Mobile Developer Alliance Wiki

Mobile Developer Alliance FAQ

What is it?

The Mobile Developer Alliance is a loose group of people concerned with issues facing mobile developers. There is a natural divide between the manufacturers and operators that create or provide service for mobile devices, and the many individuals and companies that write applications for them.

Each group has different motivations and problems. There are a number of issues that impact mobile developers that can be solved by manufacturers and operators, but aren't faced by these companies. Without a clear cost-benefit story for these large companies, the problems generally remain unaddressed. Even the largest software developers are typically much smaller than an operator or manufacturer, so getting these issues addressed is difficult at best.

Unfortunately, this has led to a lot of griping with little results. Those of us who decided to create the Mobile Developer Alliance are tired of the talking, and desire to pursue concrete activities aimed at solving these problems once and for all. We feel that by organizing, we can have a more coherent voice, and take positive steps towards addressing issues facing mobile developers, be they individuals or members of small or large corporations wishing to develop mobile applications.

What issues?

We are interested in highlighting issues that raise barriers to developers' ability to create, write, or deploy their applications. These issues range from fragmentation, to artificial barriers to openly develop on mobile platforms. The bottom line is that it is not possible to write one application to run on a wide variety of mobile devices. The reasons are technical, political, administrative, security related, you name it.

One of our early goals is to work with standards bodies like the JCP to enumerate these issues and resolve them. We also want to reach out to other standards bodies - many of which are also dominated by large operators and manufacturers - and make sure that the interests of developers are heard and understood.

What developers?

The mobile developer can be anyone ranging from a hobbyist writing an application that may be useful to others in his hobby, to a small business or an entrepreneur in his garage attempting to write the next killer application, to a development house writing the next big game, to a small business owner trying to create a tool to simplify his business, to a large corporation developing an application for deployment to its customers or employees.

Operators and manufacturers are rarely in this position and might develop a relatively small number of applications, or target their applications to only one set of devices. On the other hand, the mobile developers listed above bring "street smarts" to the picture.

An objective of the Mobile Developer Alliance is to help bridge the gap between these groups, so that a feedback loop is created and better and better mobile environments are created.

Why don't developers simply use platform so-and-so, which is free from impediments to development?

There are some great platforms that are free from many development impediments, such as an OpenMoko^? Freerunner, or a jailbroken iPhone. However, there are serious limitations as well. The OpenMoko^? platform is in very limited supply at the moment. It is unlikely that an OpenMoko^? developer will be able to share her application with her friends. On the other hand, it may be possible for someone to avoid some of the restrictions of the iPhone SDK by writing for a jailbroken iPhone. Distribution, however, requires the recipient to circumvent software locks on their iPhone, an action which by its very name is a deterrent.

The bottom line is that currently, openness and ubiquity are currently mutually exclusive when it comes to mobile application platforms. This is vastly different from the PC architecture, which is both open and ubiquitous.

It is our feeling that environments that are both open and ubiquitous greatly increase the ability for innovation to occur. This innovation, however, often benefits the innovators more than the platform providers. This message has not been lost on those who supply the platforms, who do not wish to become commodities as so many PC manufacturers have, and to prevent this, inject control of platforms and erect virtual toll booths.

This is already changing, as we see newer platforms that are being created by entities who are not traditional players in the mobile space being significantly more open than earlier platforms. We would like to see the best of all platforms brought together so that we can level the playing field, enjoy inclusionary instead of exclusionary development environments, and focus on creating solutions.