Microsoft meets with Windows Phone 7 “unlocker” team
Microsoft representatives met with Rafael Rivera and Long Zheng of the ChevronWP7 team on Monday to discuss the tool and Microsoft's plans to support homebrew applications on Windows Phone 7.
Context & Ripple Effects
ChevronWP7's unlock tool landed in late November 2010 as the first way to sidestep Windows Phone 7's developer restrictions, and Microsoft's initial response was hostile — warning days later that running it could render a phone permanently unusable. Seven weeks on, the posture has flipped: representatives sat down Monday with Rafael Rivera and Long Zheng, the tool's authors, to talk through the unlock and Microsoft's own thinking about supporting homebrew applications.
That matters because Windows Phone 7 launched in late 2010 as a deliberately closed platform built around Microsoft's 2009-era developer strategy, with no sanctioned path for unsigned apps — leaving hobbyists like ChevronWP7 to fill the gap themselves. A vendor sitting down with its unlocker team rather than issuing takedown threats signals Microsoft may want to channel that energy instead of fighting it.
First-order effects
- Rivera and Zheng shift from targets of Microsoft's brick-warning to informal advisers, with their tool's status moving from tolerated-or-blocked toward possible official accommodation.
- Windows Phone 7 users who unlocked with ChevronWP7 gain clarity on whether Microsoft will bless or block their modified handsets going forward.
Second-order effects
- If Microsoft follows through on homebrew support, its Marketplace policies and developer-signing requirements become the battleground — the unlocker community's workaround would compete with, or be absorbed by, an official channel.
- Rival platforms' handling of jailbreaking gets a reference point: a major vendor legitimizing its hacker scene pressures peers to justify why theirs stays locked out.
Third-order effects
- The episode points toward mobile platforms institutionalizing homebrew rather than suppressing it — vendors deciding that co-opting the unlocker community costs less than an arms race against it.
- If the pattern holds, the line between 'developer' and 'hacker' softens structurally, with platform owners building tiered access (signed marketplace, semi-official homebrew) as standard architecture.
The trend: Mobile platform owners are shifting from criminalizing unlock tools to absorbing the communities behind them into officially supported homebrew channels.