Bob Kerns wrote:
> Personally, I start with the assumption that these are professional
> developers. Sometimes they have hard choices to make. They need to
> know what the customer pain points are.
As Mr. Coryat indicated, they are aware of those pain points. I can
attest to this as well.
> Now, I'm not saying wording can't be improved. If you have specific
> concrete suggestions, I think it would be a fine idea to offer them.
The executives in charge of Android and the Android Market allocate
engineering time from a much smaller team than most outsiders might
think. Different people on the outside have different reasons for
wanting a different allocation of that engineering time -- you want more
spent on the Market, I want more spent on open source builds, etc.
At least for the two I cited specifically above, the executives in
charge of Android are well aware of the issues -- to use your term, they
would have to be idiots not to, considering all the noise that has been
made in the past year. All the complaints and subsequent media coverage
have not had an externally-obvious impact on decision-making.
I am completely unconvinced that even a well-written, well-worded
petition alone would make an impact at the executive level, any more
than anything else tried so far has. The petition being discussed is
neither well-written nor well-worded, IMHO.
For all the chest-beating going on about not seeing the strategy being
employed by Android executives ("They haven't communicated it, so I
won't pretend to understand it."), there is equally little sign of a
strategy by those who care about this issue. Perhaps I'm not looking in
the right places. As a result, to me, this petition comes across as your
garden-variety Internet rant. If there is a bigger plan, of which this
petition is but one part, please point me to it. Until I see such a
plan, it is difficult to take this petition seriously.
What I would hope the "bigger plan" would entail is changing the Android
Market by making it obsolete -- building a vastly better market,
evangelizing the heck out of it, etc. But, if that were the plan, this
petition wouldn't seem to be necessary, or even prudent. Of course,
there are other plans, such as organizing developers into a cooperative
and using group action for bargaining power, for which something like a
petition might make sense.
To me, a petition alone will have as much success as do the Washington
Generals against the Harlem Globetrotters. Or, to quote a delightful movie:
Miracle Max: Have fun stormin' da castle!
Valerie: Think it'll work?
Miracle Max: It would take a miracle.
As that movie illustrated, miracles do happen, at least in children's
stories distilled from economics treatises. They also happen
occasionally on hockey rinks.
If, in this case, it doesn't happen, and you want to develop a long-term
strategy and plan for dealing with this issue, let me know.
--
Mark Murphy (a Commons Guy)
http://commonsware.com | http://twitter.com/commonsguy
_The Busy Coder's Guide to *Advanced* Android Development_
Version 1.3 Available!
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