May 21st, 2009 | 
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Back in February, Whurley, Gio and I heard about a new product called the Palm Pre.
I was excited at the promise of a new, open mobile development platform and we decided to recreate the success of iPhoneDevCamp by creating preDevCamp.
I never expected Palm to provide assistance, but I hoped they would. Apple was flooding the market with advertisements, not for the iPhone, but for the iPhone App Store and the abundant apps.
Clearly, a thriving supply of mobile applications was the way to sell a new mobile device.
I’d developed apps for Palm OS in the past and I knew that there was a devoted community of developers out there; however, they were rather neglected developers, since Palm hadn’t really been a major player in the mobile arena for a while. With the advent of the Pre, I thought things were changing.
Time went by and there were fleeting moments of contact with Palm. We spoke to them; they seemed interested but asked us to put a disclaimer that we were not affiliated with them, before they would enter into a relationship with them. This seemed a little backwards to me, but we complied. Not much transpired after that.
Then Mitch Allen gave his web presentation on developing WebOS apps and gave us a shout out. I was really excited about this; the CTO of Software was aware of what we were doing, but there wasn’t any follow up from Palm following that.
Finally, last week, Palm sent us some NDAs in preparation for a meeting this Wednesday. We signed them and prepared ourselves for an interesting update. Gio sent out a tweet simply stating that we had a meeting and it was under an NDA, as a result Palm then cancelled the meeting and cancelled any discussions covered by an NDA. At that point, my hopes for a useful relationship with Palm died.
As a corporation, I acknowledge that Palm’s only responsibility is to its shareholders. There’s nothing self serving or evil about that; it’s how things work in big business. However there are many keen and willing developers out there, who have been waiting for the arrival of WebOS. A development platform is only a success if it is broadly adopted. Instead of embracing the grassroots upswell of interest in WebOS that preDevCamp fostered, Palm seem to be, at best, oblivious and, at worst, disdainful of the enthusiasm and good will engendered by these folk. I think they are missing a real opportunity to be involved in and to help generate the growth of a vital community.
My fellow preDevCamp founders and I may have differing views on the impact of Palm’s interactions with us. Personally, I’m left disappointed at what I view as a lack of foresight on Palm’s behalf. Palm will live or die by the success of the WebOS platform. The preDevCamp community will be a large part of this. However, my excitement remains about the WebOS platform. I couldn’t really give two hoots about Palm at this point. I *do* want preDevCamp to be a success and I *know* it will be; we have dedicated organizers all the way across the globe. We have a release date, at last. We have a date for preDevCamp. It’s all systems go. I encourage you to stay focused on the product and on the exciting possibilities that WebOS brings. My only hope, now, is that Palm runs the course with their indifference to community. If they don’t want to help us, that’s fine. I just hope they don’t try and get in our way.
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I agree on many levels that Palm has done a lot to shoot themselves in the foot on the release of the pre. They by no means have embraced developers or the community in the way that Android and iPhones have. I do know however that most companies that make you sign and NDA are often very sensitive to the mention of you letting people know that you are under NDA with them.
Hopefully the product will be good enough to make up for their missteps in the strategy department!
How lame and short-sighted of them. In organizing the Chattanooga preDevCamp, I’m actually reaching out to Sprint instead of Palm, hopefully I’ll have better luck.
Wait wut?
“Gio sent out a tweet simply stating that we had a meeting and it was under an NDA,”
So someone tweets “we have a meeting” and everything gets canceled?
This is terrible news, for you guys, for preDevCamp attendees, and for Palm. From Giovanni’s post it seems that despite all the rhetoric, Palm still doesn’t get it. I had at one time even hoped that Palm would host the San Francisco Bay preDevCamp at their headquarters as we were looking for a venue. But that seems to be a pipe dream now.
I hope that most of the preDevCamps go forward, but without the support of Palm or any of its three founders, I’m not sure how much momentum can be maintained. If things don’t work out, I’d encourage any aspiring webOS developers to visit http://weboshelp.net which, although tiny in comparison to preDevCamp, is now the largest active webOS development community on the net (outside of the official (NDA’d) Palm developer portal). Hope to see you there.
I think Palm is just. I think Palm decided to not waste any time, money and resources on an unproven grass roots entity like us WebOS developers. If I was Palm, I wouldn’t have a relationship with us either especially with money be so darn tight with them. Plus iPhone developers are disgruntle and Android developers are… well whatever they are (insignificant?) – the developers’ climate is looking cloudy with a chance of rain. And honestly why bother investing in us when we are not even proven yet? Its like complimenting a woman on her shoes and expecting to get your Johnson wet later that night. We build, we build good, we build great and Palm will be making breakfast for us the following morning!
Thanks for the counterpoint. I agree that the relationship that other vendors have had with their development community has been rocky, but I do not believe that this is inherent in the nature of such a relationship.
As for your comments about investing in an unproven entity, it overlooks the very nature of an investment, in that there is an element of risk. You could argue that the risk/reward ratio is too high to invest in a development community, but the fact of the matter is that modern mobile devices are being sold entirely by the network they are on and the applications that they run. Nobody sells a phone on the virtues of its functionality.
Again, thanks for the couterpoint; I disagree with your conclusions, but I get where you’re coming from.
Maybe if we understood which entities and groups Palm is indeed investing their time, money and resources in and then we can measure up that up with what preDevCamp and get a better idea why Palm isn’t supporting us and what they’re looking for. Not to say the idea of preDevCamp isn’t good enough but maybe some other entity popped up that showed more promise than us.
I can’t defend why Palm got all freaked out by telling everyone about the NDA, but I can say that they still definitely want to support the community. I’ve talked to Pam (VP of Developer Marketing) and Chuq (Community Manager), and absolutely believe we can work through our differences and have a successful event.
I’ve read the other posts as well, and my original thoughts are still my only thoughts. Palm was looking for an excuse to kill this meeting from the outset.
Palm executed every bit of this launch with so much secrecy, so much exclusivity, and so much of a grip that virtually any chance of anything extraordinary happening died with it.
Palm has a responsibility to its shareholders, sure, but I doubt many of us want to see them squander the opportunity they have to get a team of developers together who are willing to make apps that rival those of Apple’s App Store. In all honesty, this sounds more about Palm being plain-old Palm than it does something about an NDA which mentioned a completely irrelevant date (May 14? Who cares, as the other post noted, what mattered happened May 20).
I’m sorry, but this has me really bummed about the Pre’s launch.
1. No SERO (This is just lame for those of us who have been loyal SERO Sprint customers forever)
2. Mail in Rebate (And no rebate at Best Buy, which makes sense how? Way to drive sales out of corporate stores, Sprint. That’s really good for us shareholders.)
3. Exclusivity for “Premier” customers, celebrities, and apparently everyone but customers/technophiles (what happened to those of us who registered on the Palm website seconds after the CES keynote? Nothing? Aren’t those of us who have been following this longest most likely to tell everyone and sell you more of them?)
4. Their death-grip on the release date (Why did it take a month of coaxing to get the date out of them? Just so they could make sure it was the day before WWDC?)
5. Dan Hesse and his shortages bit (Sure, scarcity breeds value, but c’mon, sell as many as you can while you still can!)
6. And now this let’s-piss-off-virtually-all-the-developers shenanigan?
Call me crazy, but they’re making a lot of the same mistakes that Apple does which drive me nuts.
“Gio sent out a tweet simply stating that we had a meeting and it was under an NDA, as a result Palm then cancelled the meeting and cancelled any discussions covered by an NDA.”
That sentence makes no sense.
“as a result” of WHAT, exactly?
“As a corporation, I acknowledge that Palm’s only responsibility is to ? its shareholders. There’s nothing self serving or evil about that; it’s how things work in big business.”
? == “screw”? It would make sense.
Palm does have a responsibility to their shareholders, and pissing off developers is a breach of that responsibility. I had high hopes for the Pre. Now I’m left still waiting for a decent option.
So, they send you a NDA and you tweet about it? Were you high or something?.. Sorry folks, but they did the right thing. If you cant respect a NDA, they cant respect you.
Nobody’s chipped in on Palm’s behalf, so let me:
“Gio sent out a tweet simply stating that we had a meeting and it was under an NDA”
This is very, very, very inappropriate behavior. While it might not be a violation of the terms of the NDA, it’s a violation of the spirit of it. If I were working at Palm and had entered into an NDA with someone, seeing a tweet “Hey everybody, I’m going to have a meeting with Palm, but it’s SECRET!” would lower my confidence that the NDA would be upheld.
“At that point, my hopes for a useful relationship with Palm died.”
I can’t imagine it’s that bad. Try contacting Palm with “Hi guys, I realize how utterly inappropriate Gio’s tweet was. We’re so very sorry for that, and it won’t happen again. We’ve reflected on how much we need to give you reasons to be confident that we’ll respect your NDA. We can and will respect your NDA, and we’d like to resume discussions.”
As a thought experiment, try switching the roles around. Image it’s you with a confidential business project, and someone with whom you’ve just signed an NDA tweets about that very NDA and a meeting subsequent to it. Are you saying you wouldn’t mind?
Give Palm a bit of slack – it’s a bet-the-company move they’re making, and they might want to control the release of some info about the software platform, especially any parts that might be almost-but-not-quite-ready. I can understand that.
To be honest, Palm just committed suicide with this move. Now it won’t matter if they extend the bridge again, the community is going to be less apt to walk on it.
Really, you only burn developers once. They’re like elephants, they’ll remember it forever.
I know my wife and I were really stomping for the pre…but if it doesn’t have developers and community surrounding it, it’s going to suck. That being the case, I doubt we’ll spring for one now and I’ll revisit the 30+ friends I’ve told about it and tell them that Palm sucks because they’re a bunch of uptight white collar idiots who can’t see the value of a grass roots movement.
Thanks for ruining things Palm!
The tweet was unprofessional. You had it coming
I feel for you, but to play the devils advocate, you guys did sign an NDA. As innocuous Gio’s tweet may have been, its kind of an annoying thing to do. If you are already tweeting about confidential meetings before they happen, whats going to \slip out\ once they actually give you some proprietary information?
“Gio sent out a tweet simply stating that we had a meeting and it was under an NDA,”
Depending on how the NDA was writing, the fact that you disclosed you had this meeting you may have already violated the NDA.
If not, you definitely violated the spirit of of the NDA.
You had it coming and ruined it for the community.
Well, if they want to play silly buggers that’s fine. Android seems quite welcoming of developers… in fact first person to coax a full OBEX push/pull based app on it will make a small fortune.
I wanted to respond to the various people who feel that Gio breached the wording or spirit of the NDA by sending out a tweet about an impending meeting.
First, he categorically did not breach the wording of the NDA. Since I have had the pleasure of actually reading the NDA, I can say that with some authority.
However, the question of the spirit of the NDA is more subtle. Naturally, I disagree that the spirit was breached and I’d like to outline why.
The spirit of the NDA is to keep confidential information shared between two or more parties… confidential. There is an expectation held by both parties that confidential information will be clearly designated as such, either through explicit labelling or through more implicit indications, such as designating the contents of a meeting confidential.
I do not believe that the act of scheduling a meeting is implicitly confidential. Certainly, a party involved in an NDA could designate the meeting itself as confidential and, had that been done, we would have honoured that request. However, Gio is a marketing guy and was in a position to promote the co-operation between Palm and preDevCamp. Palm are abundantly aware of this fact.
That’s all I have to say on that matter. Subsequent conversations over the past 24 hours have helped open up and clarify communications once again. The doors are not closed forever. If nothing else, this has been an object lesson in the importance of clear communication.
This kind of stuff is why I just ditched my iphone for a G1 (android). I’m tired of Apple’s treatment of developers and have been hopeful that Palm would realize the opportunity that’s available to cultivate more open developer relationships. Google seems to get it it; I wish others would.
palm’s WebOS is based on webkit, the same engine behind adobe air, safari, the iphone web browser, midori, google chrome, the S60 mobile browser, and appcelerator.
webkit is a free software project.
if palm cannot get it through their heads that they cannot alienate people publicly like this then they are in some serious trouble.
unless they back down it would not surprise me if palm go under.
Let me see if I understand this correctly.
First, they asked you to put a disclaimer that we were not affiliated with Palm.
Second, they offered to have a meeting with you under NDA.
Third, you issued a tweet that could be taken as implying a small degree of affiliation.
Fourth, they cancelled the meeting to ensure the appearance of preDevCamp being an independent group was restored.
Am I missing anything here?
I know of several companies that would point out the pre is their registered trademark and to use it at all requires you to honour several requirements. Or put it another way, most other companies would have tried to micro-manage preDevCamp to it’s death. I think Palm is going in the right of keeping the camp independent and still leave room to protect it’s brand by making a strong distinction between what is material controller by Palm and what isn’t.
This whole thing is stupid; it isn’t about an NDA, it’s about a company that clearly doesn’t understand that having a ton of Devs chomping at the bit, eager to make software which enriches their platform is a GOOD thing.
They failed to capitalize on it, and instead of the Pre launching with hundreds, perhaps thousands of apps, it’ll launch with probably less than 50 (excluding the old Palm OS apps, if you can even count them).
NDA or not, they made an entirely poor political move of their own and slapped the proverbial hand that will be feeding them. Ask apple whether 3rd party developers are important. Apparently the oldest company in the smartphone industry still doesn’t get it.
Whurley, Gio, Dan, right on. Amen brothers.
The sanctimony is a little off-putting. I’m not a corporate fan by any means, and I’m completely indifferent to Palm. But the meeting was clearly canceled as a direct result of some questionable, self-aggrandizing behavior on Gio’s part. Hopefully, they just needed to send a message that their NDA was not a formality and a part of a larger corporate strategy, and will re-schedule after some additional discussion.
But seriously, don’t give the movement a bad name with self-righteous arrogance. Say you’re sorry, you made a mistake, got carried away, whatever … and move on with what sounds like a good plan.
OK, so Palm and preDevCamp sets up a meeting. Palm says, “hey, don’t tell anyone about this, ok?”.
preDevCamp hears that as ‘don’t tell anyone about the *contents* of the meeting’ and proceeds to tell everyone that a meeting is taking place but they can’t reveal the contents.
This is the equivalent of a father telling his kid, “hey, I’m gonna tell you something but don’t tell your mother” and the kid then proceeds to the living room and loudly announces “Dad’s gonna tell me something but I can’t tell Mom what it is!!”
As much as Palm needs the developer community more that the other way around, the disclosure of the meeting should *never* have happened. That was a childish move. Business has always operated a certain way (NDA’s and such). That hasn’t always sat well with developers and other techie types. This act of ‘rebellion’ (just like a teen acting out against a parent) only serves to reinforce the stereotype that developers and their like cannot be trusted with business decisions.
For clarification for people like marginalboy and Viktor, since the NDA is the main thing being discussed on most posts on the web.
We were very specific and direct with Aaron Hyde that we signed the NDA to cover the release date of the phone. Nothing else. The fact the the meeting was taking place or that we had an NDA was absolutely not part of the agreement.
Second point, Paul Cousineau and Chuq Von Rospach at Palm had asked us on a previous call to make sure the community knew they were talking to us. They were held under some tight restrictions about what they could say to the public, for obvious reasons, and had asked us to be sure the developer community knew they were engaged.
It appears that the two competing needs (communication to the community that Palm was talking to the independent developers via preDevCamp and secrecy) driven by separate camps clashed.
This, coupled with our frustrations based upon some other issues in our relationship with Palm led to the decisions by whurley and myself to exit the scene.
The worldwide movement we created under the preDevCamp banner is, by design, in tact and all local groups, as far as I can tell, are still planning their individual events.
Last point, Palm gets it now…
Pam Deziel, VP of Developer Marketing, responded on the Palm Developer Network blog this morning about the situation:
“We overreacted to the whole disclosure issue. We’ve been in stealth and super secret mode for so long now, we needed a real world conversation to see how we needed to work things so everybody can operate in their own environment.”
“I’m optimistic that we can find a good solution. And we’re going to keep talking. We’d love to get your two cents, concerns, and suggestions — feel free to join the conversation here, and be assured that even when we sometimes have to keep quiet, we’re always listening to your ideas.”
Read the whole post here: http://pdnblog.palm.com/2009/05/a-predevcamp-update/
Whurley and I are here to serve the community, not the corporation. When it became obvious that we needed to make a bold move to get Palm’s attention on behalf of preDevCamp, we moved. Whether you agree with our tactics or not, Palm is seriously paying attention to you now.
The end result has been a more active, genuine, serious relationship between Palm and its independent developer community. Everyone wins. This is what we, as leaders of the preDevCamp movement, hoped to create in the beginning. It looks like we’re here now.
Anyone want to talk to me about it personally, feel free to catch me on twitter http://twitter.com/giovanni, email at predevcamp(@)gallucci(dot)net or leave a comment on my original post http://blog.gallucci.net/2009/05/palm-doesnt-get-it.html
I’m thinking it’s water under the bridge now. Nothing to see here. Go forth and develop. I’m going camping: http://dallas.wordcamp.org
-giovanni
http://twitter.com/giovanni
It was stupid of you to tweet about the NDA. You need to tell them you’re sorry and it will never happen again, and re-establish the relationship.
I think there are 10 other “dev camps” out there…I didn’t even know you guys were around until this news broke out. I’m sure palm pre will get a dev community, i like to dev for palm and i wouldn’t care which dev site i’m on as long as i get my anwsers.
This news is way over blown.
I understand you’re pissed off. I get it. Now get over it.
This matters to *you*, but not to my Mom. Why is that important? Because people like my Mom are the ones that buy phones.
In other words, you’ve had bad news and thrown your dummy out of the pram. You’re not going to get any biscuit now that you’re not playing any more.
If the pre is a success, developers will still come out of the woodwork and write programs for it, cancelled camp or not. If it’s not a success, your participation or not probably won’t have had a lot to do with that.
I don’t know that I would have taken Palm’s approach, but they’re in charge for this game.
Why? Who’s more important here? Without you perhaps a few developers pout a bit, or choose not to release software. Without them, there’s no game at all.
Best of luck, and I hope you find a platform you can love.
-Ken
Reading between the lines, it sounds like Palm is more interested in large development houses designing apps for it’s Pre phone than it is in private developers. That is a common and understandable position to take for companies who are used to working in closed environments
It’s not so common or understandable for companies in open software development environments.
It appears that Palm is attempting to transition from one to the other and not everyone got the word and as a corporation they are going through a period of inter-departmental conflict and confusion.
Firstly, statements to the effect of, “omg, the Pre is ruined and The Community will never forgive them!” are overstated at best, and at worst are, to use the wording of another commenter, self-aggrandizing. To think that _you_ or this camp represents the whole of the Pre development community is just hubris.
Secondly, Palm has done a lot to promote development on the Pre. The CTO is writing a book about it with O’Reilly, for crying out loud. And what do you say to Classic? They could have easily walked away from PalmOS and the old apps, but instead spent a lot of money to develop a PalmOS emulation layer. And an SDK beta? Did Apple hold a closed beta for their SDK? No, they didn’t even murmur about the iPhone until like 2 days before they released it.
Just a bunch of malcontents.
Also, my two cents on the NDA deal. I don’t know what sort of conversations happened between you all and Palm, but based on what I’ve read here I agree that tweeting about it maybe wasn’t the best idea. But I’m not going to beat this horse any further.
What makes this behavior even more inexcusable is that there is already a template in place for how this is supposed to work – iPhone. If you don’t realize how important developers are to the establishment of a platform, then you’re stupid. And don’t think that anything less than the establishment of a legitimate mobile computing platform will save Palm. They cannot afford for the pre to just be a successful phone.
Since I don’t believe that those at the helm at Palm are stupid, I am led to only one conclusion. Palm doesn’t really care about building a viable developer community. That’s because the whole point of this exercise is to make Palm an attractive takeover target. There are two notable companies which are itching to get into this phone-slash-computer game, but they have repeatedly demostrated total ineptitude with respect to consumer electronics. I predict that Microsoft will snap up Palm within the year if Dell doesn’t beat them to it.