Dear Palm: The Last Thing You Want To Do Right Now Is Screw Over App Developers

from the bad,-bad-idea dept

The Palm Pre comes out in a few weeks, and many are hoping that this is finally the smartphone out there that can capably compare to the iPhone. Of course, one key to that is having a devoted developer community that makes the device more valuable. Palm is betting the business on the Pre, and some of the early reports I'd heard from developers about its WebOS platform were that it was a great development environment. Since I think it's good for the overall market to have strong competitors, I was hopeful that maybe the Pre would live up to the hype (to be honest, I'm thinking about getting one myself). However, slimcat, points us to the story of overly legalistic Palm overreacting to a minor issue and canceling a chance to work with the folks who were setting up PreDevCamp. Now, Palm had no obligation to work with the folks setting it up, but it would be a good way to support the developer community. So why did they bail out? Apparently because one of the folks behind PreDevCamp mentioned on Twitter that he was meeting with Palm, but that he couldn't say anything since the meeting was under NDA.

Now, if you've been around larger companies for any length of time, you can see why this happened. It's pretty standard that a meeting under NDA means that even the fact that the meeting exists is covered by the non-disclosure agreement. So... I can understand (at first glance) how Palm reacted. But, Palm really should have taken a step back and looked at the larger picture. Having the guy reveal the meeting was hardly a big issue. The bigger issue is helping developers feel as comfortable as possible developing for the Pre and making the device as valuable as possible. Freaking out over a harmless "leak" about the meeting is missing the big picture in a way that only hurts Palm. Update: Looks like things are getting worked out with Palm apologizing for overreacting and a nice airing of differences that seems to have worked well for both sides.

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Apple Finally Realizes That NDAs For Developers Are A Bad Idea

from the took-'em-long-enough dept

It was definitely surprising to see Apple trying to enforce an NDA to stop iPhone developers from talking about their applications, so it's nice to see Apple (for once!) respond to the backlash by dropping the NDA. However, the company's explanation for why it had the NDA in the first place doesn't make much sense:

We put the NDA in place because the iPhone OS includes many Apple inventions and innovations that we would like to protect, so that others don't steal our work. It has happened before. While we have filed for hundreds of patents on iPhone technology, the NDA added yet another level of protection. We put it in place as one more way to help protect the iPhone from being ripped off by others.

It's unclear what "inventions and innovations" would be "stolen" (the company probably means infringed, not stolen, obviously) without such an NDA in place. Also, the patents are a separate issue. The whole explanation, frankly, is misleading. The NDA and the patents protect entirely different things in very different ways, and it's difficult to see how the lack of an NDA allows anything to be "ripped off."

Either way, it's good that Apple has recognized that such NDA's significantly limit its developers. It's tough to have much of a developer "community" when said developers are barred from communicating.

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