Open Source Not Welcome At Palm App Catalog 174
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."
Why bother developing for it then? (Score:3, Interesting)
Seriously people, you're the authors not them. You choose what rights others are offered -- that's the goal of Open Source: Giving you the choice, not them. But if you want to make bad choices about your intellectual property, such as signing all your rights over to a greedy corporation, we're not going to stop you. I fail to see why we're even discussing this, beyond pointing out so everyone knows Palm is not a company worth developing for.
If you're going to support open source, then do it already--stop complaining about companies that don't. In return, don't support them by buying their products. It's simple, really -- we like our freedom and we're willing to pay for it. Is there any other message we can realistically send as a community and have any credibility?
Re:Buzzwords (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Buzzwords (Score:4, Interesting)
well... apple did a lot less things to piss people off five years ago, while the ipod was a success they weren't actively trying to kill anything and everything that could interact with it by any means possible like they are now.
The only thing left still relatively 'free' in the sense you can do what you like with it is the mac computers, almost everything else they touch these days tends to have a horrible taint to it of 'you will not do what we do not want you to do'
While I'm a linux user there was once upon a time I'd buy mac hardware just because of the build quality, but with recent shenanigans I just can't justify it... the perception of them has changed in the last five years, but for good reasons. (depending on your qualification of 'good') Almost everything they sell is in a walled garden, to protect you from *gasp* running something useful.
Re:Palm's Zawinski Contradicts Palm SDK License (Score:5, Interesting)
Ah. The Palm appologist fanboys are already out in force. Jump all over Apple sure, but if its Palm then "Noooes, Palm is just working out kinks", despite strong evidence that internally the whole Pre developer program is riddled (and I mean riddled) with schitzoid internal behaviour from executives and others within Palm. And I haven't seen any sign that its improving.
Re:Buzzwords (Score:3, Interesting)
Previously, the Apple hate was technical in nature: "Oh, Macs don't have pre-emptive multitasking, Macs don't have protected memory, Macs don't have any CLI-- they must be toys you can't use for actual work!"
(Which completely ignored the fact that back then, Apple's UI was *so much* better than Windows, Mac users were much more productive despite the lack of those OS features. Not as much now that Microsoft's UI people have more-or-less caught-up, and Apple's been making their OS less usable each version. Besides, it wasn't as if early Windows versions with pre-emptive multitasking and protected memory were immune to crashing or locking-up. But I digress...)
Anyway, with OS X, all those old arguments have been torn away, so now the new generation of Apple haters have to focus on other things-- and their complaints have become, well, really petty-seeming. At least to me.
Come to think of it, though, I used to know a Mac hater who's biggest criticism of the OS was that it rounded the corners of the screen instead of leaving them square. I can't imagine anything more petty than that.
Re:Buzzwords (Score:3, Interesting)
well... apple did a lot less things to piss people off five years ago, while the ipod was a success they weren't actively trying to kill anything and everything that could interact with it by any means possible like they are now.
For me it's simpler. Diehard apple fans were a lot less numerous. I don't think they are any more rabid than they were - but there are so many more of them, and so quick to tell us how "if this was mac it wouldn't.. " or "on mac this isn't a ..." or... or...
I find the same attitude equally annoying from diehard linux fans, and diehard windows 7 fans. (I didn't see many windows fanatics before win7, not the way we do now.) There is no single operating system or platform that's a panacea. Stop trying so hard to convince everyone that yours is just that, because it just makes you sound like that annoying kid who plugs his hears and shouts "LA LA LA I CAN'T HEAR YOU!"
Erm... oops, that looks suspiciously like a rant. But there you have it... the dirty core of my own distaste for [vocal] mac [people].
Re:Palm's only partially getting it (Score:0, Interesting)
if Apple couldn't show that they've checked EVERY app they've allowed on their phone (and, as a result, into the international cell network) without reasonably ensuring that the app doesn't cause an individual's phone to die or, worse, infect the iPhone net (and others) with bad or malicious code that could compromise the cell networks.
Android phones don't seem to have a problem, and as far as I am aware, there is no pre-screening process for apps. Granted, post-screening is done to remove certain tethering apps, but I am highly skeptical that it's possible to write an app capable to "infect the iPhone net".
Re:Palm's Zawinski Contradicts Palm SDK License (Score:3, Interesting)
How is that incompatible?
You write some code and GPL it. I take it and build it into an app. Palm tells me sure, I can put the app on their store, but I can't charge for it. If someone else takes my code and wants to charge a fee for it, they're free to do so.
No incompatibility.
Re:Moot point (Score:3, Interesting)