding constant attention will only lead to attention.