Palm hasn't said much to the community since the Mojo SDK was leaked over a week ago; that is, until this past weekend, when Developer Community Manager Chuq Von Rospach responded to questions as to why the bulk of developers still are not approved for the Early Access Program. So why the foot-dragging? Also, what criteria are they looking for to get into the program? Here's what he had to say:
The primary limitation we have today is the capacity of our developer area, which wasn’t built to support the number of developers who want access. That’s actually a good problem to have, and we have a team working on bulking up the infrastructure, too. There are some really interesting things just over the horizon here, but it takes time.
If you think about it, if we let too many people in too fast and everything does the fail whale, we’ll get yelled at and developers will give up on us. I realize that there are some developers who are tired of waiting — and I fully understand — but I hope they’ll come and take another look at us later when we finish the SDK up and get it out to everyone. If we mess up the SDK or the tools, we risk driving away lots of developers and convincing them not to come back. It’s a fun and challenging balancing act.
Our current admission policy is fairly simple: we’re accepting in applications based on how complete and detailed the applications were. I’ve broken that up into a few different piles of applications, and within each pile, we’re admitting them based on when they sent us the application. Right now, the most detailed applications are going in; when we finish that, we’ll grab the next set and do the same until everyone is in the program or we release the SDK to the public and end the early access program.
So looks like if you're applying, it's probably best to go through the application thoroughly, as the form asks for a summary your development background and to describe the great webOS app(s) you plan on creating (but better save plans for your fart app until later). Otherwise, all we can say is good luck, and know that everyone will have access to the SDK in good time, likely by summer's end.
Tuesday, 07 July 2009