Palm freeing up webOS development 42
There’s been a lot of heming and hawing over Palm’s developer relations, and many were hopeful that the hiring of Ben Galbraith and Dion Almer of Mozilla fame would go a long way to improving the developer side of things. Well, tonight after Palm pushed out the first paid webOS applications, less than two weeks after joining Palm the amazing duo has announced updates to Palm’s webOS development platform.
TechCrunch was at the event and reports that Palm is amending the developer agreement to allow for distribution outside of the App Catalog (or at least that’s how we’re reading it). “Developers can simply submit their apps to Palm, and Palm will return them to a URL that they can then blog, tweet, do whatever they want to share it. When a person the clicks the URL they can easily install the app. And while Palm is providing the URL, it is not going to be reviewing the apps in any way.” This trends much more towards the Android side of app reviews (where they perform an automated test for stability, they don’t check for “appropriateness”).
And for a developer that wants to distribute their apps as open source, Palm is also waiving the $99 yearly registration fee. According to Palm’s Twitter postings, developers that will be distributing closed source apps, free or paid, will still have to pay the $99 annual fee, as well as $50 per app.
Palm will also be opening all that aggregate info that they’ve been collecting to developers. TechCrunch notes that opening up their analytics data stands in stark contrast to Apple, who has historically held the data they collect very close to the vest.
And in a wonderful last note, Palm pulled an Oprah and gave all developers in attendance a free Pre, Touchstone, and a month of Sprint service. Galbraith told the new Pre owners to “Just hack on it.” It’s clear that Palm is taking a much more open stance on webOS development, quite possibly rivaling Android in terms of development transparency. To us, that’s a wonderful thing.
42 Comments
I can understand the $99/yr for developers to make their paid apps available on the Palm Catalog, but a $50 per application also? I hope that's a mistake, as I see that as a major hurdle for a lot of small developers.
What does Apple charge it's developers for posting their apps on their store? Do they also charge a per/application fee as well? What about the Android phones?
Yeah, this is great for open source developers but kind of a hit to closed source devs.
It's all about being rewarded for transparancy. That's the nature of "open source."
Apple charges the $99/year, but no per app fee. But it takes a while to get approved as a developer, and there's always the chance that your app won't be approved. And if it does, you've got 75,000 apps to compete with. So, good luck making your killing there...
yesssssssssssss
I love this phone..
Bring it on, guys. This is awesome!!!!
this seems amazing
That seems pretty pricy to be posting apps in the app store. :-/
This is great news. This is the kind of bold move that Palm needs to compete with Apple. I think that this, combined with the pleasant developer experience and easy learning curve will make webOS the platform of choice for open source coders.
Now they are making really marketing Great, Go Palm
That's why i bought a Palm Pre, it is going to be a very good phone and i am glad i am able to support David against Goliath.I am going to get rid of my Iphone 3G, bye, bye and long live Preeeeeeeeeeeeeee. My phone is a pre!!! like nothing else.
Johnflo88.
If you are charging for the apps, is $50 really that much? I mean you need to sell 50 apps to break even, and if you can't sell 50 $1 apps, how good is your app? (actually, since palm takes a cut, maybe like 70 sales at $1).
As far as the rest of it 1) this has to make steve jobs go insane, it's the antithesis of his entire philosophy. Is this Rubensteins real philosophy or is it just to get back at Jobs/Apple?
2) this is relatively good news for developers as it seems like everything is geared towards making this platform easy to develop for and sucessful.
They will need to sell a lot fewer than that -- have you seen the prices in the app store?
Moving the free stuff out of the catalog and appending a fee a submit an application to the catalog is great. It means that submitting an application to the catalog will likely go smoother, faster, and will mean that the submissions will likely be higher caliber. I think this is great news for the WebOS platform and a great way to ensure a QUALITY applications catalog.
does the install link mean that ANYONE can EASILY install fileCoaster on their pre?
Yes, I believe that it will. However, it will also mean that FileCoaster isn't even necessary for apps that are "ready" to be used. It could still be a great tool for PreCentral if they want to become the unofficial single-location-host-for-free-apps-that-wish-to-be-found-easily.
fileCoaster is pretty outdated. Please use something like Preware from now on for homebrew.
Say what? ... To each their own reality I guess.
yeah, I use preware on my phone, but it requires a service that definitely won't be capable of being installed through this method.
Why? What's the difference?
I love my pre! Everyday more good news comes! Sprint is just one of the many great things about it! Everyday I say to my apple fanboy friend can your iphone do this? Life is good. :)
I like that they made the apps not needing the app store.. but 50$ an app even if it's free? WTF free shouldn't cost anything on either end, open or closed source.
Very nice. There is no reason a free app should need to be in the app catalog to be considered a legit app. I just took the dive into homebrew yesterday, and I am a little disappointed in myself for waiting so long now.
$50 per app AND 30% of each purchase???
I'm impressed. Way to go Palm.
I actually think it's good to have a cost associated with submitting an app. This will weed out useless apps from the store and set a baseline of quality. It will make developers consider their effort and reward more carefully.
At the same time, hobbyists are still free to publish their apps outside the catalog without any endorsement by Palm.
Yes -- for the same reason some bars/clubs charge a cover fee. It helps keep the rif raf out.
The $50 per closed source app is simply a substitute "control" put there in place of having Palm people review and approve the apps. Simply put, it's a monetary based policy that helps developers to not put up money for a really stupid app that nobody would ever buy. For successful apps, this is a non-issue. Supply and demand will eventually drive at an end price for apps anyway. In two weeks, no-one will see this as an issue anymore.
I just bought 2 apps and trying a 3rd that runs 4-5 bucks.
Let's do basic math you spend $99 a year to be a developer and then $50 per app submission. I figure after $215 in sales you are making a profit. Palm still has to review submissions, which costs them time and money rather the app sells or not.
OK so now every living room developer will not be submitting apps to the catalog. There is still homebrew for those.
Considering the ease of buying and the number of people you are reaching the outlay does not seem exorbitant in the least.
Just my thoughts as a consumer.
this is VERY good news. I am a happy customer
while im dissapointed by the 150 first app cost, higher than ANY other platform, I guess it means we might not be littered with 468 iFart apps and other such garbage that makes the appstore 98.7% junk.
That's EXACTLY the point. In addition to encouraging and driving open-source development, it also keeps the App Catalog CLEAN. Chances are that 99% of the applications published by Palm will be USEFUL and people will WANT to pay for them, and the developer will make back their publishing cost in a matter of weeks.
while im dissapointed by the 150 first app cost, higher than ANY other platform, I guess it means we might not be littered with 468 iFart apps and other such garbage that makes the appstore 98.7% junk.
Just want to make it clear: open source app will not pay $99 per year but still have to pay $50 to get it on the app catalog (doesn't matter if it's a Free or Paid app)? Is that correct?
Can you not read? The $50 per-app fee only applies to CLOSED source apps, free or paid.
[...] developers that will be distributing closed source apps, free or paid, will still have to pay the $99 annual fee, as well as $50 per app.
Palm's official statement says
we will enable the distribution of open source webOS apps to the web without you having to pay the $99 program fee. If the source of your app is available to the public under one of the commonly accepted licenses (BSD, Apache, GPL, MIT, etc.), you can distribute your apps on the web for free.
The $50 is for apps that go into the App Catalog, so Open Source apps on the web will not cost their developers anything. Listing Open Source apps in the App Catalog will still probably cost at least $50, and might also require the $99/year fee also.
Very cool - so does this mean we will see apps like Preware and Filecoaster hitting the official appstore? What about MyTether? :D
Shane Menshik
D2 GLOBAL INC
I'm really glad to hear this, but unless the SDK's terms have been modified to explicitly allow distribution of apps without Palm's involvement or intervention ("sideloading", or simply "the way mobile apps were distributed before the iPhone") -- as originally advertised -- my company still can't accept those terms.
Are we still going to run into the "Sorry, Not Enough Memory" with this install method like we do on the official App Cat? If so I'm not sure this will do much good for many of Pre users since we cannot download any right now due to these ridicules limitations. Since they are open source could these same apps be added to a repo and then be loaded via Preware or QI?
Palm is already skimming 30% of every app sale. Why charge an additional $50?
I guess $50 fee will pay to the tech who will review your app. Palm don't have many tech guys like Apple so if you want to get your app to their app catalog, then you have to pay them $50 per app to get reviewed. Your $50 fee will help Palm hire more techs...just a thought.
I think they do it so, People don't post useless apps and think of the investment that they are making. So charging people and extra $50 would most likely increase competition on making better useful apps so more people are less disappointed. But in Todays world people are never happy lol.
I would definitely love to see some changes to the OS. There is a lot of work that needs to be done.
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