Palm: Free Apps For The Web, Free Development For Open Source, And Free Phones!
I'm here in San Francisco for a meeting Palm has called to give its newest employees, Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer, who both came over from Mozilla, a chance to talk a bit about the state of the webOS platform.
Context & Ripple Effects
This announcement is the latest turn in Palm's attempt to rebuild around webOS: after the 2007 open letter to customers and partners acknowledging its troubles, CEO Ed Colligan argued in March 2009 that the platform is bigger than just the Pre, and by April early developers reported the OS was living up to its hype. Today's event converts that momentum into a developer-acquisition pitch.
The pitch has new faces: Ben Galbraith and Dion Almaer left Mozilla in late September to lead webOS developer relations, days after Ars Technica dismissed their App Store criticism as misguided. Now, fronting a program of free web apps, free development for open source, and free phones — with syndicated coverage noting the developer program lifts off in December — they are putting the open-web argument they made at Mozilla into a competing platform's playbook.
First-order effects
- Developers targeting webOS get a zero-cost entry: no distribution fees, free tooling for open-source work, and free hardware, removing the upfront financial barrier that Apple's paid App Store model imposes.
- Galbraith and Almaer must now convert the goodwill Palm earned when early developers praised webOS into an active December launch pipeline, with their credibility from Mozilla as the draw.
Second-order effects
- Apple faces a direct counter-positioning move: Palm is recruiting exactly the developers most critical of App Store gatekeeping, forcing Apple to defend its fee-and-approval model against a free alternative.
- Sprint benefits from the developer push — the September report arguing Palm's channel problem disappears inside Sprint means subsidized free phones strengthen the carrier's exclusive device story.
Third-order effects
- If 'free' distribution and hardware subsidies prove effective at winning developers, smartphone platform competition shifts from app-store revenue sharing toward whoever can absorb the cost of developer acquisition — pressuring the walled-garden economics Apple established.
- Mozilla loses two of its most visible open-web advocates to a commercial phone platform, a test of whether the open-web-as-app-delivery argument can be institutionalized inside a vendor rather than a browser project.
The trend: Smartphone platforms are escalating from SDK releases to outright giveaways — free tools, free distribution, free devices — as they fight Apple's App Store for third-party developer loyalty.