Incognito wrote: > You are right, they can do whatever they want. However I don't think > that is a good argument against what I said.
That depends on how you define a "good argument". ;-) In the abstract, I agree with your position. The fact that I doubt the industry is necessarily going to follow your guidance may not make it a "good argument", but I think it is a "likely occurrence". Take Archos for example. They've announced a media player that will blend Android with their own multimedia tech. There's a fair chance some changes will be needed to Android to pull this off. With luck, the changes will be backwards-compatible, but that really only gets proved once it's in the hands of us developers. According to my interpretation of the Incognito Rule (don't ship a new firmware until developers get it and test it), Archos is not allowed to ship their product until test firmware images for all other Android devices possibly used by developers (ADP1, G1, etc.) have been made and distributed that incorporate those patches, plus some lead time for said developers to help conclude there are no regressions caused by Archos' patches. It may be I am misinterpreting your rule, in which case I apologize. In theory, that'd be lovely. In practice, Archos has deadlines to meet (e.g., Christmas season) and cannot be held hostage by other device manufacturers, waiting for them to prep firmware updates. Archos may not even be willing to hold up waiting for a Google-led ADP1 firmware update, depending on when the next such update is scheduled, and over time only a small percentage of Android developers are likely to have the ADP1 anyway. Since Android is open source, there's nothing really to stop them...and it's even tough to *blame* them, since their business model is not necessarily predicated on making J. Random Developer happy. You know and I know that apps breaking left and right on their device will hurt their sales, but that may or may not be obvious to the decision-makers. If you want executives at mobile device manufacturers to hew to some variation of the Incognito Rule, there's a lot of work to be done: writing a position paper that explains why the Rule is in their best interests, getting audiences with the appropriate firms to present the paper, etc. This list can be a launchpad for such efforts, but I rather doubt all that many marketing executives read [android-discuss]. Or, perhaps there is some other way we can achieve your goals. -- Mark Murphy (a Commons Guy) http://commonsware.com _The Busy Coder's Guide to Android Development_ Version 2.0 Available! --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Discuss" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-discuss?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
