No FOSS for Palm app catalog says Netscape pioneer

David M Williams
Thursday, 01 October 2009 13:34

Opinion and Analysis

This objection referred to the fact Zawinski published the source code and binary executables for these programs on his own personal web site. However, he was not profiting from them and cutting Palm out of a slice of the action. Rather, he had licensed his programs under a permissive open source license.

Zawinski replied arguing he found Palm’s protestation to be unacceptable and even offensive.

Palm agreed to discuss the matter but only on condition of a signed non-disclosure agreement. Zawinski refused to sign.

In September Zawinski was called by Joe Hayashi from Palm, formerly Senior Director of Product Management for Yahoo!. Despite the treatment from Palm over this matter Hayashi said “We aren’t asking that you remove the binaries or source of your apps from your web site, and we aren’t restricting anyone from distributing their source code, open source license or otherwise.”

This was at odds with Zawinski’s experience but nonetheless he was pleased the roadblocking policy in question appeared to no longer apply.

However, nothing has transpired since. Neither Tip Calculator nor Dali Clock have been posted to the App Catalog. Zawinski’s last correspondence with Palm requested he now sign up with a PayPal verified account and pay a $99 fee.

Given the applications are intended to be freely given away Zawinski, understandably, also objects to these latest two hurdles drip-fed by Palm along his route.

Nevertheless, even if Zawinski did cough up the money Palm’s software development kit license still maintains the clause prohibiting App Catalog software from appearing anyone else.

Given the nature of open source is that the source code is, well, open, this means in practice that open source is not welcome at Palm.