So, today PalmSource announced a goal of running Palm OS applications on Linux devices.
I think people expecting a Palm OS module they can install on a Linux handheld are going to be disappointed. And I think people expecting PalmSource to open up a lot more of their tools to be disappointed.
This doesn’t seem to be as much about making Palm OS a linux application layer as it is about making Palm OS more portable across platforms. Hardware vendors will undoubtedly have to do customization to make Palm OS on their hardware, it’s just that with this new plan it will be possible to get Palm OS working on more hardware.
I’ve been trying to think of an analogy for this, but have been unable to. Mac OS X threw away their old kernel, and PalmSource isn’t doing that and shouldn’t. The best analogy might be the cross-platform NextStep APIs, but it seems PalmSource plans to port their visual look as well. (Good idea!)
On the plus side, this could be big news for developers willing and able to write vertical market applications. We’re going to see a huge jump in the variety of handhelds running Palm OS over the next few years, including some mobile devices we don’t even consider handhelds.
Hopefully, compile farms will be made available, or PalmSource will update the tools a lot… I know I don’t want to be maintaining a half dozen or more targets with current tools.
I’d like to see a return to some of PalmSource’s previous platform-agnosticism, and I’d like to be able to recompile PalmSource’s tools for hosts other than Windows. But I don’t expect to see either of these.
Still, just the increase in variety will be nice.