Palm Kills Community Before It Begins 247
Former Fan of Palm writes to tell us that an enthusiastic, supportive developer community has fallen victim to corporate ineptitude once again. The preDevCamp started as a community-driven effort designed to mirror the iPhoneDevCamp based on the new "Pre" product announced by Palm. Unfortunately, suspicion and legal posturing seems to have gutted the founders of any and all enthusiasm they may have once had. When will corporations realize that community support is the best way to drive success? "As a corporation, I acknowledge that Palm's only responsibility is to its shareholders. There's nothing self serving or evil about that; it's how things work in big business. However there are many keen and willing developers out there, who have been waiting for the arrival of WebOS. A development platform is only a success if it is broadly adopted. Instead of embracing the grassroots upswell of interest in WebOS that preDevCamp fostered, Palm seem to be, at best, oblivious and, at worst, disdainful of the enthusiasm and good will engendered by these folk. I think they are missing a real opportunity to be involved in and to help generate the growth of a vital community."
contrary (Score:2, Informative)
"There is nothing self serving---only responsibility to its share holders".
What a contradiction. Right action demands serving all people and the most in need first not shareholders. In plain terms a corporation is about the essence of pure evil.
Nitwits (Score:5, Informative)
If I'm reading correctly, Palm hasn't done anything.
It seems they signed some NDAs and had a meeting set up. Then one of the guys posted to Twtiter something about the meeting, and as a result Palm canceled the meeting.
That's it.
Am I missing something? If not, these guys are tards and making a big deal out of nothing.
Re:Hah! (Score:5, Informative)
Windows Mobile?
When it comes down to it...like it or not...Windows Mobile is the most open phone OS.
They are the most supportive for developers. No roadblocks, nothing. I can write a program today, and distribute it over the web without any problems.
Every part of the Phone OS is open to me. My carrier cannot block a single thing from running on my phone.
Re:contrary (Score:5, Informative)
Right action demands serving all people and the most in need first not shareholders. In plain terms a corporation is about the essence of pure evil.
By that logic, if I don't live in a shack and give away all the money I don't absolutely need, I must be an evil, immoral person. Right and wrong are determined by culture and society. In our culture, a business has a duty to maximize shareholder value because shareholders have essentially loaned the corporation the money it needs to operate. If I loan you money, it is correct in our society to pay it back with agreed upon interest; there's very little difference between that and a corporation maximizing shareholder value.
Re:Hah! (Score:5, Informative)
bullshit.
android followed closely by symbian OS is the most open there is.
carriers regularly block GPS capability on windows mobile phones.
Re:Nitwits (Score:1, Informative)
these guys are tards and making a big deal out of nothing.
I think this part needs to be emphasized and repeated.
Re:Hah! (Score:3, Informative)
Honestly...I completely forgot about Android.
But I have had quite a bit of trouble with Symbian, much less so with Windows Mobile.
Re:contrary (Score:3, Informative)
By that logic, if I don't live in a shack and give away all the money I don't absolutely need, I must be an evil, immoral person.
According to a lot of regions... Including Christianity.
Yes, you are.
"Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to squeeze through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to get into the kingdom of God."
>
I'll admit. I'm not a Christian (and yet I'm here quoting bible verses) so I understand perhaps this view is flawed, but arguably if you take it from a religious point of view of Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism then yes you are supposed to give all your things away you don't need a live in a shack.
Heck, Islam forbids money lending and so did Christianity up until recently.
Not that people have overlooked these teachings for the past 2000 or so odd years, but don't say wealth isn't historically viewed as something not evil. Half of the new testament is Jesus's denouncification of it.
Again, I don't personally ascribe to it, but the tell that to the Amish or Buddhist monks.
Re:Hah! (Score:5, Informative)
Why?
Really all that happened is these guys talked to Palm about setting this up, signed and NDA, got a meeting set up, then some yo yo tweeted about it and probably violated the NDA.
So the meeting got canceled.
No take down notice or anything like that. Now they are all upset and posting about how unfair this is and Slashdot picks it up and runs with it.
Well just what are you going to replace your Tungsten E with then?
Windows Mobil, iPhone, S60 maybe?
Good grief folks get some perspective. Palm my end up sucking but the Pre may be great. Seems way out of line to get bent before the phone is even out yet.
Re:contrary (Score:3, Informative)
I'll admit. I'm not a Christian (and yet I'm here quoting bible verses) so I understand perhaps this view is flawed, but arguably if you take it from a religious point of view of Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism then yes you are supposed to give all your things away you don't need a live in a shack.
You can't just take one verse from the Bible and get a whole lot of meaning out of it. You have to look at it in context. Jesus often times did things to make a point, and this is one of those cases.
Prior to this passage (I'm paraphrasing now), a man asked Jesus what he had to do to get eternal life. Jesus told him to follow God's commandments, which the man claimed he did since he was a child. Jesus told him "Cool, now go sell all your stuff, give the money to the poor, and follow me." When Jesus said that, the man went away sad, because he was very wealthy. Basically, what it came down to was that the young man loved his stuff more than he loved God. That amounts to idolatry, which is in direct conflict with the 1st commandment.
Most people don't realize that Jesus talked about money more than almost any other subject. Obviously, Jesus had many people who had money that supported his ministry on Earth. From a Christian world view, there's nothing wrong with having stuff, there's just something wrong with loving stuff more than you love God.
Re:Hah! (Score:2, Informative)
bullshit.
android followed closely by symbian OS is the most open there is.
carriers regularly block GPS capability on windows mobile phones.
that's carrier specific, like Verizon. You can use everything in AT&T so I don't have a problem either with creating apps.
Re:And yet.. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Hah! (Score:3, Informative)
Ummm - They're absolutely hiring in Sunnyvale...
"Software Development Internship" 2/19/2009
"Build & Release Engineer" 5/09/2009
"Kernel Team Manager" 4/20/2009
"RF Software Engineer" 4/22/2009
"Senior Engineer - Multimedia Software" 4/28/2009
" Senior Kernel Engineer" 5/08/2009 and 5/19/2009
"Sr. Engineer - SW Dev" X3
"Sr. CDMA Driver Engineer"
"Sr Software Applications Engineer"
"Software Engineer"
"Sr. IS Engineer â" IT Web Applications"
"Sr. Software Engineer - Drivers"
Clearly you didn't try very hard. Obviously if you're straight out of college, there's not much, but it honestly seems every company is like this ... All major corps always have senior positions available, all the time.
Re:Right action? (Score:1, Informative)
All real libertarians are free market anarchists, which is where the term came from, just because a conservative party took it for their name doesn't mean anybody who is a conservative can go and call themselves libertarians, so you are very wrong on that point. And every libertarian worth anything understands that it was in fact government mandates that caused the banks to act in a risky way, causing the problems we see today.
Re:Hah! (Score:1, Informative)
Actually, wouldn't the most open be Open Moko? www.openmoko.org?
Re:And yet.. (Score:3, Informative)
Not all hope is lost (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Nitwits (Score:1, Informative)
For clarification, since the NDA is the main thing being discussed on most posts on the web.
We were very specific and direct with Aaron Hyde that we signed the NDA to cover the release date of the phone. Nothing else. The fact the the meeting was taking place or that we had an NDA was absolutely not part of the agreement.
Second point, Paul Cousineau and Chuq Von Rospach at Palm had asked us on a previous call to make sure the community knew they were talking to us. They were held under some tight restrictions about what they could say to the public, for obvious reasons, and had asked us to be sure the developer community knew they were engaged.
It appears that the two competing needs (communication to the community that Palm was talking to the independent developers via preDevCamp and secrecy) driven by separate camps clashed.
This, coupled with our frustrations based upon some other issues in our relationship with Palm led to the decisions by whurley and myself to exit the scene.
The worldwide movement we created under the preDevCamp banner is, by design, intact and all local groups, as far as I can tell, are still planning their individual events.
Last point, Palm gets it now...
Pam Deziel, VP of Developer Marketing, responded on the Palm Developer Network blog this morning about the situation:
"We overreacted to the whole disclosure issue. Weâ(TM)ve been in stealth and super secret mode for so long now, we needed a real world conversation to see how we needed to work things so everybody can operate in their own environment."
"Iâ(TM)m optimistic that we can find a good solution. And weâ(TM)re going to keep talking. Weâ(TM)d love to get your two cents, concerns, and suggestions â" feel free to join the conversation here, and be assured that even when we sometimes have to keep quiet, weâ(TM)re always listening to your ideas."
Read the whole post here: http://pdnblog.palm.com/2009/05/a-predevcamp-update/
Whurley and I are here to serve the community, not the corporation. When it became obvious that we needed to make a bold move to get Palm's attention on behalf of preDevCamp, we moved. Whether you agree with our tactics or not, Palm is seriously paying attention to you now. Dan Rumney will insure that the movement has one single point of leadership to the extent that a large, worldwide movement needs it.
The end result has been a more active, genuine, serious relationship between Palm and its independent developer community. Everyone wins. This is what we, as leaders of the preDevCamp movement, hoped to create in the beginning. It looks like we're here now.
Anyone want to talk to me about it personally, feel free to catch me on twitter http://twitter.com/giovanni, email at predevcamp(@)gallucci(dot)net or leave a comment on my original post http://blog.gallucci.net/2009/05/palm-doesnt-get-it.html
I'm thinking it's water under the bridge now. Nothing to see here. Go forth and develop. I'm going camping: http://dallas.wordcamp.org
-giovanni
http://twitter.com/giovanni