Samsung Really, Really Wants Developers To Build Tizen Apps (theinquirer.net)

Samsung wants developers to build apps for its homegrown Tizen mobile operating system, and it is offering cash prizes to do so. From a report on The Inquirer:The firm has launched the Tizen Mobile App Incentive Programme, which offers devs whose apps feature in the top 100 most downloaded rankings (can't be that hard, surely) a $10,000 reward. The firm will pay up to $1m a month from February to September 2017, Samsung said, making a total of $9m up for grabs. Developers will be able to sign up for the Tizen incentive programme from January 2017, and the firm explained that applications must be developed using the Tizen SDK and aimed at the Tizen-powered Samsung Z1, Z2 and Z3.

Comments

Begun...

[technomom]

Begun the fart app wars have.

Please let Tizen succeed

[nightfire-unique]

Google desperately needs some legitimate competition in the mobile OS space.

Re:Please let Tizen succeed

[Tablizer]

Not on the Android OS

Re:Please let Tizen succeed

[tlhIngan]

Tizen offers precisely nothing that Android doesn't already have, apart from lock-in to Samsung's eco system, with it's also-ran alternatives to things Google/Android already does far better (S-Voice is garbage, for instance).

Tizen is also a nightmare to program for.

Tizen is just an OS, but the underlying foundation is E! (Enlightenment, if you're not up to date on your old fancy X window managers), or more correctly, the E Foundation Libraries (similar to ones like QT and GNOME).

And if you've never done E!, well, someone more eloquent has stated the numerous issues with it.

https://what.thedailywtf.com/t...

Re:Please let Tizen succeed

[93 Escort Wagon]

Tizen isn't Android either.

Re:Please let Tizen succeed

[gustygolf]

The Foundation Libs never existed 8 years ago. Or at least a stable version of them didn't. They were gestating in the CVS repository for over ten years.

Enlightenment 0.16 has been around since, er, 1999 or so, and its only non-standard dependency was Imlib2.

Enlightenment DR17, the first version to be based on EFL, was only released in 2012.

Where are the developer phones?

[Anonymous Coward]

If Samsung wants developers to make Tizen apps, Samsung should be putting Tizen phones in the hands of developers.

Re:Where are the developer phones?

[Joce640k]

They must have a large stockpile of Galaxy Note 7's somewhere.

Surely they could give those away.

(assuming they can run whatever this "Tizen" thing is)

Re:Where are the developer phones?

[Dunbal]

This would encourage developers to work quickly. Before their house catches fire and burns down.

Advice

[c]

Talk to (or just buy) BlackBerry. I'm sure they'd be a wealth of information on how to woo Android developers.

Re:I didn't understand a word of the summary.

[Yvan256]

Please choose one of the following option:
1. So long and thanks for all the fish.
2. I don't want to live on this planet anymore.
3.The blue pill.

If Samsung really wants that...

[Tough Love]

If Samsung really wants that, how about making Tizen actual open source instead of pretend open source?

Re:If Samsung really wants that...

[DickBreath]

If Samsung wants to compete with Android, why not make an Android compatible ecosystem. Build their own "Play store" and "play services" so to speak. Support some already existing, or create new android development tools. Say, based on Eclipse (or similar). If Android developers can use their existing skills and code to easily build apps for another ecosystem (like Amazons!), then they also could for Samsung's.

This would effectively compete with Google. Using the very developers that write for Google's platform. Developers would gain the advantages of multiple markets (Google, Amazon, Samsung) to sell their Android apps. Samsung would gain the advantage of many existing apps. Hardware OEMs would gain the advantage of multiple OS vendors with highly similar OSes to run on their existing hardware with only slight branding changes to the model number.

Re:Really?

[Anne Thwacks]

What we all need is open hardware APIs - so you can choose the OS you actually want, on the hardware you want. Presumably we don't have this already because the HW manufacturers are afraid people will find out how crap their HW is.

Eventually, some of the hardware people will realise that once they have amortized their dev costs, the marginal cost of the same part is close to zero, and someone will start releasing "bog standard" hardware. With several OSes able to support it, the OSes will specialise (Like the *BSDs do now). At least one will probably compete on quality, and presumably several with fight to the death on lack of same.

It has not happened so far because the buyers have relatively little experience - that is changing fast. Almost 50% of the world's population has a smart phone. In 5 years, practically everyone who is able to will have used one. Then the more mature market will ask more questions before they buy - like "where the fuck are the bug fixes?", "why would I buy one that is even thinner that the one I have, if the battery life is shorter than my commute?" and "The phone works fine. Do you really think I will buy one with less features than the one I have paid for that still works?"

The "My phone is bigger/shinier/posher than yours" has run out. No one can tell the most latest, expensive from cheap Chinese ones (except perhaps by the fact that the cheap ones don't burn your legs off).

Let it dual boot stock

[Hydrian]

If Samsung wants developers and users play with Tizen, why don't they have all / most of their phones dual boot with both android and tizen as the alternate. The people who aren't interested won't probably even notice it is there. The developer and power users will be able to start playing with it and possibly gain interest / marketshare.

Samsung is on fire

[OneHundredAndTen]

All those apps will no doubt allow its phone to explode into new markets.

Agreed, the NX1 community is asking

[lamer01]

There is a huge cult following on the NX1 as the hardware is amazing but the closed source firmware is hampering the progress

Tizen proprietary?

[unixisc]

By proprietary, if you mean 'belongs to a company', that is right. If you mean it's not open source, then you're wrong, since it is Linux. Since Replicant hasn't been hitting the shelves, good luck finding a non TiVo-ized OS

Speaking of which, even Android is TiVo-ized, since you can't install your modified version of Android on your phone w/o breaking things

Re:I didn't understand a word of the summary.

[DickBreath]

I'll summarize it for you: If nobody will write apps for Windows Phone 7, and then get backstabbed by Windows Phone 8, then why, oh why in God's name would anyone write apps for an OS for exploding phones? Hope that helps clarify.

Perhaps Google needs to do the same

[WindBourne]

Seriously, they might want to make sure that the same or better apps end up in Android space.

Tizen? Don't make me laugh

[StevenMaurer]

I worked on a contract in which an auto manufacturer was trying to use that abomination, and we could never even get the source to compile. Literally a year later, it came out that Samsung was trying to use both git/gerrit and Perforce as version control for it, mixed between different teams:

Time went by and Bad Things started to appear. Git/gerrit was official in some teams, but Perforce was official in other teams (even working on the same component). Some patches went there, some there. The management finally decided Perforce code should be used as THE source for building OS images. Again, they only forgot to tell everyone else to stop using git

Both repositories diverged to the point of being almost incompatible. Issues in Perforce code were given to git teams, which resulted in a litany of WTFs. After all, there’s not many things more fun than being tasked with fixing a bug in code that you physically don’t have. ASAP. Meetings took place, arrangements were made to rectify the situation. Months later, the situation is still the same.

One implication was code review process. With gerrit in place, that was a non-issue. But the Korean teams didn’t (and still don’t) understand the notion of code review and pushed everything directly to the repo. The quality of some patches was so bad that enforcing code review became top priority for non-Korean teams. Finally, a solution was developed – MS Word based code review. Each changeset needs to be attached to a bug in the tracker. Each bug can have a Word document attached with a request for code review. That document is a three pages long form with information so useless, nobody even wants to read it. At the end there’s a place for copy-pasting a diff for each file changed, with the explanation why. Reviewers are supposed to fill a Word form with details about which line they comment on and what their issue with it is.

Submitting a patch, clicking through the awful issue tracker and filling the form takes literal hours. All this because using git with gerrit was too tough. Fortunately, the review form has fields listing times taken by various steps in fixing a bug. Maybe someday someone will read how long pushing the code actually takes.

No, they won’t.

Luckily, that contract was short term. But because I put it on my resume, I got a few head-hunters inquiring about it. Quickly though, interest waned. Not hard to see why...