Quote:
|
Originally Posted by TadW
Wow, David, that's definitely the scoop of the day!! I didn't know that 80% of Palm staff were software engineers. In other words, more than 700 employees are working on Palm software development! Given how little Palm has shown us in regard to software advances to date, I am pretty sure you are right on spot that Palm must have been working on something big as a new OS behind our backs!
|
Right, but keep in mind that building an OS is a huge undertaking and most likely Palm has a partnership or licensing agreement with a commercial Linux vendor that has already done most of the low-level work and even created some kind of application framework. It's a big enough project just for Palm to modify an existing framework to suit its needs.
It is exciting. But also kind of a shame when you think what might have happened if Palm and Palmsource hadn't gone their separate ways, don't you think? It's going to be a very confusing thing for Palm OS developers and users to figure out which platform they go with and deal with the inevitable incompatibilities.
Also take care: when the analyst says he believes Palm is doing this to hedge its OS risk, you should read that as "this may or may not be released depending on circumstances." We don't really know if this platform is their Plan A or their Plan B.