Editorial: webOS App Approval Too Bureaucratic or Just Right?

A really great post has found its means to reddit from Jamie Zawinski, who’s a big name in developer circles (known as jwz), about his rough ride in trying to get a free people tip calculator into the webOS App Catalog. Since I’ve been performing with Bell’s Palm (NSDQ: PALM) Pre for the last workweek and trying out home brew applications, it really caught my oculus. Here’s The Short Version of this particular programmer’s complaints, but I encourage you to read the whole matter if you’re packing a Palm Pre or developing on webOS.

Inability to natively install applications from outside the market Requirement of a verified PayPal story and potential drop fees, even for free people apps Forfeiting rights to post submitted applications anywhere other than the App Catalog

Let me foreword my answer by saying that I’m not a developer, and don’t pretend to fully empathize with their wide-ranging plights and challenges when transaction with manufacturers, carriers, and end-users. However, a lot of this situation raised some flags.

If you don’t want to swordplay by Palm’s rules to get into the App Catalog (however reasonable/unreasonable they whitethorn be), don’t whimper when your only pick left is homebrew; making apps “off the gridiron” is not a bad start smirch for someone learning the webOS platforms. Palm is in dire financial traits, and they need to harness their app marketplace in order to stay in business – that entails some story of caliber control, transaction with PayPal, code tweaks, and all that jazz that mightiness come off as personal affronts to the more quixotic developers out there. How do you think Elevation Partners would feel if, when request about third-party software system strategy, Palm said “Developers tin do whatever the hell they want! Woo, open source!” and cracked open a Bud? Instead, Palm saw what a financially successful player, Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), was doing right (pickings controller of the application flow) and doing legal injury (devising draconian app compliance decisions) and built their scheme around that. Sure, it might not be the supposed surface-source computer programing Nirvana found in Maemo 5 or even Android, but it’s a balanced approach that helps everyone win at least a little. If you’re committal to writing free apps and you don’t want to jumping through the hoops, homebrew is not that complicated for oddment users.

Enter dev way Get Quick Install and your recovery ROM (Sprint, Alexander Bell) Install fileCoaster

There, you’re exercise set. You have a second on-gimmick app storage that Palm doesn’t control. Go nuts. Is that really an insurmountable barrier for entry? Will an app really have that many fewer eyeballs on it than if it were in the App Catalog? And if the software system is free people anyway, wherefore would the creator maintenance?

If developers wish to documentation the webOS ecosystem with a free people app, or make a sawbuck with a premium one, they should be ready to make some compromises, including small code changes for the sake of QA. It’s not like Palm is turn into a bunch of Nazis; they aren’t pickings shots at the homebrew scene, like Apple does with jailbreakers – in fact, Palm encourages the home brew view. The exclusive rights to the code is simply Palm’s means of ensuring the functionary marketplace remains valuable. Why would anyone use the App Catalog if the home brew scene had all of the same apps summation others that didn’t shuffle it though the hoops? Sure, oddment users would get their apps, and devs could do whatever they wanted, but Palm wouldn’t get their cut, which ultimately is badness newsworthiness for the whole platforms and anyone developing on it.

As for the $99 annual developer fee, someone has to handle the submissions; even if your app is free people, that person answering the e-mails has to get paid. If you tin’t be bothered to manage a ubiquitous and widely-accepted payment method like PayPal to handle that tiny number of bureaucratism, then why should they be bothered to look at your compliance? The thing that probably exercise set me off most on jwz’s post was the insinuation that Palm was dead because they’re abusing webOS developers like a lot of naughty puppies. First off, the headphone has been out terzetto months, and as I’m sure you tin imagine, it takes a lot of manpower to shuffle an app storage ready for primetime – career the time of death at this distributor point is ridiculous. Secondly, this is the harshest measure of discontent I’ve heard from a webOS developer so far, and I’m tempted to think the majority are distillery willing to reefer with Palm through the official App Catalog launch. Let’s hear from other developers who have tried their hand at the submission procedure, and see who has been satisfied (or at least reason), and who has been pushed to another mobile platform. Feel free people to commentary with your own personal experiences.