Hi, I'm starting to see some of the subtleties here, I think - and I'm not sure we're all talking about the same things - it seems to me like the various constraints, goals & value of an application compliance programme are not exactly the same for the different actors here.
Skarpness, Mark wrote: > On Sep 15, 2010, at 1:16 PM, Graham Cobb wrote: >> But app stores are not going to be in the business of selling compliant apps! > yes they will - that is the whole point of MeeGo compliance - to get > scale in the application ecosystem by enabling applications to run > across multiple devices. If there is a very well-stocked repository of community applications which are non-compliant, resulting in many people running non-compliant apps on their devices, then the value of a "MeeGo compliant" label for application developers will go down. To me, the whole point of having MeeGo compliant applications is to (1) give users a way to know which apps are of a certain standard (kind of a quality mark) and (2) to let application developers know what best practices are for application development (endorsed APIs & distribution channel). If a substantial number of the most commonly used apps are not compliant, won't that muddy the waters at both ends of the pool? The third axis of application compliance you've hinted at are the implied responsibilities of stack vendors. This, it seems to me, is the key difficulty we have. You are saying (if I understand correctly) that every MeeGo stack must provide access to every MeeGo compliant application. Is this a requirement? If platforms "must" allow installation of all MeeGo compliant applications, and MeeGo Extras (or whatever the shared repository of community-packaged applications will be called) applications which depend on libraries in the usual way can be compliant, then yes, you're requiring stack vendors to provide a mechanism for enabling Extras and doing dependency resolution. Perhaps there is a way to phrase this so that vendors must support the installation of apps which are self-encapsulated, and may provide a means to install apps which have MeeGo compliant dependencies? >> This whole "MeeGo compliant" thing is about creating very high volumes of >> low-end, mainly free, apps. The high value apps that app stores care about >> are not affected. And for low end apps, it has to be quick, easy and cheap >> to develop or port them. And many of them will be in MeeGo Extras. > No, I don't agree. MeeGo compliance is about creating a large, > unified application ecosystem with apps sold through multiple app stores on > multiple devices. How do you see the end result looking? Let's take an example of 2 vendors: let's say Linpus and Novell. In my mind: MeeGo provides the app store infrastructure (similar to Android Market) which both Linpus & Novell are required to enable access to in their devices. MeeGo also provides build, packaging & hosting facilities for the MeeGo Extras, which may or may not be enabled by default on Linpus & Novell devices. If enabled by default, MeeGo Extras applications would show up in the app store as free applications (similar to Hildon Application Manager). If Novell or Linpus wanted to provide vendor- or device-specific app stores, they could also do that, provide the upload & hosting facilities, and have those extra applications also show up in the app store client. The user would be able to see in the interface which apps are MeeGo compliant, and which come from the vendor app store. I could also imagine the potential for a "Nettbook app store" for applications tailored for the netbook UX, which would be another common app store between Novell & Linpus, but which would not be used by GENIVI or Nokia. It seems that in your mind, each vendor will provide their own app store, that MeeGo will not provide any build, packaging or hosting facilities, and that the products of the MeeGo project will start & end with the core distribution + specs on what makes up a compliant application. The burden of providing a distribution channel & hosting is entirely pushed to the vendors. Is that a fair assessment? If it is, where do you see community apps being distributed? How would Linpus users be able to get at & install applications from the Novell app store? Perhaps I'm misunderstanding how you see this working in practice. If so, perhaps you could clear up my misunderstanding a little? Thanks! Dave. -- maemo.org docsmaster Email: [email protected] Jabber: [email protected] _______________________________________________ MeeGo-dev mailing list [email protected] http://lists.meego.com/listinfo/meego-dev
