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06/04/2010, 10:19 AM
#355
 Originally Posted by Kupe
That concern won't go away for the foreseeable future. The road ahead for WebOS is still so murky, developers trying to make a living will take their skills and apply them to a more sure thing and WebOS will remain the platform for hobbyists and oh-by-the-way converted programs.
Concern is fine. We all can be concerned. And we all are concerned because we all want webOS to succeed. But, yelling "fire" in a movie theater never ends well. Developers benefit most from calm users. Stirring them up creates a self-fulfilling prophecy by chasing them away or discouraging them from purchasing apps. And just a few days before the grass-roots "Buy an App Day" this Sunday? Excellent timing. I still plan to buy apps on Sunday, but I'll pay closer attention to who's (whose?) apps I buy. Developers shouldn't bite the hand that feeds them.
P|C members listen very closely to what developers say. Much more so than to regular old users like me. When developers speak, you have to remember that it carries weight and authority 10 times what anyone else says. Same thing goes for P|C editors. The pandemonium of the last few days shows that.
Ironically, the panic response to the CEO's remarks were just as foolish as the way it was reported. The second P|C article that seemed to calm everyone somewhat while waiting for HP to clarify... was already on the web before the first provocative headline was published. What ever happened to context? What ever happened to having at least two sources before publishing a story?
As thinking people, we owe it to ourselves and those we influence to check things before we react. The next time this community wants to communicate something to Palm or HP, do you think Palm or HP will take us more seriously? I think they will be inclined to pay less attention and say, "there they go again..."
Do you think the chaos made it easier or harder for developer relations at Palm to promote the causes that benefit the developers? I hope that dev relations found a back channel method for expressing the embarrassment they must have enjoyed.
How do you think Apple would have responded to developers that contributed to such panic? Do you think it would increase the visibility of their apps in the Apple ecosystem? Palm isn't punitive like Apple, and that openness was taken advantage of. Do you think Adobe has improved their reputation by the way they have handled their disputes? Did you see Steve Ballmer creating panic posts in Microsoft forums when HP cancelled the Win7 tablet he showed at the Win7 launch? I'm sure he expressed his concern to HP, but not by stirring up the users in his various forums.
Anyone that wants to make money in the digital ecosystem that is emerging around smartphone market places... has a significant responsibility to behave professionally. They have to recognize they have a "virtual microphone" and what they say carries more weight than what someone like me would say. Isn't there a line from a movie like that? Something like "with great power comes great responsibility"...
That's just my opinion. But perhaps it's worth pondering...
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